Guns N’ Roses’ 1992 hit November Rain is one of the greatest power ballads of all time – and in the creation of singer Axl Rose’s magnum opus, his biggest influence was Elton John.
Elton’s 11-minute masterpiece Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding – the opening track from his 1973 double album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road – is widely considered to be a key inspiration for November Rain.
At the MTV Music Awards in 1992, Guns N’ Roses performed November Rain with Elton as guest star playing piano opposite Rose.
And when Axl was asked to induct his hero into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1994, he stated: “For myself as well as others, no one has been there more for inspiration than Elton John.” He added, with reference to a hit song from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road: “When I first heard Bennie And The Jets, I knew I had to be a performer.”
Written by Rose alone, November Rain is nearly nine minutes of piano-driven brilliance with an intensity that builds and builds from its B Major intro before erupting into an explosively dramatic B Minor finale.
However, for GN’R guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin, as well as bassist Duff McKagan, the song was played in C position given that they are all tuned half a step down.
In Slash’s official autobiography, co-written with Anthony Bozza and released in 2007, the guitarist revealed how the song originally came into existence back in 1986, a whole year before the release of the band’s seminal debut Appetite For Destruction.
Speaking to MTV in 1992, Slash said of November Rain: “We’d been dicking around with it for years,” while also joking: “It used to be, like, 25 minutes long!”
This wasn’t a huge exaggeration. An early version of November Rain clocked in at 18 minutes. A 10-minute version was recorded at Sound City Studios in LA with producer Manny Charlton, the guitarist for Scottish hard rock band Nazareth. He was chosen because the group loved the sound of his band’s Hair Of The Dog album of 1975 – which Charlton himself produced.
The 10-minute version of November Rain from the Sound City sessions was included in the super-deluxe edition reissue of Appetite For Destruction, released in 2018.
In an interview with music journalist Malcolm Dome, Manny Charlton recalled his reaction to hearing November Rain in its embryonic form.
“Axl played it on the piano," Charlon said, “and I believed it should have been on the first album. I thought it had all the makings of being a hit single and told Axl it would be a mistake not to include it on the debut.”
As it turned out, it was Mike Clink who produced Appetite For Destruction. And the band didn’t need November Rain for that album.
They had another ballad – Sweet Child O’ Mine – and it went all the way to No.1 on the US chart in 1988.
November Rain was eventually recorded to Rose’s satisfaction in 1990 with Clink again in the producer’s chair.
The song was included on the 1991 album Use Your Illusion I, and when released as the third single a year later it peaked at No.3 on the Billboard Hot 100, making history as the longest song to enter the American top 10 at that time.
In a 1990 interview with Kerrang!, Rose had given fans a teaser of what to expect from his group in the future. His words certainly rang true when the world got its first taste of November Rain.
“I was writing these ballads that I feel have really rich tapestries and stuff, and making sure each note, in effect, is right,” Rose explained. “Cos whether I’m using a lot of instrumentation and stuff or not, I’ll still write with minimalism.”
He added: “But it has to be right; it has to be the right note and it has to be held the right way, and it has to have the right effect, do you know what I mean?”
Drawing comparisons between November Rain and Estranged, the big piano ballad from Use Your Illusion II, Rose once explained how they were both love songs from varying perspectives.
“November Rain is a song about not wanting to be in a state of unrequited love,” he revealed in one of the videotapes documenting their music videos from this era.
The first verse in November Rain features a handful of open position chords from rhythm guitarist Stradlin, who then adds some clean arpeggiated ideas from the second verse.
Slash makes his grand entrance in verse three with a much more rough and ready distorted tone, right as Rose sings, “I know it’s hard to keep an open heart.”
For the recording, Slash most likely used his number one guitar – a 1959 Les Paul Standard replica made by Kris Derrig – into a modded Marshall JCM800 2203.
However, in the video, he can be seen playing a Dark Burst 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard that had previously belonged to Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry. He gave the guitar back to Perry in 2000 as a 50th birthday present. In an interview with Conan O’Brien, Perry said of Slash: “His heart is so big, I don’t know how it fits in his chest.”
The two guitar solos over the verse sections in November Rain are a great example of Slash’s melodic side – musical situations where he carefully considers the placement of each and every note instead of trying to force in something overly elaborate and up-tempo.
The final solo, however, is when everything shifts into minor key and he gets his moment to shine, switching between the B Harmonic and Natural Minor scales to create a lot of tension and suspense.
He lets his final note ring out into feedback as the final exclamation mark on one of his most universally admired musical statements.
November Rain has since been covered by numerous artists including Finnish bluegrass rockers Steve 'N' Seagulls and Scottish singer-songwriter Sandi Thom. One of the standouts is undoubtedly the 2018 version by Americana singer Nicole Atkins and Screaming Trees/Queens Of The Stone Age legend Mark Lanegan, giving the well-known classic a haunting countrified twist.
Even after all these years, November Rain remains one of the definitive power ballads, showing us just how forceful guitars and pianos can be when they are allowed to co-exist side by side.
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