Rose had every reason to be confident: the band had been through a purple patch creatively and he knew he had an ace up his sleeve in the nine-minute power ballad “November Rain,” a song he’d been holding back since the early 80s. Their response was a typically lavish gesture – the 1991 release of two double albums on the same day, Septem– Use Your Illusion, Volumes I and II. How to follow the biggest-selling debut album in US history? This was the question posed to Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses following the enormous success of their 1987 debut, Appetite for Destruction.
