Get in the Ring

Guns N’ Roses turned into a double-edged sword what many artists avoid: speaking ill of the press. In Get in the Ring, the fifth track from Use Your Illusion II, there are no half-measures. It’s a direct hit at those who criticized them, by name and surname, and a challenge thrown from the stage before the song even existed. The most curious detail isn’t in the lyrics, but in how it was recorded: the screams of "Guns. And. Roses" and "Get in the Ring" that open and close the track aren’t from a rehearsal, but from a real concert in Saratoga Springs, New York, on June 10, 1991. The band borrowed them to give it that street-fight vibe that defines the song so well.

The story behind Get in the Ring begins with Duff McKagan. In 1990, while the band was working on the album, McKagan wrote a song called Why Do You Look at Me When You Hate Me? —a title that, ironically, would end up being the first line of Get in the Ring—. Axl Rose gave it its final shape, adding verses targeting specific critics: Andy Secher of Hit Parader, Mick Wall of Kerrang!, and Bob Guccione Jr. of Spin. The mention of Wall caused confusion for years: many believed it was because of his book Guns N’ Roses: The Most Dangerous Band in the World, but Wall himself clarified that the reason was another. In a 1990 interview for his magazine, he had published a threat from Rose toward Vince Neil of Mötley Crüe over a personal conflict. The jab at Guccione Jr. was even more direct: a line suggesting that his father, founder of Penthouse, "got more sex" than he did. Guccione Jr. responded by challenging Rose to a fight, though no brawl ever took place. The song also stands out for its explicit language, something the band made no effort to soften. Recorded between June 9 and 10, 1991, at Metalworks Recording Studios in Toronto, with Mike Clink as engineer and Bill Price handling the mix, Get in the Ring hit the market on September 17 of that same year as part of an album that debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 770,000 copies in its first week.