Thirty Years After It Was Made, Guns N’ Roses Have Finally Released the “It’s so Easy” Video… Sort Of
Let the re-writing of Guns N’ Roses history continue!
One of the many, many, MANY bonus features included with special editions of the upcoming Appetite for Destruction is “the unearthed music video for ‘It’s So Easy’ originally shot in 1989 but never finished.” The entire story, if memory serves, is actually that the video was never released because it contained some footage of Axl and an unidentified woman engaging in S&M, which would have been considered risqué in those days. In any case, the clip has been floating around as bootleg for years, but to finally have a version that wasn’t made from a copy of a copy of a copy of Axl’s bodyguard’s roomate’s cousin’s girlfriend’s VHS tape sounds like a nice treat for fans.
Except, uh, the band has released the video via Apple Music, and they’ve re-edited the shit out of it. A bunch of black and white live footage has been removed; more noticeably, the S&M stuff has been toned down (which is odd because, again, in a world where Fifty Shades of Grey is a mainstream phenomenon, none of the footage seems all that offensive), and a bunch of footage of Axl canoodling with a pair of women in the back of a limo has been added.
And hey, look: this isn’t the biggest deal in the world. The bulk of the clip has always been the band playing live at the Cathouse in Hollywood, and that remains the case now; if nothing else, it’s cool to see footage of the band in their prime that isn’t so grainy it feels like I’m watching it through a layer of sand*. But it’s unfortunate that the band would try to pretend this is the original video when it’s, y’know, not.
ANYWAY, Apple Music users can view the new video here (alas, it’s not embeddable). The old video is below. It’s mildly NSFW because of the S&M stuff.
https://youtu.be/kp3lQY_yCHo
*”But Axl, glass IS sand, so you’re ALWAYS watching the video through a layer of sand,” says a nerd in the comments section. Yes, yes, of course, you’re right. But also, fuck you, you know what I meant.
