7 Guns N' Roses Tunes That Are Still Shocking Today

By Jay Anderson /

5. Pretty Tied Up

Album: Use Your Illusion II (1991) "She's pretty tied up, hanging upside down/She's pretty tied up, and you can ride her." This little ditty from 1991's Use Your Illusion II would probably raise much more of a stink today then it did back when the album was released. Full of references to masochistic sex (I know this chick she lives down on Melrose/She ain't satisfied without some pain") and bondage, the song is based off an encounter founding rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin had with a dominatrix - who had a "big fat naked guy" with an "onion in his mouth" tied up with duct tape and wearing women's panties in her bedroom. Stradlin was shocked, and the song was born, with the sexual lyrics mixed in with foreboding lines about the implosion of a rock n' roll band (keep in mind, however, that the song was written well before the actual band began the breakup of its most notable line-up). Musically, the sitar heard at the beginning of the track was inspired by a makeshift sitar Stradlin created while high on heroin with lead guitarist Slash. And we wonder why the band fell apart.