10 Best Hard Rock Music Videos Of The 90s
5. November Rain - Guns N' Roses (1992)
Artistically ambitious, painfully pretentious, full of symbolism and insanely expensive. When climate change reduces human civilisation to hordes of Mad Max style gangs, there will be religions formed around the contemplation of this video.
The production process of this endeavour represented what the dynamic of Guns N' Roses was at this time. Axl was the mad-genius dictator and those surrounding him were mere tools to help facilitate his artistic vision.
From listening to the director talk about the making of this video it's apparent that nobody involved had a clear understanding of what Axl was striving for. Matt Sorum's only input was to make sure the band was supplied with the correct booze. Slash just turned up, smoked cigarettes and played guitar when necessary and the others just tried to stay out of the way.
By this time, everyone around the band was at the behest of Axl's mad whims. They just did what they could to placate his egotistical demands. The result was a nonsensical (but somehow still brilliant) music video that cost well over a million dollars.
You've got to appreciate the sheer lack of humility and general self awareness it took to pull this off.