枪炮与玫瑰乐队（常缩写为枪花、G N' R或GnR）是一支1985年成立于好莱坞的美国硬摇滚乐队，乐队共发行了五张录音室大碟、两张EP以及一张Live专辑，经历了大量乐队人事变动后，Axl是乐队仅存的创始成员。他们至今仍保持全美音乐史上处子专辑最高的销售记录（3300万张以上），在美国本土和世界上已经分别拥有4600万和1.1亿的专辑总销量以及两张专辑同时成为Billboard200排行榜冠亚军的神话。枪花在80年代中期至90年代早期这一巅峰时期，有评论认为：“他们带来了一个极端享乐主义的叛逆并复兴了硬摇乐界的朋克态度，让人想起早期的滚石。”
1988正是美国流行金属的黄金年代，枪炮玫瑰乐队的音乐是布鲁斯硬摇滚，是当时盛行的流行金属的一种，同时具有肮脏、暴力、颓废的SLEAZE ROCK特征。而他们的音乐则具有喧嚣出色的旋律，同时拥有旋律非常出色的乐器演奏，特别是主音吉他手Slash和节奏吉他手兼乐队的核心创作者Izzy Stradlin的吉他演奏，无论是riff段还是Slash的solo都成为歌迷们追捧的对象，而主唱Axl Rose华丽的外形，以及高亢至极的嗓音更是为乐队征服了无数女歌迷的心，再加上长相帅气十足但个性特例独行的贝司手Duff McKagan以及放纵不羁的鼓手Steven Adler，正是这些综合的元素才让这支原本不为人知的乐队迅速的走红全世界，随着之后乐队成功的商业化包装，更是成为了世界流行金属界在80年代末最具标志性的乐队之一。
十年过去了，尽管枪炮玫瑰乐队发生了许多的变化，乐队人员几乎全部更换了新人，只剩下一个Axl Rose依然凭借高亢的声音在支撑着，但是尽管如此，在世界上的每个热爱摇滚乐的角落里，只要出现枪炮玫瑰名义的唱片那就一定会成为唱片店最抢手的商品。这张枪炮玫瑰的精选辑虽然遭到了乐队原始成员及Axl Rose的一致抵制，但是毕竟是乐队第一张精选辑，而枪炮玫瑰乐队在十年之后依然在全世界范围内保持着非常强大的号召力，在美国发行首周就售出了16万9千张，成为了Billboard 200排行榜的季军，这是枪炮玫瑰乐队的专辑自从1992年以来首次进入排行榜三甲。而在世界其他地方，这张专辑同样非常受欢迎，专辑销售不到一周就已经成为了包括欧洲一些国家专辑排行榜的冠军。
At a time when pop was dominated by dance music and pop-metal, Guns N' Roses brought raw, ugly rock & roll crashing back into the charts. They were not nice boys; nice boys don't play rock & roll. They were ugly, misogynist, and violent; they were also funny, vulnerable, and occasionally sensitive, as their breakthrough hit, "Sweet Child O' Mine," showed. While Slash and Izzy Stradlin ferociously spit out dueling guitar riffs worthy of Aerosmith or the Stones, Axl Rose screeched out his tales of sex, drugs, and apathy in the big city. Meanwhile, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler were a limber rhythm section who kept the music loose and powerful. Guns N' Roses' music was basic and gritty, with a solid hard, bluesy base; they were dark, sleazy, dirty, and honest — everything that good hard rock and heavy metal should be. There was something refreshing about a band who could provoke everything from devotion to hatred, especially since both sides were equally right. There hadn't been a hard rock band this raw or talented in years, and they were given added weight by Rose's primal rage, the sound of confused, frustrated white trash vying for his piece of the pie. As the '80s became the '90s, there simply wasn't a more interesting band around, but owing to intra-band friction and the emergence of alternative rock, Rose's supporting cast gradually disintegrated, as he spent years in seclusion.
Guns N' Roses released their first EP in 1986, which led to a contract with Geffen; the following year, the band released their debut album, Appetite for Destruction. They started to build a following with their numerous live shows, but the album didn't start selling until almost a year later, when MTV started playing "Sweet Child O' Mine." Soon, both the album and single shot to number one, and Guns N' Roses became one of the biggest bands in the world. Their debut single, "Welcome to the Jungle," was re-released and shot into the Top Ten, and "Paradise City" followed in its footsteps. By the end of 1988, they released G N' R Lies, which paired four new, acoustic-based songs (including the Top Five hit "Patience") with their first EP. G N' R Lies' inflammatory closer, "One in a Million," sparked intense controversy, as Rose slipped into misogyny, bigotry, and pure violence; essentially, he somehow managed to distill every form of prejudice and hatred into one five-minute tune.
Guns N' Roses began work on the long-awaited follow-up to Appetite for Destruction at the end of 1990. In October of that year, the band fired Adler, claiming that his drug dependency caused him to play poorly; he was replaced by Matt Sorum from the Cult. During recording, the band added Dizzy Reed on keyboards. By the time the sessions were finished, the new album had become two new albums. After being delayed for nearly a year, the albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II were released in September 1991. Messy but fascinating, the albums showcased a more ambitious band; while there were still a fair number of full-throttle guitar rockers, there were stabs at Elton John-style balladry, acoustic blues, horn sections, female backup singers, ten-minute art rock epics with several different sections, and a good number of introspective, soul-searching lyrics. In short, they were now making art; amazingly, they were successful at it. The albums sold very well initially, but while they had seemed destined to set the pace for the decade to come, that turned out not to be the case at all.
Nirvana's Nevermind hit number one in early 1992, suddenly making Guns N' Roses — with all of their pretensions, impressionistic videos, models, and rock star excesses — seem very uncool. Rose handled the change by becoming a dictator, or at least a petty tyrant; his in-concert temper tantrums became legendary, even going so far as to incite a riot in Montreal. Stradlin left by the end of 1991, and with his departure the band lost their best songwriter; he was replaced by ex-Kills for Thrills guitarist Gilby Clarke. The band didn't fully grasp the shift in hard rock until 1993, when they released an album of punk covers, The Spaghetti Incident?; it received some good reviews, but the band failed to capture the reckless spirit of not only the original versions, but their own Appetite for Destruction. By the middle of 1994, there were rumors flying that the band was about to break up, since Rose wanted to pursue a new, more industrial direction and Slash wanted to stick with their blues-inflected hard rock. The band remained in limbo for several more years, and Slash resurfaced in 1995 with the side project Slash's Snakepit and an LP, It's Five O'Clock Somewhere.
Rose remained out of the spotlight, becoming a virtual recluse and doing nothing but tinkering in the studio; he also recruited various musicians — including Dave Navarro, Tommy Stinson, and ex-Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck — for informal jam sessions. Remaining members were infuriated by Rose's inclusion of childhood friend Paul Huge in the new sessions when both Stradlin and Clarke were excluded from rejoining the band. And a remake of the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" was essentially the straw that broke the camel's back, as Rose cut out some of the other member's contributions and pasted Huge over the song without consulting anyone else. By 1996, Slash was officially out of Guns N' Roses, leaving Rose the lone remaining survivor from the group's heyday; rumors continued to swirl, and still no new material was forthcoming, though Rose did re-record Appetite for Destruction with a new lineup for rehearsal purposes. The first new original GNR song in eight years, the industrial metal sludge of "Oh My God" finally appeared on the soundtrack to the 1999 Arnold Schwarzenegger film End of Days. Soon after, Geffen issued the two-disc Live Era: '87-'93.
2000 brought the addition of guitarists Robin Finck (of Nine Inch Nails) and Buckethead. 2001 was greeted with Guns N' Roses' first live dates in nearly seven years, as the band (who consisted of Rose plus guitarists Finck, Buckethead, bassist Stinson, former Primus drummer Brian "Brain" Mantia, childhood friend and guitarist Paul Huge, and longtime GNR keyboardist Dizzy Reed) played a show on New Years Eve 2000 in Las Vegas, playing as well at the mammoth Rock in Rio festival the following month. On New Years Eve 2001, the band played almost the exact same set as the year before.
An appearance at MTV's 2002 Video Music Awards helped garner interest in the new lineup, but a rusty performance from Rose and an interview where he said his new album wasn't coming out anytime soon didn't do much to further their cause. That summer, the band started on their first tour in almost eight years, and they managed to fulfill all of their commitments in Europe and Asia. Sadly, they caused a violent and destructive riot in Vancouver when Rose failed to show up for the first date of their North American tour. While he was up to his old shenanigans with the retooled lineup, former Stone Temple Pilots vocalist Scott Weiland, Slash, Sorum, and McKagan formed the successful Velvet Revolver in spring 2002.
And so years passed and still no new GNR album, to the point where it became a joke to many. The album was long billed as Chinese Democracy, and occasionally session recordings would leak and make their way onto Internet file-sharing networks. A fascinating article written by Jeff Leeds for The New York Times, published March 2005, revealed how tangled and costly the making of the album had become. According to the article, titled "The Most Expensive Album Never Released," Rose began work on the album in 1994 and racked up production costs of at least 13 million dollars. Producers involved with the album at one time or another include Mike Clink, Youth, Sean Beavan, and even Roy Thomas Baker. (Curiously, Moby claimed to have been offered the job as well.) Marco Beltrami and Paul Buckmaster were allegedly brought in for orchestral arrangements, and there was a revolving door of guitarists. In 2006, the album seemed closer to release, as Rose began surfacing in public and even took his band on the road for some shows.