Looking back, it’s hard to believe that Guns N’ Roses debuted with 1987’s Appetite for Destruction, a fully formed statement that made it onto Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list. That smash-hit album was leaps ahead of the LA metal scene that forged the band, balancing the head-rush hard rock of “Welcome to the Jungle” with such universal songwriting as the oft-covered ballad “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and the Queen-worthy suite “Paradise City.” Once the world had been introduced to Axl Rose’s deeply invested warble and wail and Slash’s cloud-parting guitar solos, there was no putting the genie back in the bottle. Hit after hit followed, from the acoustic lament “Patience” to the bravura overhaul of Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Even after Nirvana ushered in grunge in 1991, GNR guided the sweeping ballads “Don’t Cry” and “November Rain” to chart supremacy. After 1994 began a famous drought in releases that wouldn’t break until 2008’s Chinese Democracy—a guest-stacked opus orchestrated by Rose with few other original members. Yet it sold a million copies in America alone, and the opening title track and other saturated salvos reinvigorated—and modernized—the brand to such a degree that Slash and bassist Duff McKagan rejoined in 2016 for several more rounds of multi-year global touring. Despite only releasing four albums’ worth of original material in their original incarnation, GNR had burned so brightly in such a short time that their legend remains stubbornly intact.