Trivia / Use Your Illusion

• What Could Have Been: When the band realized they had written too much material for one album, Slash wanted to focus on the best dozen songs, but Axl wanted to record all of it. Later on during the mixing phase, Slash ended up with a rough mix without the synths, overdubs and other production pieces. Considering the most common criticisms of the albums are the amount of Filler and the overblown production, they may have been better regarded in hindsight with a more focused and bare-bones approach.
• Word of God: Axl has explained that he got the idea of the albums' covers upon visiting an art gallery with the Album Title Drop in "Locomotive" in his mind, wherein he saw a crop out of The School of Athens that just so happened to be titled "Use Your Illusion." Consequently, Axl commissioned artist Mike Kostabi to design the covers based on the cropped scene.

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