The Meaning Behind Welcome To The Jungle By Guns N' Roses

Publish date: 2024-05-02

If you took your knowledge of Guns N’ Roses’ backstory — as well as your knowledge of the song’s video — and guessed that “Welcome to the Jungle” is about Axl Rose’s struggles moving from Lafayette, Indiana, to the tough streets of Los Angeles, you’re only partly correct. But the idea is there, as the song’s title and lyrics were actually inspired by Rose’s feelings as a 20-year-old visiting a friend in Seattle and realizing how different things are in the big city.  There was also an encounter Rose had with a homeless man in New York around the same timeframe (via American Songwriter), where the man allegedly told Rose and his friend, “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle baby. You’re gonna die.” 

A few years later, as Guns N’ Roses was working on songs for “Appetite for Destruction,” Rose found a link between the lyrics he wrote in 1982 and the survival of the fittest he and his bandmates regularly went through in L.A.’s seedier parts of town. As for the homeless man’s warning, those, of course, were the same lines Rose would scream in the breakdown toward the end of “Welcome to the Jungle.”

Commenting later on the lyrics of “Welcome to the Jungle,” Slash recalled identifying with the themes covered by the song. “It was a very telling lyric,” Slash explained, as quoted by Louder. “Just the stark honesty of it. If you lived in Los Angeles, and lived in the trenches, so to speak, you could relate to it. And knowing Axl, I could relate to exactly where it was coming from.”

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