gnrsucks.com went live back in good ol’ 1998.

GN’R were not famous by any means, and were more or less “uncool”. Just a handful of years had passed since their last tour ended. 1998 wasn’t a year to be in Rock. Bands weren’t cool enough, Kurt Cobain had pulled the trigger 4 years before, and Rock went down the toilet for a while.

A year before (1997) I was packing stuff in my room when I finally looked at something I hadn’t seen for a while. Something familiar was sneaking out of a box… It was my Appetite for Destruction CD, the first CD I ever bought, and it was standing right there, a few feet away. I remember as it was yesterday. It was a rainy winter Sunday outside and I had nothing to do and decided to check some boxed stuff out. When I found my Appetite for Destruction album and looked outside I told myself, “I’ll sit here and listen to it from start to finish…”, after all I was their biggest fan back in 1991/2. I took the CD out and just pushed play. I couldn’t believe what I was missing… all those songs packed in one album, it was unbelievable… It’s So Easy, Nightrain, My Michelle, Rocket Queen, aside from the well known hits… I was speechless.
That summer I went back to being a huge GN’R fan. Everyone was into Portishead and alternative bands, and there I was with my ripped jeans and my Discman, and the only 4 albums I ever needed all summer long,: Appetite for Destruction, Lies, Use Your Illusion I and II.

That year I got my first computer and internet connection. Sitting there staring at Yahoo, my first night surfing got me thinking. Is there any GN’R related stuff on the net? (I know it was THE INTERNET but it was just a small place with a lot less people back then, and information wasn’t so abundant)
So as I sat there wondering what to look for, only one thing came to mind: search for Guns N’ Roses.

… and I did. After a while I was on the newsgroups and most popular websites, just wishing for some GN’R news. Those were dark days people, I know it, and you know it. Information was non-existent, MTV  had a minor website, and all we knew was that 3 guys named Josh Freese, Robin Finck and Tommy Stinson were playing with Axl. Rumors flew around for a bit, about a possible album for the next summer (1998). We were all excited! Finally! A new GN’R album! (I know… the feeling is basically the same nowadays with some more twists and turns)

As I surfed the net, and no disrespect for anyone, I felt there was a lot of stuff missing from various websites. Some were very good at some things as picture libraries and others in biographical content. But there was one thing missing for me, and it was VIDEOS! No one had good enough videos on their websites, except for snakepit.org (Linda’s website). So I grabbed a PC capture card, and started converting my videos into MPG’s. 50 MB for 5 minutes of video… It would take nearly 4 hours to download, but I didn’t care. I did it anyway. I decided to make the GN’R website that I would like to visit constantly and I gathered a lot of information and started learning about Web Design. I wanted to have a GN’R website, but a full and complete (in my point of view) site for everyone to enjoy. I’ve spent a lot of money on this website along the years but I don’t regret a single penny. I loved it up until now and will always love it. The people who visit this website is what keeps it going, so thank you in advance for enjoying gnrsucks.com

Sometime around  1998/99 I put online the first version of the site. It was called Intentional Illusions. Sometime after that I got the gnrii.com domain and a couple of years later, by December 2002 I finally got gnrsucks.com. I remembered reading about the Use Your illusion albums being named “GN’R Sucks” and I loved the idea. I loved GN’R and I had a cool name for the website. I knew there would be the occasional hater (who hadn’t read the disclaimer and thought I really hated GN’R).

So gnrsucks.com was born and had a healthy “life” up until 2007 but then, for personal reasons and some problems with some Chinese Democracy material being released to the public earlier than thought…

It has been a great ride up until now, with more than 20.000.000 visitors and a very successful Portuguese forum.

Thank you, take care.

Peace

Lourenço