Welcome To The Jungle - Background and Composition

Background and Composition

According to an interview published by Hit Parader in March 1988, "Axl wrote the words while visiting his long-time friend Tori in Kingston, Washington, a town outside of Seattle. It's a big city, but at the same time it's still a small city compared to Los Angeles and the things that you're gonna learn. It seemed a lot more rural up there. Axl just wrote how it looked to him. If someone comes to town and they want to find something, they can find whatever they want." Hit Parader also quoted rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin as summarising the song as "about Hollywood streets; true to life."

Slash describes the development of the music of "Welcome to the Jungle" in his self-titled autobiography. As the band was trying to write new material, Axl remembered a riff Slash had played while he was living in the basement of Slash's mother's house. He played it and the band quickly laid down the foundations for the song, as Slash continued coming up with new guitar parts for it. He credits Duff McKagan as coming up with the breakdown (main riff). Duff backs this up in his autobiography, It's So Easy (and other Lies), saying it was from a song called "The Fake" that he wrote in 1978 for the Vains, a punk band he was in. He also said it was the first song he ever wrote, and that it was later released as a single by the band. According to Slash, the song was written in approximately three hours.

The line "Welcome to the Jungle" was also featured in the 1984 song "Underwater World" by the Finnish glam punk band Hanoi Rocks, whom Axl has cited as the biggest influence of Guns N' Roses.

Clint Eastwood wanted to use the song in his film The Dead Pool. The movie featured a then-unknown Jim Carrey playing a rock star by the name of "Johnny Squares". Carrey would be filmed lip synching to "Welcome to the Jungle". The band was asked to be in the film, and can be seen briefly during Johnny Squares' funeral scene, as well as during the shooting of a movie, when Slash, Duff, Izzy, and Steven Adler are seen on a prop boat, with Slash firing a harpoon at a window, which was later used in the film to kill the antagonist.