Song
The song features Shannon Hoon of Blind Melon on backing vocals. Shannon grew up in the small town of Dayton, Indiana, which neighbors Axl Rose's hometown of Lafayette, Indiana. The two became friends when they subsequently met in Los Angeles and discovered they were from the same state. He also appears in the video for the song. It was originally intended to be the first commercial single release before the Illusions were released in 1991, but "You Could Be Mine" was chosen instead to coincide with the release of the movie Terminator 2.
"Don't Cry" forms a segment of the Illusions Trilogy, according to singer Axl Rose. Along with "Estranged" and "November Rain," it forms a narrative inspired in part by the short story "Without You" by Del James.
During the interviews for their Making F@#$ing Videos edition for "Don't Cry", Rose stated that the song is about a woman leaving a man. The song was written about a girl that Izzy used to go out with, and Axl was attracted to. Here are some quotes from Axl about the incident: "It was a girl that Izzy had gone out with, and I was really attracted to her, and they split up, and we wrote the song", "I was sitting outside the Roxy, and you know, I was like really in love with this person, and she was realising this wasn't going to work, she was doing her things, she was telling me goodbye, and I like sat down, and just started crying, and she was telling me 'don't cry'. Next night we got together and wrote the song in 5 minutes. He'd been through some things with her, himself".
The song peaked at #10 on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band's fifth Top 10 hit there.
Read more about this topic: Don't Cry
Famous quotes containing the word song:
“Even their song is not a sure thing.
It is not a language;
it is a kind of breathing.
They are two asthmatics
whose breath sobs in and out
through a small fuzzy pipe.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane of the grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“There is the falsely mystical view of art that assumes a kind of supernatural inspiration, a possession by universal forces unrelated to questions of power and privilege or the artist’s relation to bread and blood. In this view, the channel of art can only become clogged and misdirected by the artist’s concern with merely temporary and local disturbances. The song is higher than the struggle.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)