My Michelle

During the band's 2006 New York and European tours, "My Michelle" took on a new life when Axl Rose shared vocal duties on the song with former Skid Row singer Sebastian Bach. By then the track had long been a fixture of Guns N' Roses' live sets, drawn from the band's 1987 debut album Appetite for Destruction.

The song was written about Michelle Young, a friend of the band who was thanked in the album's cover sleeve. Slash had known her since junior high, as she was a friend of his first girlfriend. According to Rose, he and Young were in a car together when "Your Song" by Elton John came on the radio, and Young mentioned she had always wanted someone to write a song about her. Rose's first attempt was a sweet, almost romantic song, but it had nothing to do with the reality of Young's life. Unhappy with it, he rewrote the song to be completely honest. Several band members, especially Slash, worried the new version would upset her, and Rose grew hesitant before finally showing it to her. She liked it and was especially pleased with its honesty, most notably regarding her drug addiction, the death of her mother and her father's work in the pornography industry, all mentioned in the first verse. According to Slash's autobiography, Young later cleaned up and moved across the country to escape her lifestyle.

An alternate account says the song came from an incident before the band was famous, involving a young girl who broke the band's equipment during a practice session, ending with Rose on the run from the police. For the recording, Slash swapped his usual Gibson Les Paul copy for a 1960s Gibson SG, feeling it had a darker sound.