November Rain

Guns N' Roses had first attempted "November Rain" back in 1986, when the band recorded an 18-minute version of the track with Nazareth guitarist Manny Charlton, a year before sessions began for Appetite for Destruction. Written by vocalist Axl Rose, the song finally surfaced in February 1992 as the third single from Use Your Illusion I, released by Geffen Records. Getting it onto the album took some persuading. According to Rose, no other band members wanted to work on it or on the ballad "Estranged", and Slash and Duff McKagan were unhappy with the band's drift toward symphonic ballads. Rose eventually won the others over during work at Can-Am Studios, though Slash later disputed his account of harsh musical differences.

The song ran almost nine minutes, making it the longest track to enter the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 at the time, and it peaked at number three in the United States and number four in the UK. Rose orchestrated the sweeping string arrangement himself, and the composition drew influence from Elton John's "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding". Slash called it "the Layla song", a reference to its long instrumental second part, and said his guitar solo grew directly out of an improvisation.

The music video, directed by Andy Morahan, drew on Del James's short story "Without You" and starred Rose and his then-girlfriend Stephanie Seymour. For the outside shots of Slash's first solo, a church building was transported to New Mexico because winter had left no suitable fields to film in.