You ain’t never heard Guns N’ Roses like this before! Singer Mario Jose used his funk superpowers to revamp this “Sweet Child o’ Mine” into a popping viral jam. But Mario’s smooth vocals were not the only thing that caught netizens’ ears on the 8.9 million view cover. Six-piece band Scary Pockets delivered the groove, and viewers could not stop raving about Sam Wilkes’ “face-melting” bass lines, which took the song to a whole other place than Gunners’ hard rock feel.
Of course, you can’t complete a rhythm section without a killer drummer. Many of the top comments also highlighted that drummer Tamir Barzilay’s phat beats were infectiously groovy. The Music Man has to say that it’s pretty rare for the top comments to focus on much beyond the singer or lead guitarist, so if you have a rhythm section stealing the show, then you know they’ve got something really special going on.
Scary Pockets’ collab with Mario took off in a big way on YouTube and has become one of their most popular uploads on the platform. Fans were loving it and added comments such as “Dude that bass is gonna melt my face. My man is slingin’ some funky stuff over there” and “How the heck did you do that to ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’? If I didn’t hear it I wouldn’t have believed it… RICH!”
Mario has dropped in to work with Scary Pockets on several tracks, with memorable results each time. Another killer collab between Mario and the band is their take on The Beatles’ “Come Together.” It’s such an incredible song, and that slithering groove was just made for a funk remake. On this track, the musical arrangement is less busy, which really gives Mario room to totally go to town on the vocal.
Guns N’ Roses released “Sweet Child o’ Mine” on June 3, 1988, as the third single from their debut studio album Appetite for Destruction. The Music Man readers may recall that the love song hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming the band’s only song to do so. “Sweet Child o’ Mine” has since become Guns N’ Roses’ most enduring song. It is the band’s only track on Spotify to surpass two billion streams, with 2.44 billion and counting at present. The tune started as a warm-up exercise for lead guitarist Slash, which he played at the band’s rehearsal. Rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin heard some potential in the melody and asked him to repeat it. Stradlin added chords under the melody, while bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Steven Adler wrote a rhythm section groove. Slash later recalled, “within an hour my guitar exercise had become something else.” Singer Axl Rose was listening to the band while sitting in his upstairs room. He began writing lyrics and completed them by the next afternoon, and the rest is rock ‘n’ roll history.