How Did the Most Twisted Guns N’ Roses Song Get Its Title

All right, it’s time for a little Guns N’ Roses storytelling. Not because I currently have nothing else to write about, but simply because Axl Rose himself started it. It is about one of the most twisted GnR songs, and how did it actually get its title.

At the concert in Luxembourg, their very first ever in this small European country, Axl addressed the crowd and told the story of how the title for the notorious (and currently last) GnR song The General came to be.

So, before you continue reading – what do you think? How did one of the band’s most musically controversial and lyrically heavy songs get its name?

None other than from a commercial for “The General Fried Chicken,” or however it’s spelled, since I’m not familiar with the brand because I’m not from the U.S.

Yes, exactly that. Just as Axl told it at the mentioned concert. However, hardcore Guns fans probably weren’t too surprised by this revelation.

As far back as 2019, Brain Mantia, the band’s former drummer (from the Chinese Democracy era), shared this anecdote on the Appetite For Distortion podcast—four years before the song was officially released.

“We called it The General because we were eating General’s chicken. But when I handed it over to Axl, he thought it was named that because I was joking with Tommy (Tommy Stinson, the band’s former bassist from the CD era), who was the musical director of the band’s rehearsals, saying he was acting like a general.”

According to Brain, Axl was surprised, but he went with it. And that’s that. Nothing fancy, nothing spectacular. That’s how, at least for now, the weirdest Guns song got its name.

And if we add in Buckethead to this story, who was the band’s guitarist at the time and was so obsessed with chickens and chicken meat that he believed he was one of them and even had his own personal chicken coop in the studio, then it’s really no wonder fans still struggle to connect with this intriguing song.

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