Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle

What this video is

Released in September 1987 as the second single from Appetite for Destruction, 'Welcome to the Jungle' arrived when Geffen Records was on the verge of abandoning the album after roughly 200,000 copies sold in nine months. The video's single midnight airing generated enough demand to force MTV into full rotation, triggering a commercial explosion that would carry Appetite to over 30 million copies sold and…

Why it matters

This video is a foundational document of American hard rock's commercial breakthrough on MTV. It demonstrated that raw, street-level rock aesthetics could succeed in a medium then dominated by synth-pop and polished glam metal. Its success reshaped Geffen's promotional strategy and set a template…

The director

Nigel Dick (born 21 March 1953, Catterick, North Yorkshire, England) is a British-American music video director and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Trained as an architect at the University of Bath, he entered the record business at Stiff Records before…