Music Video Breakdown: ‘November Rain’ By Guns N’ Roses

The video's dramatic plot begins with Axl Rose alone in his oddly-lit bedroom sucking down a handful of unidentified pills. We will get back to Axl, the man, in a moment, but the important thing to take away from this slide is that he is about to drift off into the great prescription abyss, and things are going to get WEIRD. Buckle in.

Here is a statue of Jesus that is crying blood. I have watched this video no less than eight times while working on this breakdown, and I have literally zero clue what purpose this serves. It is a video about a dude getting married and his wife dying (spoiler alert), which, I mean, sure, it's sad and everything, but is it "Jesus crying blood" sad? I don't think so.

My best guess as to why this shot was included is that at some point during the filming of the video Axl snakey-shimeyed up to the director -- probably no less than four hours after they were supposed to start shooting for the day -- and they had this discussion:

AXL ROSE: Hey. You.

DIRECTOR: Yes, Axl?

AXL ROSE: Let's get a shot of Jesus crying, like, blood.

DIRECTOR: What? Why?

AXL ROSE: Because it'll be cool as f-ck, that's why.

DIRECTOR: But it has nothing to do with the rest of the video.

AXL ROSE: I SAID IT'LL BE COOL AS F-CK.

DIRECTOR: OK, fine. Whatever.

AXL ROSE: Cool. I'll be in my trailer.

DIRECTOR: But we have scenes to shoot...

AXL ROSE: [grunts, snakey-shimmies away]

Ladies and gentleman, William Bruce Rose, Jr., aka William Bruce Bailey, aka Axl Rose.

This is the spot in the breakdown where I would normally give you a paragraph or two about what a fascinatingly bonkers human being Axl Rose has been over the past 30 years, but all of the things I would say have already been said far more eloquently by John Jeremiah Sullivan in his 2006 profile of Axl for GQ. I mean, just read this paragraph:

Then he was there. And apologies to the nice woman, but people do not go that nuts when Bon Jovi appears. People were: Going. Nuts. He is not a tall man—I doubt even the heels of his boots (red leather) put him at over five feet ten. He walked toward us with stalking, cartoonish pugnaciousness. I feel like all anybody talks about with Axl anymore is his strange new appearance, but it is hard to get past the unusual impression he makes. To me he looks like he's wearing an Axl Rose mask. He looks like a man I saw eating by himself at a truck stop in Monteagle, Tennessee, at two o'clock in the morning about twelve years ago. He looks increasingly like the albino reggae legend Yellowman. His mane evokes a gathering of strawberry red intricately braided hempen fibers, the sharply twisted ends of which have been punched, individually, a half inch into his scalp. His chest hair is the color of a new penny. With the wasp-man sunglasses and the braids and the goatee, he reminds one of the monster in Predator, or of that monster's wife on its home planet. When he first came onto the scene, he often looked, in photographs, like a beautiful, slender, redheaded 20-year-old girl. I hope the magazine will run a picture of him from about 1988 so the foregoing will seem a slightly less creepy observation and the fundamental spade-called-spade exactitude of it will be laid bare. But if not, I stand by it. Now he has thickened through the middle—muscly thickness, not the lard-ass thickness of some years back. He grabs his package tightly, and his package is huge. Only reporting. Now he plants his feet apart. "You know where you are?" he asks, and we bellow that we do, we do know, but he tells us anyway. "You're in the jungle, baby," he says, and then he tells us that we are going to die.

So, yeah. Read that.

Here is an important lessons: If you select Slash as your best man, he will show up to the wedding dressed exactly like Slash, and he will lose the ring. None of this should come as a surprise. Also...

"LOL J/K, BRO. YOINKED THE RING WHEN YOU WEREN'T LOOKIN'. BURN. SHOULDA SEEN YOUR FACE. SHOULDA SEEN IT, BRO."

As the wedding ends, Slash walks out the front door of the church and ***POOF*** he is magically transported to the middle of the desert, where he proceeds to wail on a guitar while dangling a cigarette from his mouth and wearing leather chaps and a leather jacket with no shirt under it. Say what you will about pre-Nirvana rock music, but it did not lack for showmanship.

OK, so here's what's happening. Try to stay with me.

Everyone is having a grand time at the reception: laughing, dancing, drinking, etc. You know, as one does. But then it starts raining, and -- for reasons known only to the director of the video and whatever Higher Power gave him the inspiration -- people SCATTER like the rain is made of pure sulfuric acid.

My working theory about all this is that everyone in the video is a descendent of Wicked Witch of the West, and they will melt if they get wet. I feel like I'm close.

Here is the plot of the video for "November Rain," in a nutshell: A pretty lady marries some dude who dresses like a fancy buccaneer at their wedding, and then it rains and she dies. The End.

They spent over a million dollars on that. Think about that for a while.

The video ends with Axl mourning at his bride's graveside as the storm continues. This is an interesting way to close things out because LOOK OUT AXL THE RAIN HAS A TASTE FOR BLOOD NOW IT'S KILLED ONCE AND IT WILL KILL AGAIN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE AND DIVE THROUGH A CAKE IF NECESSARY. IT'S LIKE YOU DIDN'T SEE THE FIRST EIGHT PLUS MINUTES OF YOUR OWN VIDEO. COME ON, PAL. GEEZ.

In conclusion, "November Rain" is a weird music video and there should really be a Syfy Original Movie called Murder Storm. Thank you for your time.