About The Song
“Mr. Brownstone” is a song by the American rock band Guns N’ Roses, featured on their debut studio album, Appetite for Destruction (1987). Group guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin wrote the tune while they were sitting around Stradlin’s apartment complaining about their addictions to heroin, for which “Brownstone” is a slang term.
The lyrics make a clear reference to the tolerance that the drug causes: “I used to do a little, but a little wouldn’t do it, so the little got more and more.” They wrote the lyrics on the back of a grocery bag and brought it to Axl Rose. Slash said the lyrics describe a typical day in the life of Slash and Stradlin. He also states that it was the first song the band wrote after being signed by Geffen Records.
“Mr. Brownstone” was the first Guns N’ Roses single released outside of the United States and appeared as the A-side of “It’s So Easy” in the United Kingdom. In the US, it was used as the B-side of “Welcome to the Jungle”.
Seung-Hui Cho, the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech shooting, wrote a play titled “Mr. Brownstone” that took inspiration from the song’s lyrics. The song “Shackler’s Revenge” from the band’s 2008 album Chinese Democracy was written in reaction to “the insanity of senseless school shootings and also the media trying desperately to make more out of one shooter’s preference for the Guns song Brownstone to no avail.”
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Lyrics
I get up around seven
Get outta bed around nine
And I don’t worry about nothin’, no
Because worrying’s a waste of my time
Show usually starts around seven
We go on stage around nine
Get on the bus about eleven
Sippin’ a drink and feeling fine
We’ve been dancin’ with Mister Brownstone
He’s been knockin’, he won’t leave me alone
No, no, no, he won’t leave me alone
I used ta do a little, but a little wouldn’t do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin’ to get a little better
Said, a little better than before
I used ta do a little, but a little wouldn’t do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin’ to get a little better
Said, a little better than before
We’ve been dancin’ with Mister Brownstone
He’s been knockin’, he won’t leave me alone
No, no, no, he won’t leave me alone, wow
Now I get up around whenever
I used to get up on time
But that old man, he’s a real motherfucker
Gonna kick him on down the line
I used ta do a little, but a little wouldn’t do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin’ to get a little better
Said, a little better than before
I used ta do a little, but a little wouldn’t do it
So the little got more and more
I just keep tryin’ to get a little better
Said, a little better than before
We’ve been dancin’ with Mister Brownstone
He’s been knockin’, he won’t leave me alone
No, no, no, he won’t leave me alone
Oh, leave me alone
Stuck it in the middle and I shot it in the middle
And it, it drove outta my mind
I should’ve known better, said I wish I never met her
Said I, I’d leave it all behind
Yowza