the lyrics were inspired by an encounter he and a friend had with a homeless man while they were coming out of a bus into New York. Trying to put a scare into the young runaways, the man yelled at them, "You know where you are? You're in the jungle baby; you're gonna die!" "It was a very telling lyric – just the stark honesty of it," said Slash. "If you lived in Los Angeles – and lived in the trenches, so to speak – you could relate to it." Reception "Welcome to the Jungle" was ranked number 19 in Martin Popoff's book The Top 500 Heavy Metal Songs of All Time. It was also named the second greatest metal song by VH1 in 2008. In 2006, VH1 also placed the song at number 26 on its list of the "100 Greatest Songs of the 80s" and, in 2009, the channel ranked it the greatest hard rock song of all time. It was ranked number 467 in Rolling Stones "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2004, number 473 in 2010, and number 491 in 2021. (Rolling Stone readers named it "the greatest sports anthem" in 2009) and number 764 in Qs 's "1001 Best Songs Ever". Paste and Kerrang both named it Guns N' Roses' greatest song. It was named the "greatest song about Los Angeles" in a 2006 Blender poll. "'Welcome to the Jungle' had this high velocity, high impact, aggressive delivery," Slash observed. "But there were a lot of emotional subtleties in the song that the band really grasped. If Axl went here, the band went with him. I really love that about the band and the music and how it all came together. There was something magical in all of that." Cash Box called it a "solid, satisfying chunk of metal." Music video Geffen Records was having a hard time selling the video to MTV. David Geffen made a deal with the network, and the video was aired only one time around 5:00AM on a Sunday morning. As soon as the video was aired, the networks received numerous calls from people wanting to see the video again. In spite of the early morning airtime, the song's music video caught viewers' attention and quickly became MTV's most requested video. The video in question (directed by Nigel Dick) begins with a shot of Axl Rose disembarking a