“Never Enough” hits right in the middle of Cocked & Loaded as track 5 (4:10), and it’s a big reason the album feels arena-sized instead of just another Sunset Strip party record. Cut April–June 1989 at Hollywood rooms like One on One, Music Grinder, and Conway, it has that major-studio weight—wide guitars, tight low end, and a chorus built for rock radio. It’s also a lineup stamp: this is the first L.A. Guns album with drummer Steve Riley, and the song’s locked-in drive helps define that punchy era. Producers Duane Baron, John Purdell, and Tom Werman keep it polished but still gritty, letting the band sound dangerous without getting messy.
On the surface, “Never Enough” is an insatiable-desire anthem, but it’s more carefully built than the title implies. Its writing credits add Gregg Tripp and Phil Roy alongside the band—an uncommon move on an album that’s mostly written in-house—and you can hear that extra discipline in the structure: a chorus designed to loop in your head, a groove that stays locked, and an arrangement that leaves space for the vocal melody to sell the obsession instead of just yelling it. Even years later, AllMusic’s album review (as quoted on Wikipedia) singles “Never Enough” out as a songwriting highlight, basically confirming it’s a standout cut—not filler between the bigger singles.
Released as a single in 1989, “Never Enough” was part of Cocked & Loaded’s unusually heavy five-single push—coming after “Rip and Tear” and before “The Ballad of Jayne.” In that slot, it isn’t the big emotional breakout; it’s the “prove it” track that keeps rock radio hooked on attitude and riffs while the band’s identity locks in: sleazy, melodic, and hard-driving. It works like a credibility single—chorus-ready and memorable, but still tough enough to sound unmistakably like L.A. Guns instead of a generic glam-rock radio cut.
The “Never Enough” video is pure late-’80s band-branding, but it hooks you with a smart opener: IMDb’s plot summary says it starts in black-and-white, framed like an old variety show intro, then flips into straightforward performance-driven visuals. Wikipedia lists the director as unknown in the band’s videoography (unlike some better-documented clips), yet the video clearly served the album campaign—those single-era videos were later collected on the 1990 release Love, Peace & Geese. And because it’s been kept in circulation as an “official” upload, it still functions the way it was meant to: a fast, stylized snapshot of L.A. Guns’ attitude and look from the Cocked & Loaded era.
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