Every Rose Has Its Thorn

How to play Every Rose Has Its Thorn by Poison on guitar

These are the sounding chords. With a capo on fret 6 you play C, F, G, Am, the shapes the player above shows.

This song is a great beginner play-along because it stays steady, repeats the same small group of chords, and lets you focus on clean changes instead of memorizing a lot of shapes. At about 120 BPM, it has a smooth, driving feel that makes it easy to settle into once your hands find the pattern.

You will be using barre shapes for all of the chords here, so the main challenge is getting each shape to ring clearly without extra string noise. The biggest change to watch is the back-and-forth between F# and B in the opening progression, since that move comes up again and again.

Start by practicing F# to B slowly until the switch feels automatic, then add the return to F# and keep looping that cycle. Once that feels solid, bring in C# and D#m one at a time and practice the full progression at a relaxed pace before moving toward the song speed.

Use the play-along above to follow each chord change in time with the music, or learn the shapes first with the chord diagrams below.