1987.10.21 - Albany, USA

Among local rock fans, claiming you saw Guns N' Roses at the Palace Theatre in 1987 is the equivalent of saying you voted for John Kennedy in 1960. Everyone wants to be present at the creation.

It was shortly after the band's breakthrough album “Appetite for Destruction'' was released, although the record hadn't broken through yet -- nobody knew who Guns N' Roses were. (Nobody knew who the opening act was, either -- EZO, a Japanese heavy metal band that performed in kabuki-meets-Kiss makeup.)

That night, the members of Guns N' Roses were everything a lean, mean rock act should be. They pumped out raw, powerful and genuinely dangerous music with little regard for the consequences. If memory serves, the band was furious that the orchestra pit had been lowered to create a moat between the stage and the fans. It must have been Slash, the guitarist, who jumped into the pit like a buccaneer -- guitar in one hand, bottle of Jack Daniels in the other.

Ironically, there was no need to separate the band from the fans: Only 187 fans attended the show, in a theater that could have held 2,500 more.

35 years ago, Guns N' Roses played Albany. Only 187 people were there.

Rockers performed at the Palace Theatre just a few months after the release of debut album "Appetite for Destruction," which by the following summer would the most popular release on earth

Mike Goodwin

ALBANY — Thirty-five years ago, Guns N' Roses hit the stage of the Palace Theatre, promoting their months-old debut "Appetite for Destruction."

The album's monster hit - "Sweet Child O' Mine" - wouldn't be released as a single, the album's third, until the following summer. By then, the band was on its way to being a rock 'n' roll sensation.

But when Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff Mckagan and Steven Adler arrived in Albany for the Oct. 21, 1987 show, they were far from the household names who would dominate airwaves and stages for years to come.

Just 187 people were in the audience. The Palace can easily accommodate a crowd of 2,800.

When the band made a return trip to Albany in 2002, the Times Union noted: "Among local rock fans, claiming you saw Guns N' Roses at the Palace Theatre in 1987 is the equivalent of saying you voted for John Kennedy in 1960. Everyone wants to be present at the creation."

Times Union music writer and musician Greg Haymes was among the tiny crowd and years later would recall: "That night, the members of Guns N' Roses were everything a lean, mean rock act should be. They pumped out raw, powerful and genuinely dangerous music with little regard for the consequences. If memory serves, the band was furious that the orchestra pit had been lowered to create a moat between the stage and the fans. It must have been Slash, the guitarist, who jumped into the pit like a buccaneer -- guitar in one hand, bottle of Jack Daniels in the other."

The Times Union's Steve Barnes, then a college student, was also in the crowd.

He writes:

"Given the untamable unruliness of the young Guns N’ Roses, it seems a little too orderly that its first local appearance, at the Palace Theatre in Albany in October 1987, drew 187 fans. But that became lore, so let’s just accept it, and if the real number was 198 or 211 or whatever, no matter. The crowd that night at the Palace was at least 125 times smaller than the capacity audience the next summer at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center, where, in front of crazed mob of at least 25,000, Guns N’ Roses showed how five guys nobody local had heard of two years before could achieve the monumental task of upstaging their headliner, Aerosmith.

"I’ve never been to any of the Woodstock incarnations, but I was at the Palace 35 years ago. Home from college for a weekend, I accepted a friend’s offer of a ticket for a band I didn’t know. I don’t recall much of the opening act, aside from it being Japanese heavy metal performed in kabuki makeup, and, after all this time, I couldn’t with any certainty tell you what Gn’R played. (See: college weekend, rock concert, 19 years old, mid-1980s.) But the ferocity of the band, the way Axl and Slash and the boys sank their teeth into the heart of hard rock, remains indelible. And as iconic concert moments go, it doesn’t get better than Slash jumping into the orchestra pit with a bottle of whiskey in his hand.

"Things were even crazier the next summer. Reviewing the SPAC show, I had an amphitheater seat a third of the way back, in a row reserved for critics. Soon before the lights went down, two preppy guys, one with a split lip and the other showing a red eye that would be purple the next day, pleaded to squeeze in next to me. They had second row-seats, they told me, but two bikers had punched them in the face and literally thrown them into the aisle. The guys said, 'Put that into your review!' I did. It was exactly in the spirit of the show."

By the time Guns N' Roses played what was then known as the Times Union Center in 2002, Rose was the lone original member of the band. Times Union reviewer Haymes wrote the band was "once a lean, ferocious rock 'n' roll machine, seething with raw, primal energy. But the new lineup was a far cry from the band's heyday."

So, were you one of the 185 others?