1989.10.21 - Los Angeles Coliseum, Los Angeles, USA

POP MUSIC REVIEW : No Surprises in 3rd Night of Stones N' Roses
October 23, 1989|JONATHAN GOLD

The third Stones N' Roses show at the Coliseum Saturday was routine as the 47th date on an 80-city tour, a bread-and-butter show in Ames, Iowa, or someplace with a weekend party crowd. Nobody threatened to break down, no one fell off the stage, and the Stones had to manage the blues segment without the help of Eric Clapton. Living Colour's leering dedication of "Glamour Boys" to Arsenio Hall was about as racy as it got.

Guns N' Roses even managed to play a couple of songs without speeches or Angst , though the band was kind of listless until Axl Rose woke them up with a little press-bashing 15 minutes into the set--controversy is to Guns N' Roses what gasoline is to a car. Rose has never been what you'd call publicly repentant about those famous lyrics, but in an apparent show of solidarity with the gay community, he performed "Rocket Queen" clad in nothing but black leather jacket, motorcycle cap and bare-bottom chaps, mooning the audience while Slash soloed on guitar.

The Stones' stage set still looked like a cross between an airport runway at night and the entire city of Irwindale, they still spent a lot of time covering the disco years, and Jagger still told the same jokes before the same songs. (After 26 years, the Stones don't have a lot to get off their chests.) "Dead Flowers" occupied the optional-song spot on the set-list--you could tell because there wasn't an elaborately timed light show. And the Stones still sounded best where they were closest to the blues.

Jonathan Gold wrote:No surprises in third night of Stones N' Roses

The third Stones N' Roses show at the Coliseum Saturday was routine as the 47th date on an 80-city tour, a bread-and-butter show in Ames, Iowa, or someplace with a weekend party crowd. Nobody threatened to break down, no one fell off the stage, and the Stones had to manage the blues segment without the help of Eric Clapton. Living Colour's leering dedication of "Glamour Boys" to Arsenio Hall was about as racy as it got.
Guns N' Roses even managed to play a couple of songs without speeches or angst, though the band was kind of listless until Axl Rose woke them up with a little press-bashing 15 minutes into the set -- controversy is to Guns N' Roses what gasoline is to a car. Rose has never been what you'd call publicly repentant about those famous lyrics, but in an apparent show of solidarity with the gay community, he performed "Rocket Queen" clad in nothing but black leather jacket, motorcycle cap and bare-bottom chaps, mooning the audience while Slash soloed on guitar.
The Stones' stage set still looked like a cross between an airport runway at night and the entire city of Irwindale, they still spent a lot of time covering the disco years, and Jagger still told the same jokes before the same songs. (After 26 years, the Stones don't have a lot to get off their chests.) "Dead Flowers" occupied the optional-song spot on the set-list -- you could tell because there wasn't an elaborately timed light show. And the Stones still sounded best where they were closest to the blues.

STONED IN L.A.

Their final gigs? Axl to quit? Or yet more lies? Either way, GUNS N' ROSES just played their first shows in over a year: as 'the very special guests' to old codgers the Rolling Stones at four giant outdoor gigs in LA. PHIL WILDING gatecrashed day three and saw LIVING COLOUR as well, opening proceedings for over 80,000 doooods

GUNS N’ROSES/LIVING COLOUR
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum

THE CBS BUS rolls slowly through the stomach of downtown Los Angeles. Heartland of the Jungle, where the price of a parking space has suddenly-escalated to $20 plus, and every corner has bootleg T-shirt, hot dog and hamburger stands.

The focus is softened by the black tint that covers our windows. Blissfully, the tint veils houses that don’t look fit habitation for rabid dogs. But each of these houses, it seems, provides sanctuary for half a dozen families.

Today, with the help of headliners the Rolling Stones -playing the third of four capacity shows - it’s the families’ turn to make some kind of killing.

They wave down crawling cars, attempting to clean windows while wipers are slashing back and forth. Or they are offering ‘Quick Geteway’ (sic) parking spaces that are in actual fact backyards, communal gardens and corners where fire hydrants have been ripped up and dirty weeds have taken over.

LA’s Memorial Coliseum rises up and out of all this like some ignorant edifice. Glorious in its own grandeur, dismissing everything that fails to reach its turrets.

The Olympics were held here, normally the LA Raiders call it home - though their attendance figures are falling rapidly due to a pitiful start to the season.

Inside there are 85,000 salmon pink plastic fold away seats waiting to be filled. Even empty, the quiet thunder of this particular Ernomodome snatches the breath from your chest.

HOURS LATER, and the place is full. People look at a stage set that might not fit in Wembley. It’s a multi-tier jumble of black and chrome with steel pipes spewing smoke. A ‘Blade Runner’ babylon, which from the front looks hard and hugely impressive. Though from the sides - where more than half the crowd are positioned - it looks like nothing more than a glorious, hi-tech, jumbled mess.

Two elongated walkways run out as arms to the very ends of the stage, and it’s all topped off with two static grey video screens and more lights than Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year and the whole damn caboodle put together.

Living Colour run to the centre of this stage at a little after five in the early evening. They are instantly dwarfed by it. Shame, too, that the sound system comes on like a hoarse cough as ‘Middle Man’ does its very best to encourage the small pockets of dancers dotted around the gaping shelves of seats.

Few punch the air in tribute as ‘Desperate People’ reaches out, totally devoid of bass guitar. It finds itself lost in the fading afternoon light. Nothing moves with Tunny Vibe’ either, as it’s left spineless.

Then ‘Glamour Boys’, current MTV heartbreaker, pulls a sinewy hand to its chest and rips its heart out and over the slowly bubbling expanse. The front three break to the wings. Attempting the near impossible with no lights, no video images to preach to those strung out at the very rear of the field. Vernon Reid has to hustle a quickstep to get back to his effects board in time, while drummer Will Calhoun is lost as a very small island of percussion in a sea of sunlight.

Vernon Reid (a member of the Black Rock Coalition) had purportedly already expressed dissatisfaction with Guns N’ Roses frontman W Axl Rose’s lyrics to ‘One In A Million’.

Considering the dizzying odds and apparent unrest, Living Colour rousted the complacent and delivered apt homage and wistful understanding.

‘Open Letter (To A Landlord)’ went out to the victims of San Francisco’s earthquake, while, ironically, ‘Which Way To Your America’ played out powerfully as a young black girl was wrestled away, arm high behind her back, by four of the LAPD’s finest.

They left dismissing icons with ‘Cult Of Personality’, racing away from the stage and up the marble steps at its rear, toward the oncoming night.

NOW FOR Guns N’ Roses. W Axl Rose had already spent two nights in varying states of pithy discourse (see story last issue). To add to his discontent, there had also been the enduring media barrage of lies and half-truths and indiscriminate attacks on the aforementioned ‘One In A Million’ lyrics.

A restrained, though fiery, tirade followed. Axl berating the press, spluttering: “I can say what I want, this is art, this is how I feel. If you don’t like it, turn it off...

“I don’t understand it, someone hasn’t been crucified in rock ’n’ roll for a while, so why not Guns N’ Roses? Why not Axl? Is that it? They can shove it, this is for them...”

And ‘Out Ta Get Me’ ricochets awkwardly from the concealed PA. Levels flapping wildly, the guitars at the very end of distortion. Guns N’ Roses are on a live roll although they haven’t ran this ragged for what seems like an eternity.

Axl heads for a raised walkway - whether he’s allowed to or not - and shifts like an irate Sidewinder; the role model for a thousand imitators. He casts a shadow 30 feet tall, smearing his image on the video screen above his head.

For ‘Patience’ he strips off his top and sings with over 80,000 others, moving darkly to the very edge of the stage and offering his mic out into the sea of bodies as some ethereal lifeline.

‘My Michelle’ burns red against the silver steel of the super structure, and somewhere they find themselves. They find that which has pushed their sales in excess of 10 million. Heads crash with horrific authority and each finds his own perfect space on the bloated industrial stage they’ve chosen to prove a point on.

Slash gets to say a few words that are mostly expletives and drawn from God knows what bottle. He sounds like a drunk kid.

His guitar excesses, where often bountiful, this time crucify ‘Rocket Queen’. Due to his overkill it moves from sharp melodrama to a bloated excuse for Axl to don shorts and await his cue.

When it finally comes, he offers sincere reverence to the Stones, accepts his place as part of another warm-up act -“We’re the biggest jockstrap in the world” - and offers no introduction as ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ creaks into the sky and falls like acid rain on to the surrounding crumbling blocks of depravity. Welcome home.

WHICH LEAVES only ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ and a ‘Paradise City’ encore that was borne to the clouds by desperately passionate voices. With the verve of the uncaring, the strut of the assured, they left wholly unashamed...

Only the Rolling Stones and the ever-present GN’R controversy could follow...