1991.08.31 - Wembley, London, England

Out of kilter

Adam Sweeting on Guns Ν’ Roses

SO FINALLY they came, we saw, and we left, not much the wiser. When Guns Ν' Roses released Appetite For Destruction in 1987, its rough-hewn hard rock and violent, hedonistic lyrics set them apart from the airbrushed, vacuum-tacked, poet-MTV pop which dominated the industry.

Nine million copies later, the group have yet to substantiate their vast and noisy reputation. Their only release in the last four years was a compilation effort called G Ν’ R Lies in 1988. Two double albums, Use Your Illusion Parts I and Π, are due out in a couple of weeks, after months of teasing with on-again off-again release dates.

You suspect they’ve turned into all the things they appeared to be against. They use riots, fights and controversy in-stead of Pepsi commercials and big-production videos, but the end result is the same— stadium rock and a billion-dollar income.

The Wembley sound was characteristically atrocious and, as usual, you watched most of it on giant TV screens. However, it was clear that G Ν’ R play a conservative and rather clumsy brand of hard rock, including a noisy Live And Let Die and an interminably leaden version of Knockin' On Heaven’s Door, and also that there are several ballads among the new material.

Singer Axl Rose stopped sprinting around the stage for a few minutes to sit at the piano, plonking out “sensitive" minor chords and singing stuff about everybody needing somebody. Whoa yeah.

Axl looked a lot better when he swapped his tartan kilt for some cheeky white shorts, and in a show which disappointed with its lack of spectacle, Rose’s finest moment was when he swaggered out of the wings in a stars-and-stripes jacket and white stetson, shrieking “I don’t need your Civil War". Man of the match was guitarist Slash, who consistently stood out with his powerful, melodic soloing.

But after 30 years of rock 'n' roll, you might reasonably hope for something more highly evolved than this squad of hair-and-barechest cartoons.

Big Guns blazing!
 
Yep, for thousands of rock fans up and down the country, last Saturday was The Big One - the long-awaited return of American dangermen GUNS N’ ROSES, along with an over- the-top SKID ROW and unknown quantity NINE INCH NAILS, all together at Wembley Stadium. It was sunny, sexy and sold out. The video screens actually worked, the sound wasn’t at all bad, and our man with the Bergasol, NEIL JEFFRIES, had a very nice time behind a strawberry Cornetto. (PS Thanks for the free publicity, Axl!)
 
BLAZON
(In the car park)
 
BRIT PUB Metal heroes in anti­US demo shock! Sort of... Blazon played off the back of a lorry in the car park to anyone who would listen (rarely more than 20), while a Stars And Stripes fluttered tauntingly on the flagpole of one of Wembley’s twin towers. The sound was crap, the vocals crap and the band were endearingly crap to average - but at least their spirit was faultless!
 
“We've been told to move our truck a lot today. I think the charge was 'loitering with intent to bore people’," wisecracked singer Dave Hobbs, before going on to blow the Down With Yanks cool with a useful cover of Kiss' 'Cold Gin'. Ah well, at least they also did the 'Postman Pat' theme...
 
But after an hour and 35 minutes, the generator ran out and so did Blazon's chances of mega-stardom.
 
NINE INCH NAILS
 
AXL'S HEROES Nine Inch Nails fared little better. Street punk attitude and mean guitars couldn't hide the fact that the music owed more to Depeche Mode or Sigue Sigue Sputnik than Metal, so they came and went without being anything more than a mild distraction for 99 per cent of the gathering masses. From my vantage point, it was impossible to tell whether the guitar smashed at the end was sacrificed in frustration or an attempt at Rock Cred. Whichever, it failed.
 
SKID ROW
 
A POSSIBILITY that was, of course, never on the cards for Skid Row. How could they after opening with ‘Slave To the Grind’, 'Big Guns', ‘Piece Of Me’ and ‘Riot Act’? Abso-fkin’-lutely superb - and that was only the crowd! Even when they slow it down for ‘18 And Life', then chose the relatively weak 'Psycho Love' off the new album, there is no risk of anything other than total delirium on and off stage.
 
And after those 20 minutes had flown by like 20 seconds, Sebastian Bach - surely the greatest frontman in the world - stops charging around like a pit bull on crack long enough to make “an announcement"...
 
Holding the offending piece of paper aloft, he tells the stadium full of supercharged Skid Rowdies how his band and the headliners have both received this letter from Brent Council expressing concern over their possible use of foul and abusive language. (Cue: deafening chorus of jeers.) “If there's one f**kin’ thing that makes me madder than anything, it's people telling rock 'n’ rollers how to run their f**kin' lives..." he rants magnificently, dropping in a couple more expletives to add to the 27 he's already used. Then quoting the letter verbatim, he explains how the council - “Who are these f**kin' guys? Do you know them?" - will stop the show if they play the expressly forbidden song 'Get The F**k Out’...
 
Wembley goes wild, totally apeshit and then some.
 
Skid Row play 'Get The F"k Out', go wild, totally apeshit and then some.
 
They follow it with 'Monkey Business' - where unless you blinked, those fans of drummers with their dicks out saw the video screen give you a mercifully quick flash of Rob's Knob - then make their only serious mistake: they leave the stage. The crowd are stunned. Even at fever pitch we are still only getting warmed up. But 45 minutes is their alotted period onstage, and that leaves only time enough for an 'I Remember You'/’Youth Gone Wild' closing salvo and Rachel's Bolan's death-defying stagedive at the end.
 
Given that the headliners waited 110 minutes to follow 'em (70 more than the specified changeover), it's a tragedy that the Skids couldn’t play longer.
 
They reduced a sea of distant faces to a one-on-one, cos the whole band know that to play music like this you have to FEEL it. Their every muscle moved with the mayhem. Conviction and commitment gushed from the stage and PA in all-consuming tidal waves, the whole of sunbathed (and blinded) Wembley drowning willingly in an orgy of power and passion impossible to manufacture.
 
Abso-f**kin'-lutely perfect!
 
GUNS N' ROSES
 
PREDICTABLY LATE, Guns N' Roses exploded onto the Wembley Stadium stage like a nailbomb at a christening. Axl a tornado on two legs, in red tartan kilt and shirt over a 'No Martyr' white T-shirt (in reply to Vince Neil's Donington vest?) leads them off at breakneck pace.
 
After all the rumours, counter rumours and the three years since the disastrous Donington appearance, I am stunned. First because the band are so good: and second, because the band are so different...
 
Fears that they will play too much unfamiliar material all but evaporate as they cleverly shuffle the seven songs that no one without bootlegs could possibly have heard into a pack of hits and classics - a cleverly paced set with barely a hiccup.
 
The 'Appetite For Destruction' material gets the best reception, of course, but (didn't ya just know there was a 'but' lurkin' in the wings!) this was not the all­-powerful 100 per cent set that we could reasonably expect of the Biggest Band In The World. Almost... but almost is not enough.
 
Of those new numbers. ‘Bad Obsession' (Hey! Wasn't that Dizzy Reed on keyboards?!) and 'Estranged' are probably the best - but choosing to save the crafted-but-complex latter for an  encore was a little much to ask  of a tired but fired-up crowd. And while it's great to see Izzy Stradlin' - cooly undisturbed by all the madness surrounding him - get more of the limelight, the two numbers he sang lead vocals on ('Dust And Bones' and '14 Years') seemed a little too goodtime amongst the brooding power or unbridled fury of the rest of the set. Strange...
 
But not so strange as Mr Rose. Whadaya reckon? As a point of information, would you be surprised to learn that Kerrang! was banned from this show, that their record company was instructed not to give us any tickets? Docs that make sense of Axl's declaration: ''I'd like to dedicate this song to Sky magazine, to Time Out. and to something I respected years ago, but now I'd rather wipe my f**kin' ass with... Kerrang! This is called 'Double Talkin' Jive', motherf**kers!"? Thanks to everyone who sounded surprised. And thank you Axl for caring so much. So what do you expect me to do, slag you off for it? No way! I got in and I'm writing what I would have said even if you'd said we were your favourite. Please call me up and let's discuss this...
 
I was actually hugely flattered he chose that song (don't know what Sky or Time Out thought...), cos it is probably the best of the night. An awesome no-brakes rollercoaster to hell. Pity, then, that Slash's solo at the end seems aimless, so the coupling of it and the awesome 'Civil War' isn't neater.
 
'Civil War', with Axl a livewire in his Stars And Stripes jacket and stetson, is one of the highlights. 'Patience', 'You Could Be Mine' and the stunning cover of Bob Dylan's 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' are the others. Like Hendrix stole Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower', Guns have surely made this their own. His Bobness should be proud.
 
But (did ya guess there was another 'but'?) by the time they play it, the stuffing has been knocked out of the mid-set momentum by an embarrassingly tedious drum and guitar solo sequence. I'll forgive Axl the hilarious pub crooner intro to 'Live And Let Die’, I’ll forgive that lyrically moving but musically dull 'November Rain’, but I won't forgive a full 17 minutes with nothing even approaching a song. It drove me to sit down, disgusted that a band could cheat themselves like this. In Matt Sorum and the incomparable Duff McKagan, they have one of the baddest rhythm sections I’ve heard in a long while - so why oh why do they f**k around like this? Play us three more songs and get real!
 
At the end of the day, though, 80,000 people with their hands in the air didn't agree... and I admit I'm finding faults in an otherwise superb set.
 
Finally, the band rock out like bitches while the white strobes flash through the closing section of 'Paradise City'. Wembley is left reeling. The roadcrew come on to lift the band on their shoulders, and Slash walks off on his hands. This was a victory or death situation for Guns N' Roses, and despite my reservations this could only be classed as a victory...

Blackstar wrote:Review in Kerrang!, September 7, 1991:

Big Guns blazing!
 
Yep, for thousands of rock fans up and down the country, last Saturday was The Big One - the long-awaited return of American dangermen GUNS N’ ROSES, along with an over- the-top SKID ROW and unknown quantity NINE INCH NAILS, all together at Wembley Stadium. It was sunny, sexy and sold out. The video screens actually worked, the sound wasn’t at all bad, and our man with the Bergasol, NEIL JEFFRIES, had a very nice time behind a strawberry Cornetto. (PS Thanks for the free publicity, Axl!)
 
BLAZON
(In the car park)
 
BRIT PUB Metal heroes in anti­US demo shock! Sort of... Blazon played off the back of a lorry in the car park to anyone who would listen (rarely more than 20), while a Stars And Stripes fluttered tauntingly on the flagpole of one of Wembley’s twin towers. The sound was crap, the vocals crap and the band were endearingly crap to average - but at least their spirit was faultless!
 
“We've been told to move our truck a lot today. I think the charge was 'loitering with intent to bore people’," wisecracked singer Dave Hobbs, before going on to blow the Down With Yanks cool with a useful cover of Kiss' 'Cold Gin'. Ah well, at least they also did the 'Postman Pat' theme...
 
But after an hour and 35 minutes, the generator ran out and so did Blazon's chances of mega-stardom.
 
NINE INCH NAILS
 
AXL'S HEROES Nine Inch Nails fared little better. Street punk attitude and mean guitars couldn't hide the fact that the music owed more to Depeche Mode or Sigue Sigue Sputnik than Metal, so they came and went without being anything more than a mild distraction for 99 per cent of the gathering masses. From my vantage point, it was impossible to tell whether the guitar smashed at the end was sacrificed in frustration or an attempt at Rock Cred. Whichever, it failed.
 
SKID ROW
 
A POSSIBILITY that was, of course, never on the cards for Skid Row. How could they after opening with ‘Slave To the Grind’, 'Big Guns', ‘Piece Of Me’ and ‘Riot Act’? Abso-fkin’-lutely superb - and that was only the crowd! Even when they slow it down for ‘18 And Life', then chose the relatively weak 'Psycho Love' off the new album, there is no risk of anything other than total delirium on and off stage.
 
And after those 20 minutes had flown by like 20 seconds, Sebastian Bach - surely the greatest frontman in the world - stops charging around like a pit bull on crack long enough to make “an announcement"...
 
Holding the offending piece of paper aloft, he tells the stadium full of supercharged Skid Rowdies how his band and the headliners have both received this letter from Brent Council expressing concern over their possible use of foul and abusive language. (Cue: deafening chorus of jeers.) “If there's one f**kin’ thing that makes me madder than anything, it's people telling rock 'n’ rollers how to run their f**kin' lives..." he rants magnificently, dropping in a couple more expletives to add to the 27 he's already used. Then quoting the letter verbatim, he explains how the council - “Who are these f**kin' guys? Do you know them?" - will stop the show if they play the expressly forbidden song 'Get The F**k Out’...
 
Wembley goes wild, totally apeshit and then some.
 
Skid Row play 'Get The F"k Out', go wild, totally apeshit and then some.
 
They follow it with 'Monkey Business' - where unless you blinked, those fans of drummers with their dicks out saw the video screen give you a mercifully quick flash of Rob's Knob - then make their only serious mistake: they leave the stage. The crowd are stunned. Even at fever pitch we are still only getting warmed up. But 45 minutes is their alotted period onstage, and that leaves only time enough for an 'I Remember You'/’Youth Gone Wild' closing salvo and Rachel's Bolan's death-defying stagedive at the end.
 
Given that the headliners waited 110 minutes to follow 'em (70 more than the specified changeover), it's a tragedy that the Skids couldn’t play longer.
 
They reduced a sea of distant faces to a one-on-one, cos the whole band know that to play music like this you have to FEEL it. Their every muscle moved with the mayhem. Conviction and commitment gushed from the stage and PA in all-consuming tidal waves, the whole of sunbathed (and blinded) Wembley drowning willingly in an orgy of power and passion impossible to manufacture.
 
Abso-f**kin'-lutely perfect!
 
GUNS N' ROSES
 
PREDICTABLY LATE, Guns N' Roses exploded onto the Wembley Stadium stage like a nailbomb at a christening. Axl a tornado on two legs, in red tartan kilt and shirt over a 'No Martyr' white T-shirt (in reply to Vince Neil's Donington vest?) leads them off at breakneck pace.
 
After all the rumours, counter rumours and the three years since the disastrous Donington appearance, I am stunned. First because the band are so good: and second, because the band are so different...
 
Fears that they will play too much unfamiliar material all but evaporate as they cleverly shuffle the seven songs that no one without bootlegs could possibly have heard into a pack of hits and classics - a cleverly paced set with barely a hiccup.
 
The 'Appetite For Destruction' material gets the best reception, of course, but (didn't ya just know there was a 'but' lurkin' in the wings!) this was not the all­-powerful 100 per cent set that we could reasonably expect of the Biggest Band In The World. Almost... but almost is not enough.
 
Of those new numbers. ‘Bad Obsession' (Hey! Wasn't that Dizzy Reed on keyboards?!) and 'Estranged' are probably the best - but choosing to save the crafted-but-complex latter for an  encore was a little much to ask  of a tired but fired-up crowd. And while it's great to see Izzy Stradlin' - cooly undisturbed by all the madness surrounding him - get more of the limelight, the two numbers he sang lead vocals on ('Dust And Bones' and '14 Years') seemed a little too goodtime amongst the brooding power or unbridled fury of the rest of the set. Strange...
 
But not so strange as Mr Rose. Whadaya reckon? As a point of information, would you be surprised to learn that Kerrang! was banned from this show, that their record company was instructed not to give us any tickets? Docs that make sense of Axl's declaration: ''I'd like to dedicate this song to Sky magazine, to Time Out. and to something I respected years ago, but now I'd rather wipe my f**kin' ass with... Kerrang! This is called 'Double Talkin' Jive', motherf**kers!"? Thanks to everyone who sounded surprised. And thank you Axl for caring so much. So what do you expect me to do, slag you off for it? No way! I got in and I'm writing what I would have said even if you'd said we were your favourite. Please call me up and let's discuss this...
 
I was actually hugely flattered he chose that song (don't know what Sky or Time Out thought...), cos it is probably the best of the night. An awesome no-brakes rollercoaster to hell. Pity, then, that Slash's solo at the end seems aimless, so the coupling of it and the awesome 'Civil War' isn't neater.
 
'Civil War', with Axl a livewire in his Stars And Stripes jacket and stetson, is one of the highlights. 'Patience', 'You Could Be Mine' and the stunning cover of Bob Dylan's 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' are the others. Like Hendrix stole Dylan's 'All Along The Watchtower', Guns have surely made this their own. His Bobness should be proud.
 
But (did ya guess there was another 'but'?) by the time they play it, the stuffing has been knocked out of the mid-set momentum by an embarrassingly tedious drum and guitar solo sequence. I'll forgive Axl the hilarious pub crooner intro to 'Live And Let Die’, I’ll forgive that lyrically moving but musically dull 'November Rain’, but I won't forgive a full 17 minutes with nothing even approaching a song. It drove me to sit down, disgusted that a band could cheat themselves like this. In Matt Sorum and the incomparable Duff McKagan, they have one of the baddest rhythm sections I’ve heard in a long while - so why oh why do they f**k around like this? Play us three more songs and get real!
 
At the end of the day, though, 80,000 people with their hands in the air didn't agree... and I admit I'm finding faults in an otherwise superb set.
 
Finally, the band rock out like bitches while the white strobes flash through the closing section of 'Paradise City'. Wembley is left reeling. The roadcrew come on to lift the band on their shoulders, and Slash walks off on his hands. This was a victory or death situation for Guns N' Roses, and despite my reservations this could only be classed as a victory...