1988.08.04 - Philadelphia Spectrum, Philadelphia, USA

In Philadelphia, just minutes before a concert, Axl got into a fight with a parking-lot attendant who, Axl says, shoved Stuart, Axl's younger brother and personal assistant. Doug Goldstein, the group's tough but temperate and shrewd tour manager, persuaded the police to release Axl in time for the show [1988.11.17, Interview].

Aerosmith rocks hard with Guns ’N' Roses

By Jim Gladstone
Special to The Inquirer

High and Dry, the title of an album by the group Def Leppard, also is an apt tag for a sold-out concert at the Spectrum last night that featured two of that band’s hard-rocking counterparts.

The raucous double bill, which will be repeated this evening, kicked off with fast-living LA. newcomers Guns ’N’ Roses, whose opening song “It’s So Easy” includes the lyrics, “I drink and I drive.”

All five members of headliner Aerosmith are recovering alcoholics, who, after years of drug-addled concert performances, have sobered up and shot back to the top with bracing detoxed rock.

The cleaned-up quintet still had plenty of plucky bad-boy attitude to offer last night’s enthusiastic crowd.

Under a Vegas rainbow of colored lights, lead singer Steven Tyler raced about the stage kicking and wiggling like a hot-wired Gumby doll. In lieu of substance abuse, Tyler spiked his performance with a dose of good humor, opening “Permanent Vacation” with a few bars of Harry Belafonte's "Banana Boat Song” and occasionally scatting a la David Lee Roth.

Crisp versions of new work, including “Rag Doll” and "Hangman Jury,” were delivered without needless solo forays. There was, however, a fair share of crowd-pleasing excess on older numbers, including a Joe Perry guitar introduction to “Lost Child" that was so long it could have been televised as a mini-series.

Guns ’N’ Roses, whose Appetite for Destruction is currently the country’s best-selling album, sounds better in concert than on vinyl. While the band’s faster songs are cluttered with punky noise on record, the live arrangements are more spacious and melodic.

The band’s lyrical bad points were so bad, however, that they overwhelmed the musical good. In addition to several salutes to inebriation, vocalist W. Axl Rose was relentlessly profane and misogynistic. He wiggled gleefully and ran a finger along his throat while singing the refrain of a new song: "I used to love her, but I had to kill her.”