1988.05.18 - Ottawa Civic Center, Ottawa, Canada

Chris Cobb wrote:[...]
By contrast, the opening act Guns ’N’ Roses performed in poverty. The group’s stage setting was strictly barroom but the message, as the British group Nazareth used to have us believe, was strictly “loud and proud.”

Guns ’N’ Roses lead singer W. Axl Rose uses contrived rebellious obscenities in an attempt to stir up some enthusiasm in the crowd.

Slash, an aptly mononamed lead guitarist, seemed unable to conjure up more than two or three words that didn’t begin with the letter ‘f'. The verbals, coupled with bare torsos and tattoos, certainly distanced the group from the relatively mature sophistication of Iron Maiden.

Yet for all the group’s nonsense, they provided one of the highlights of the night with a superb rendition of Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, one of the finest songs ever written about the breaking of human spirit. It was an interesting choice. Significantly, Axl Rose didn’t tell the audience who had written it. Perhaps that would have been too uncool.

But this is a good group and with definite potential to go beyond the limitations — if, of course they exist — of heavy metal and the strange magnetic field that surrounds it.