1991.06.10 - Performing Arts Center, Saratoga Springs, USA

Guns N’ Roses: Ready to rock With both barrels

By Mike Curtin
Special to The Post-Star

They haven’t toured in nearly three years, save for a few gigs opening for the Rolling Stones, and those performances nearly tore the group asunder.

Their discography is scant: two albums, one little more than a hodgepodge of early live tracks and acoustic jamming.

Except for some scattered cuts on soundtrack and benefit albums, they haven’t released anything of substance in more than 31 months.

They make headlines: marriages and divorces; apartment spats that require police intervention; drug abuse and detoxification; drunken escapades on commercial airlines and on prime-time TV; and song lyrics that have enraged gay and minority groups nationwide.

They define an attitude; one not appropriate for this “just say no” world, but one that's enthralled, for better or worse, an entire generation.

And Monday they'll rock the Saratoga Performing Arts Center — rock it like those staid grounds rarely have been rocked before.

They’re Guns N’ Roses, arguably the most popular rock band in the world.

The SPAC shed has hosted some monster concerts in its 20-plus years of existence: The Who, Bruce Springsteen, the Grateful Dead. But it was unprepared for Guns N’ Roses’ first appearance in the summer of 1988, opening for Aerosmith.

Some 25,000 fans jammed the amphitheater and hillside, and not all just to see Aerosmith’s lead singer, Steve Tyler, spin his microphone for the billionth time.

"When the lights went down, the place went nuts. Fans rushed towards the stage and packed any open space they could find,” said Post-Star copy editor Troy Burns, who from his seat in the eighth row of the SPAC amphitheater watched a near-riot evolve.

“People threw themselves onstage and were thrown back in the seats by the security personnel. They climbed onto the amplifiers and sound system. The band finally just dropped their instruments and stalked offstage.”

Ticket sales for Monday’s performance will be limited to 25,000; few are expecting anything less than a sellout.

Guns N’ Roses formed in 1985 and quickly became a popular club attraction in Los Angeles. They signed with Geffen Records and released their first album, “Appetite For Destruction,” in July 1987.

It took 10 months for the album to crack the Top 100. But in late 1988 it reached No. 1, where it remained for five weeks and spawned three Top 10 singles: “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Paradise City” and “Welcome to the Jungle.”

“Guns N’ Roses Lies,” a compilation of new tracks with an acoustic flavor and an earlier E.P., “Live ?!*@ Like A Suicide,” was also a best seller. At one time both recordings were ranked in the Top 5 on Billboard magazine's album charts. Guns N’ Roses was the only band in the 1980s to achieve that feat.

To date, “Appetite For Destruction" has sold 12 million copies; “Lies,” 6 million.

In 1990 the band released only two songs. “Civil War" appeared on “Nobody’s Child — The Romanian Angel Appeal," a benefit album for Romanian orphans. The group’s version of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door" appeared on the soundtrack to the film, “Days of Thunder.”

Individual band members kept busy. Vocalist W. Axl Rose sang on Don Henley’s “The End of the Innocence" album. Guitarist Slash played guitar on Dylan’s lightly regarded “Under the Red Sky."

In late July the band will release two separate albums: “Use Your Illusion — Vols. I and II.” A third recording with cover versions of songs by obscure punk bands may be released later this year.

Fueled by drinking and drugs, the persistent strife among band members came to a boil in the fall of 1989. At a Los Angeles concert, opening for the Rolling Stones, they nearly broke up onstage.

Since then they’ve performed rarely, mostly notably at the 1990 “Farm Aid" benefit at the Hoosier Dome in Indiana. The current tour began two weeks ago in Wisconsin and will crisscross the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia for the remainder of 1991.

The band's lineup includes Rose, Slash, guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum, formerly of the Cult, replacing original stickman Steve Adler. Additional keyboard chores are handled by Dizzy Reed.

Despite the troubles and distractions, the band has produced a fiery sound to complement its image. But one need look no further for the reason for Guns N’ Roses’ phenomenal success than the album charts or this year’s SPAC schedule.

With rare exceptions, rockers who started in the ‘60s and ‘70s still rule the roost. SPAC, in particular, will host an unending series of aging rock warriors like Styx, the Doobie Brothers, the Moody Blues, Scorpions and Steve Miller.

The members of Guns Ν’ Roses are children of the ‘80s and were eagerly embraced by their peers.

They’re young and they’re dangerous. In an era where abstinence and “safe sex’’ are the twin pillars of modern morality, the band’s reckless behavior is the definition of social treason.

Treason that’s irresistible. Their fans demand rebellion. The Gunners give it to them with both barrels.

Guns N’ Roses went heavy on new stuff and solos

SPAC review

by Mike Curtin
Special to the Post-Star

Toast, and a twice burnt piece of bread at that!

That’s how a morning disc jockey — my Tuesday morning wake-up call — described his condition after the marathon Guns N’ Roses concert the previous night at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.

There were more than a few of us who felt like a Freihofer factory. It was 12:45 a.m. when I exited the SPAC grounds, and the Gunners were still going strong.

The not-so-chipper morning jock raved about the concert.

Not so.

Only during brief moments of Guns N’ Roses ungainly three-hour performance did this Los Angeles quintet show the skills and power befitting the most heralded rock band in years.

The band took its sweet time performing Monday evening. It was 10:15 p.m. before they took the stage, well over an hour after opening act Skid Row had banged its last chord. The 70-minute delay was nearly too much for the primed and partisan audience, estimated at 25,000.

The temper of the crowd pressed in the “no man’s land,” where the lawn meets the back of the amphitheater, and the patience of the beefed-up security force was tested again and again.

A thin rope, and some not-so-steady pylons, was what separated the two areas. The crowd surged, the guards pushed backed. A bulge would form in the line. Reinforcements from the 300 employees on duty would seal the breach. The line held, but not without blows and bruises on both sides.

In the background, “Jailbreak,” a song by the pioneering ‘70s hard rock band Thin Lizzy, blared over the speaker. “Tonight’s there’s going to be a break out.” Indeed.

It was a curious montage of sounds and styles that prefaced the show; clips from the films “Batman” and “When Harry Met Sally,” were shown on the overhead screens that hung from the amphitheater. The sound system pumped the crunching rock of Guns N’ Roses favorites, like Thin Lizzy and AC/DC.

The latter’s “Problem Child” was appropriate introductory music for the band. More than any other group in recent memory, the on- and offstage antics of singer W. Axl Rose, bassist Duff McKagan, and guitarists Slash and Izzy Stradlin, are reminders that despite the graying of rock music as it enters its fifth decade, it’s still the soundtrack for protracted adolescence.

The foursome, with new Gunner Matt Sorum on drums, and with Dizzy Reed on keyboards and percussion, opened with “Nightrain,” from the band’s first Geffen recording “Appetite For Destruction.”

It was Guns N’ Roses at its finest. Propelled by Sorum’s thunderous downstrokes, the group concocted a sprawling metallic soundscape that virtually forced oxygen out of the amphitheater.

A tight 90-minute set of old favorites, with a smattering of new songs, would’ve been ideal. Instead the band’s set featured an unhealthy dose of untested new material from its upcoming albums, “Use Your Illusion,” Vol 1 and 2.

Worse still, and especially for a band of young upstarts, the members of Guns N’ Roses showed a fatal attraction for interminable soloing. Though Sorum displayed some stylistic flair during his relatively brief solo, Slash’s ear-splitting guitar arpeggios followed the same predictable path up the fretboard.

His musical quote from Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” only Showed the vast chasm that still separate the two as musicians.

Rose was a captivating, dare I say it, even charming frontman. His stage presence was positively quaint compared to the foul antics of Skid Row’s lead singer, Sebastian Bach.

Rose nevertheless displayed a boundless energy, using every inch of the stage for his microphone-stand gymnastics. He changed costumes more times than Barbara Mandrell, wearing and doffing a headband, leather caps, Scottish kilt and an American flag jacket with a metronome-like regularity. His banshee voice could curdle milk, but there’s an art to that, and no one curdles better.

Among the high points: strong versions of “Civil War’ and “Knocking On Heaven’s Door.” It’s a measure of the band’s immense popularity that these two odd tracks-from benefit and soundtrack albums were given a welcome that most groups would receive for a million selling hit.

I doubt any Dylan audience ever sang “Heaven’s Door” with as much passion and vigor, as did the assembled 25,000 Monday at SPAC.

Slash’s signature guitar lines to “Sweet Child Ό Mine,” the most famous rock riff since Eric Clapton’s introduction to “Layla,” brought the Gunners into the home stretch of their extended show. A bombastic version of Paul McCartney’s already bloated “Live And Let Die” failed in both concept and execution.

The band’s Saratoga performance was still among their first shows as a headlining act. By year’s end, they may merit the title as the greatest rock band in the world. But on Monday, Guns N’ Roses was still a group in transition, and its monster tour a work in progress.

Opening for Guns N’ Roses was Skid Row. At the band’s Glens Falls Civic Center performance in January 1989, lead singer Sebastian Bach posed the timeless question, “What kind of a f—ing name for a rock band is Milli Vanilli?”

On Monday, he drew from the same boundless reservoir of bile. He led the crowd in a X-rated chant of “Ice Ice Baby;” commented not so nicely about the band Nelson; and set a record — probably his own for the most persistent use of the common four-letter word for sexual intercourse.

Skid Row previewed songs from their upcoming Atlantic album, “Back To The Grind.”

But the best moments of its well-received 50-minute set was during the encore of “I’ll Remember You.” This tender acoustic number showed a different side of Bach and Co., something more substantial than blind white rage incarnate.