1992.07.26 - Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, USA

666 wrote:I went to the next show in Giants Stadium and that was more memorable because Axl left midway thru KOHD and never returned.

Masters of metal leave milestone at stadium

By Scott Mervis
Assistant Magazine Editor, Post-Gazette

To put this event in perspective, imagine the Beatles and the Rolling Stones touring together in 1968. That’s what it was like for the nearly 50,000 headbangers that descended last night on Three Rivers Stadium.

It was the first Guns N’ Roses show in Pittsburgh since in 1988. Joining GNR on this 20-city tour is the second-in-command of metaldom, thrashmasters Metallica, and funksters Faith No More.

The show was enough of a metal milestone for one couple from Steubenville, Ohio, to tie their matrimonial bonds on the 97 Rock bus outside the stadium. With hundreds cheering on, Richard Clashman Jr. and Dona Hall exchanged vows, toasted with champagne and did a 500-Twinkie salute. The couple said it couldn’t find any better bands for the reception.

In a switch from what Pittsburgh rock fans are used to, one fan, Bob Cameron, came from Cleveland, which is missing the tour because of a scheduling conflict with the baseball team, the Indians. (Yet another strike against the hapless team.)

Cameron’s only complaint was the overzealous security. Considering GNR’s past, nothing was allowed in — not even purses, umbrellas or binoculars — and nothing stronger than cola was sold. “It’s pretty rude,” Cameron said, “when you pay $27.50 and you’re treated like a criminal.”

Ah, kind of like GNR leader Axl Rose, who’s out on bail now, pending trial for the July, 1991 incident in St. Louis, where he was charged with inciting a riot. In addition to offending the authorities, Rose has drawn fire from feminists, blacks, gays and Tipper Gore. Perhaps seeking redemption, he had activist groups like Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Rock the Vote and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals passing out literature in the hallways.

Inside it was a rush of energy. For once, Pittsburgh weather was perfect. After a slamming funk set from Faith No More, a monstrous cloud moved over the field. The cloud supplied the rain, Metallica the thunder, with songs like “One” and “Wherever I May Roam.” They sounded like they had three bass players, and for the first time all day, the drenched, fist-waving throng looked as menacing as you’d expect.

GNR, notorious for going on late and playing until 2 a.m., were expected to go on early, rocking through an explosive set of anthems. In previous stops on the tour Rose has been in hyperkinetic form, whirling across the stage and screeching songs like “Welcome to the Jungle” and ‘You Could Be Mine.”

Rain tests metal crowd’s mettle

"You play the right choice of notes and it just sounds so heavy. I mean, sometimes you feel like you can just bash people’s heads in just with riffs.”
— Kirk Hammett, guitarist for Metallica, in the Arizona Republic

By Bob Bats Jr.
and Eric Deggans
The Pittsburgh Press

THE RAIN THAT slashed through the beginning of Metallica’s set last night was dangerously delicious.

Dangerous because who could tell what water would do to the already super-electrified atmosphere, now pulsating with Metallica’s gut-grinding power chords?

Delicious because most of those on the roiling edge of the surf of 50,000 fans at Three Rivers Stadium already were punch-pumping their fists in the air and whip-snapping their heads to the frenzied beat.

And when you do that with long wet hair — and there was a lot of long wet hair — it SNAPS! when the water flies off.

Not that you could hear the hair.

You didn’t hear the music, either, as much as you felt it slamming into your body.

Twenty-one-year-old Clinton Jones of Grove City, gyrating his all on his rain-slicked plastic chair a few rows back from the stage, simply swore and wailed when asked if he was digging the show.

And this was just the middle part of a triple bill that started on-time (at 4:30 p.m.) with the group Faith No More, slip-slid into Metallica and then Guns N’ Roses (including the notorious Axl).

For most of the metalheads present, the whole night was basically as soggy, sweaty, loud, raunchy — and fun — as the preshow party on the tonneau cover of Jennifer Shriver’s pickup truck.

“It’s been a blast," she screamed before the show — before she and the three friends who came with her from Washington, Pa., resumed screaming at the arriving crowd.

The 18-year-old called the beer-dribbled truck bed their “dance floor.” With the four on it, the truck jumped a foot on its shocks.

A “no-tailgating” edict issued but not strictly enforced by the city police kept the parking-lot jungle pretty tame, and the you-can’t-bring-anything-past-this-point barricades set up outside the gates kept the lines of concertgoers long even as Metallica began playing.

But fans only grumbled. The rain probably just kept a lot of them from overheating inside.

One of the few protected by a raincoat was Peter Stonis of New Kensington. Stonis, who looked a little out of place because he's 56, said he came for his 14-year-old daughter, Ann.

Early in the evening, police and medics reported few problems. According to police, there were only six “indictable" arrests by 8 p.m., and nine other alcohol-related arrests. Despite having to also man the Vintage Grand Prix in Oakland and The Pittsburgh Press strike situation, police had about 100 officers at the concert — a typical contingent. In the first aid room, things also were fairly quiet, said Dr. Michael Sullivan, an emergency medicine physician. He reported the usual injuries — cuts, bums, alcohol-related problems — plus some head injuries — “people hitting each other with their heads.’’

Guns N’ Roses’ and Axl strut killer attitude

By Peter B. King
The Pittsburgh Press

His eyes two slits, his lips curled, his teeth pearly white against his scruffy beard and moustache, Axl Rose let out that awesome, high-pitched howl.

That’s the image/sound I'll remember most from Sunday night’s Guns N’ Roses concert — a troubled, working-class kid from Indiana in his glory, telling the whole world to go stick it with that noise.

Attitude can take a band a long way in pop music, which might explain how Guns N’ Roses — a competent, professional hard-rock group but not, I’d venture, a great one — can sell 37 million albums and fill stadiums (Sunday’s crowd was about 50,000).

The two-hour and 15-minute set started off on a high note, with the band doing what it does best — fast, hard and relatively short songs with plenty of danger. There was “It’s So Easy,” then “Night-rain,” with its killer Slash guitar riff, then “Mr. Brownstone,” the best Aerosmith song about heroin addiction Aerosmith never wrote.

Rose ran across the long stage with grace and energy; between the shorts he wore and his slight, almost elfin appearance, he reminded me of AC/DC’s Angus Young.

Next, the band launched into Paul McCartney's “Live and Let Die," with the three background singers/horn players joining in and making the song even more grandiose than the original.

GNR got back on track with tunes like “Bad Obsession” and the Misfits’ "Attitude,” but the show began to drift toward the overblown and the glitzy.

Like Guns N’ Roses recent “Use Your Illusion I and II” albums, the set was top-heavy with pompous, drawn-out ballads and mid-tempo tunes, like “November Rain” and a hyped-up version of Bob Dylan’s "Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.”

Slash got off some exciting solos in a kind of Zeppelin/Aerosmith style, but he sometimes succumbed to the temptation to play too much and too long, as on a minor-blues duet with keyboardist Dizzy Reed.

Still, the band roared back to what it does best with a set-ending "Paradise City.” It proved they’ve got what it takes — when they stay within the no-frills, hard-rock parameters that made them successful in the first place.

Up just before GNR, Metallica roared through a two-hour, 10-minute set with passion, finesse and lots of decibels.

The band practically invented the breakneck-paced, dissonant genre of thrash-metal in L.A. in the early ’80s. Since then, they’ve refined the style, increasing their instrumental prowess and tackling some heavy subjects lyrically.

The overall sound is grave — some would say bleak — and yet it
radiates a strange kind of exuberance, especially when drummer Lars Ulrich whips the tempo to a frenzy, Kirk Hammett kicks in with a dizzying guitar solo and the band bangs their heads until you’re sure they’ll end up in neck braces.

Highlights included “Enter Sandman,” a creepy ode to childhood fears, and “One,” a slow-building tale of a combat vet left with no limbs or senses. For thrash comic relief there were out-and-out headbangers like “Whiplash.”

Opening act Faith No More proved that, if nothing else, they’re very strange.

The San Francisco group has fashioned a kind of black-humored art-thrash metal fueled by lead singer Mike Patton’s surreal, disjointed lyrics and mock-operatic, Frank Zappa-like bellow.

The group occasionally makes use of Metallica-style dissonance and shifting rhythms, but adds lusher melody and a rolling, synth-organ keyboard.

Faith No More performed their rap-metal fusion hit “Epic." It will be interesting to see it they can repeat that success with their new album, “Angel Dust," which includes songs as odd as one they did called “RV,” a waltz about an aging, bitter couch potato.

(Peter B. King is The Pittsburgh Press pop music critic.)