1992.08.25 - Phoenix International Raceway, Phoenix, USA

Heavy muddle: ASU mishandles Guns N’ Roses-Metallica gig

SALVATORE CAPUTO
The Arizona Republic

The decision to turn down the Guns N’ Roses-Metallica bill should have been a tempest in a teapot. Tempe has a curfew for downtown and the area adjacent to it, and the city is not planning on relaxing it any time soon. Given Guns N’ Roses’ history, people have a right to be skeptical about the band’s ability to meet an 11 p.m. curfew.

For some reason, Arizona State University has decided to play the heavy by saying it doesn’t want the show on a school night, especially the second night of school.

The promoters originally asked for a date from Aug. 26 to 29.

On March 31, the university gave promoters a window of opportunity for using the stadium from Aug. 16 to 26. That meant, given a day for breaking down the stage, the last possible date for the show was Aug.
25, the second night of school.

If the issue of playing on the second night of school was a problem, it wouldn’t have taken a rocket scientist to figure out that the last possible date in the window of opportunity should have been two days earlier. Why didn’t ASU figure that one out?

Brent Brown, ASU’s vice president of university relations, said, "The school night arose after they said, ‘Look, we can do it on the 25th,’ and then we said, ΌΚ! Let’s see if we can resolve the problems.’ Then we started to focus that it was the second day of school. We thought they might choose one of the other nights."

The promoters, Dan Zelisko and Barry Fey, do not assume the university was that shortsighted but insist that the issue is a pretext for turning down the show.

It’s hard not to believe that. Otherwise, you have to believe that the school looked at the NFL calendar (the March 31 letter says there’s a preseason game Aug. 15) when setting the window of opportunity but failed to look at the school calendar.

Whatever’s behind the decision, it’s going to cost the promoters, state, university and Tempe revenue they can ill afford to lose in hard times.

Guns N’ Roses, rejected by ASU, to play at raceway

By Hal Mattern
The Arizona Republic

A rock concert by Metallica and Guns Ν’ Roses, rejected in May by skittish Arizona State University officials, will be held in the Valley after all, the show’s promoter said Monday.

Danny Zelisko of Evening Star Productions said the concert will be held Aug. 25 at Phoenix International Raceway, at Baseline Road and 115th Avenue in Avondale.

It will be the first time a rock show has been staged at the site, which usually is used for car racing and testing.

“I guess PIR is going to get what you’d call a baptism of fire,” said Zelisko, who is co-promoting the show with Barry Fey of Denver.

Zelisko said he expects to sell at least 60,000 tickets, even though both groups have performed separately in the Valley in recent months.

Previously, concerts of that size have been held only at ASU’s Sun Devil Stadium. However, ASU officials rejected the Metallica-Guns N’ Roses show because it falls on a Tuesday, a school night.

Zelisko said at the time that other events, most notably a 1990 Paul McCartney concert, have been held on school nights. He said ASU officials had said earlier they were concerned about Guns N’ Roses’ reputation for starting its shows late and about damage caused at past Metallica shows.

After ASU passed on the show, Zelisko said he did “a lot of searching and a lot of talking” before approaching raceway officials.

The show will be held on the raceway’s infield, which is covered mostly with grass and dirt. Concertgoers will be allowed to bring blankets to sit on, and about 15,000 seats will be available in the bleachers.

The show will begin about 6 p.m., with Faith No More as the opening act. Metallica will perform next, followed by Guns N’ Roses, which is known for its late starts. The group’s show at Compton Terrace earlier this year didn’t begin until 11:30 p.m.

Tickets, which cost $29.50, go on sale Saturday at Dillard’s outlets.

Parking is included in the price of the tickets. The lot will open at 1 p.m. and the doors at 3 p.m. Because of the summer heat, several water stations will be set up. No alcohol will be sold.

Sallie Sargent, director of special events at the raceway, said it remains to be seen whether more rock concerts will be held there.

“We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes,” she said.

Swollen river turns rock concert into nightmare for some

By Enric Volante
The Arizona Dally Star

Authorities rescued 11 people, including three UA students, trapped when they tried to cross the swollen Gila River at a Phoenix-area rock concert.

Officers continued searching by boat and helicopter yesterday for a teen-ager believed to have been swept away after the show that featured Guns N’ Roses and Metallica.

Jonas Jolly, 18, whose hometown was unavailable, disappeared after the concert as he tried to walk across the river to avoid a chaotic traffic jam, said Sgt. Jay Ellison of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department.

Heavy river flows as a result of Tropical Storm Lester forced the closure Monday night of two of four roads in and out of the concert, which drew about 30,000 fans to Phoenix International Raceway, officials said.

“Guns N’ Roses started at 11:35 (Tuesday night) and people were still coming in at about midnight that had been waiting in traffic about four or five hours,” Ellison said. The concert ended at 1:45 a.m.," and people were trying to get out of there until about 7:30 this morning.”

The rescues included three University of Arizona students who after the show tried to ford the normally dry stretch of river on foot where it was about 80 yards wide and flowing heavily.

They made it about 50 yards out to a small island, then remained stranded for two hours until a Sheriffs Department helicopter plucked them off one by one, Ellison said.

Earlier, a group of five people was stranded for an hour on the same island, he said. The five were also rescued by helicopter.

Most of those rescued “appeared to be either intoxicated or on narcotics” and may have misjudged the river in the darkness, Ellison said.

The only person known to have been injured was a Phoenix-area woman who had a possible broken leg, Ellison said.

He said names and hometowns of the people rescued were not available yesterday.

Tropical Storm Lester dumped heavy rain on the Salt and Verde rivers watershed over the weekend, forcing the Salt River Project to release water from Bartlett and Horseshoe lakes at more than five times the normal rate, said SRP spokeswoman Teri Morris.

That swelled the normally dry Gila River west of Phoenix into a heavy flow that forced closure of unbridged roads to the concert, she said.

Concertgoer W. Glenn Cook called the post-concert traffic problem “an every-man-for-himself situation.”

Cook, a UA student and Arizona Daily Star employee, spent five hours trying to get out of the raceway grounds.

After the concert, some concertgoers knocked down and drove their cars over chain-link fences to leave the parking lot, Cook said.

“It was a mad dash to get to the highway,” he said.

Several fights also broke out among fans vying for spaces for their cars in the exit lines, he said.

Sheriff’s deputies reported about six arrests, mostly for disorderly conduct, but no major crowd problems.

“The entrance (to the concert) was just a great inconvenience.... But once we got to the parking lot it
was just desperate to get out of there,” Cook said. “It was so bad, our car didn’t move from 2 to 4 a.m.”

The traffic snarl peaked between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tuesday, when vehicles were backed up nearly six miles, Ellison said.

Danny Zelisko, president of Evening Star Productions, said he learned less than 24 hours before the concert that roads would be flooded.

“We did our best within the limited amount of time that we had to alert people to the fact that some rocket scientist at the Salt River Project released all this water,” he said. He said he's had calls from angry ticketholders, “but what are you supposed to do, when tons of rain fall and somebody releases water?”

He said he will not offer refunds, since virtually all 30,000 ticketholders got in and because the flooding was beyond his control.

But Zelisko said he told concertgoers to save their ticket stubs because he might honor them for free admission to a future event.

Arizona Daily Star pop-music critic Gene Armstrong contributed to this story.

Body believed to be that of missing concertgoer

PHOENIX (AP) — A body believed to be that of a man missing since early Wednesday after a rock concert was found yesterday morning in the Gila River west of Phoenix, officials said.

A young man was swept away while trying to wade across the river following the Tuesday night concert featuring rock groups Guns Ν’ Roses and Metallica at nearby Phoenix International Raceway, said Maricopa County Sheriffs Sgt Jay Ellison. The concert ended early Wednesday morning.

The man the sheriffs office believed was swept away was Jonas Jolly, 19, of Glendale.

Ellison said the body was found about a quarter of a mile west of the race track.