1993.03.17 - Boston Garden, Boston, USA

When Metal Attacks: Guns N’ Roses’ Boston Bottle Incident
October 14, 2013 8:00 AM

When “hair metal” was at its peak and heavy blues rock continued to decline in the face of the “grunge” era, along came Guns N’ Roses. They invigorated the rock scene with their raw, aggressive rock & roll that ditched the glamour and fun of hair metal bands in favor of a more rebellious persona. They may not have been a true “heavy metal” band, but they certainly represented the attitude, none more than Axl Rose.

Well, Axl Rose’s personality certainly didn’t mix with those of drunk rock & roll fans in Boston. The band played the Boston Garden on March 17, 1993, and actually played relatively on time and delivered a strong set – but it still was not without incident.

According to a review of the show from the Boston Globe, a fan threw a glass bottle onto the stage toward the band after only three songs. This caused Axl & Co. to retreat to the backstage area, where they stayed for about 10 minutes.

This prompted “Bullsh*t!” chants from the crowd as the band sat backstage to take a breather before returning. The review notes that it would have been pretty much impossible for a fan to get a glass bottle past security into the crowd, so the fan likely brought the bottle from backstage.

And speaking of the band’s attitude, they launched into their Misfits cover “Attitude” when Slash quipped “Not that this city needs any.”

Boston has certainly garnered quite the reputation for having an attitude problem, and this bottle thrower at the Guns N’ Roses concert did nothing to silence those opinions. But hey it’s GNR, you have to expect their personalities and those of many Bostonians to clash.

Get ready for Guns N’ Roses

Guns N’ Roses at Boston Garden? Yes, your fondest fantasy or worst nightmare, depending on your viewpoint, will soon come true. The controversial hard-rockers will make their first appearance at the Garden on March 16. Tickets go on sale Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Garden box office and Ticketpro outlets. Opening for the Gunners will be the Brian May Band. May is the longtime lead guitarist of British rockers Queen.

A frenzied Guns N’ Roses delivers at the Garden

By Steve Morse
GLOBE STAFF

It’s hard to match the chemistry of Irish rockers U2 playing Boston Garden on St. Patrick’s Day, which happened last year. But there was still action galore at last night’s St. Pat’s Garden party, starring bad-boy rockers Guns N’ Roses. They anchored a frenzied evening that spanned an ugly beer bottle-throwing incident, a patronizing lecture by Guns mouthpiece Axl Rose, a surprise guest shot by Boston rockers Extreme (who joined opening act Brian May), a vicious blast at WBCN (by a ticked-off Axl, who was woken up in his hotel by a on-air phone call from a ’BCN staffer) and, oh yes, some great rock ’n’ roll.

The sold-out 15,000 fans, who endured beefed-up security inside and outside the Garden (and a snowstorm on the way home), caught a memorable show that found Guns playing far better than their bloated Worcester Centrum date last year. The band was wise to jettison their backup singers and horn players, because this new “Skin N’ Bones” tour harkened back to their stripped-down, punk-metal roots and was much more satisfying.

Except, that is, for the bizarre soap opera that took place after some idiot tossed a beer bottle onto the stage, causing Axl & Co. to stomp off for 10 long minutes. It happened after just three songs, among them the fever-pitch-building “Mr. Brownstone” (about heroin) and a cover of Rose Tattoo’s “Nice Boys,” with its ear-splicing, crowd-screamed refrain, “Nice boys don’t play rock ’n’ roll!”

No one knows where the bottle was flung from, but it may have come from someone backstage, because it’s hard to imagine any concert-goer being able to smuggle a bottle past the Garden gendarmes whose frisking was almost obscenely thorough at the gates. Anyway, it prompted the short-fused Rose (who wore a Charles Manson T-shirt with “Charlie Don’t Surf" on the back), to lecture the crowd like a school principal, before adding, “It was probably someone from that [expletive] station WBCN.”

For their part, the fans were disgusted when Guns stomped off. They broke into an angry return chant that can’t be printed in a family paper, but can be abbreviated by the initials “B.S.” When the band came back to perform their ragingly punky tune, “Attitude,” guitarist Slash declared: “Not that this city needs any.”

This war of attitudes, in the long run, may have produced a better concert. Rose was wired beyond belief when he returned, charging through Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die” (with strobe-lit effects from a wall of 125 lights in the back of the stage) and a supersonic “Welcome to the Jungle.” (Read: Welcome to Boston on St. Patty’s Day.)

A change-of-pace acoustic set, however, proved to be a highlight, as the band sat in sofas and chairs, peaking with “Patience” and Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Rose, Slash, bassist Duff McKagan (a full-blooded Irishman who clearly enjoyed himself despite the snags), guitarist Gilby Clarke and drummer Matt Sorum then rocked the rafters on through encores of “Sweet Child O’ Mine” and “Paradise City.”

May, the former Queen guitarist, opened on a generally favorable note, rocking hard and singing far better than expected. He soared with an encore of Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down,” aided by Extreme’s Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt.

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... Also on Thursday night, a party of 32 from Guns N’ Roses ate and shopped at a private dinner at Giorgio Armani’s. And they didn’t break anything.