1993.03.28 - Northlands Coliseum, Edmonton, Canada

Guns N’ Roses to play in Edmonton March 28

Those had boys of rock, Guns N Roses, will be bringing their act to Alberta in March.

Led by singer Axl Rose known for naked runs through hotel lobbys and charges of assault at violence-plagued concerts the group will appear in Edmonton March 28.

The band will not play Calgary but local fans will be able to buy tickets for the Edmonton show starting Saturday at Ticket Master outlets.

Rock’s bad boys city-bound

Security for Guns N’ Roses show will be anything but Skin & Bones

DAVID HOWELL
Journal Staff Writer

Edmonton

Security needs are already being assessed for a March 28 concert at Northlands Coliseum by rock’s ultimate bad-boy band, Guns N’ Roses.

Tickets go on sale Saturday for the band’s only Alberta appearance on its Skin & Bones tour. The opening act will be The Brian May Band. May was the guitarist with legendary British group Queen.

"We're definitely aware of problems that have happened (with Guns N’ Roses) in the past and we’ll be having extra security and extra police,” Tammi Bryant, a spokesperson with the show’s promoter, Perryscope Concert Productions, said Monday.

“The band has quite a rambunctious audience. We’re taking extra precautions.”

At a Guns N' Roses concert Nov. 30 in Bogota, Colombia, thousands of fans who had not been able to buy tickets ran riot outside the stadium, wounding 20 police officers and damaging hundreds of cars and nearby shops.

On Dec. 2 in Chile, 178 fans were arrested at a concert after violence broke out among the audience, angered by the show’s late start. Bottles were thrown on to the stage and lead singer Axl Rose walked off stage twice and threatened to cancel the concert. (Two days later Rose, completely naked, hugged a security guard in the in the lobby of a Buenos Aires hotel.)

And last August in Montreal, Guns N’ Roses fans went on a rampage at Olympic Stadium after Rose halted a show after only a few songs, apparently because of a sore throat. Rioters trashed parts of the stadium, burned a sports car which was on display and set dozens of small fires before police regained control.

But at a September concert in Toronto, security was increased and no trouble was reported.

Sgt. Al Bohachyk, head of media relations with the Edmonton police service, said primary responsibility for security rests with Edmonton Northlands.

But police will be monitoring other Guns N’ Roses concert dates between now and the Edmonton show and may put contingency plans in place, Bohachyk said.

“We’ll certainly be reviewing how things are going as they make their tour so we can properly establish what we’ll do for security arrangements.”

Edmonton Northlands spokesman John Harms said security will be beefed up but likely will be no different from that in effect at other heavy-metal shows.

Tickets for the Edmonton show go on sale at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at the Northlands box office and Ticketmaster outlets. The price is $29.50 plus agency fee.

Ticket buyers are asked to bring a non-perishable food item marked with their names, address and phone number. Each Ticketmaster outlet will make a draw, and one winner from each will have one pair of seats upgraded to front-row. Donations go to the Edmonton Food Bank.

And for Guns N’ Roses fans who can’t wait for the real thing, two new concert videotapes from the band go on sale Tuesday. Titled Use Your Illusion World Tour —1992 in Tokyo, the 90-minute videos documenting the band in concert in Tokyo last February will be sold separately as Tokyo I and Tokyo II.

No bracelet? You can skip the lineup for Guns, Roses

DAVID HOWELL
Journal Staff Writer

Edmonton

If you want to see Guns N’ Roses in Edmonton, get ready to charge your tickets by phone — unless you’re already wearing a coveted plastic wristband.

Tickets for the March 28 show at Northlands Coliseum go on sale at 9:30 a.m.

Saturday. It’s anticipated they will be 1993’s most highly prized rock concert tickets.

Lee Korber, assistant manager of Ticketmaster in Edmonton, says there’s little point in lining up in person unless you are among the 1,500 people who scooped up numbered wristbands that became available when sponsor K-97 radio announced the concert last weekend.

Wristbands, rarely used in Edmonton, are supposed to prevent the need for ticket buyers to camp out for nights before tickets go on sale.

“It heads that off at the pass,” said Korber. “And it creates less problems on the day of sale, because people know where they are in the line-up. There’s no jockeying for position.”

But she acknowledged the policy may create confusion for people unaware it’s in effect.

“They may be surprised if they’ve been living on another planet or this is their first exposure to wristbands.”

Signs will be posted at all Ticket-master locations warning fans who might consider camping out that wristband holders will be served first.

Each of 15 Ticketmaster outlets got 100 numbered plastic wristbands. They resemble the bracelets hospitals give patients.

One band was attached to each of the first 100 people who asked for them at each outlet, beginning last Saturday. Supplies ran out Monday.

Those who return Saturday morning to the same outlet they got their wristband from will be served, in order from 001 to 100, as long as the wristband is still intact.

Wristband wearers will be permitted to purchase up to the maximum eight tickets each, while tickets last, said Tammi Bryant, a spokesperson with the promoter, Perryscope Concert Productions.

Bryant said 16,500 tickets are available for Guns N' Roses. So in theory, the 1,500 people with wristbands could snap up 12,000.

But Korber said possession of a wristband is no guarantee of tickets, since up to half the available seats are expected to be sold by phone.

GUNS N' ROSES

Illusions aside, it’s a whole new, back-to-basics show from the world’s most notorious rockers

DAVID HOWELL
Journal Music Writer

Edmonton

Things easily spin out of control when you’re on the inside of the world’s most notorious and volatile rock band.

For bassist Duff Me Kagan, one of three remaining founding members of Guns N' Roses, often the only solution is to close his eyes and try to shut out the screaming images that constitute his life on the road and on the stage.

“It goes back to the philosophy of having no philosophy, of not thinking about it,’’ McKagan said Thursday from Winnipeg, the morning after the second Canadian date on the band's new Skin N’ 'Bones tour.

“You drink your protein shake, do a couple of deep knee bends, and you’re off.”

Otherwise, he said, if he did try to make sense of the confusion around him, it would get to be too much. A well-choreographed schedule of events would become a sickening blur of private jets and limousines, generic hotel rooms and groggy mornings after.

Take the Use Your Illusion world tour, which started in Wisconsin in May of 1991 and has included shows in Japan and Colombia and will see the band visit Tel Aviv in a couple of months.

The gigantic shows that made up the bulk of the tour have finally ended, and McKagan sounds like he’s just been released from prison after more than 18 months of breaking rocks in the hot sun.

“When we started (the Use Your Illusion tour) it was just the band, and then we decided we wanted to get the horns and the backup singers, and do something big.

“And we did it. We did all the stadiums. Every night it was between 80,000 and 145,000 people.”

But the incessant touring took a toll and often led to fiasco.

Early on, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin quit the band to pursue his solo career and the group scrambled to replace him with Gilby Clarke. There were riots in several cities, including Montreal, after Guns N’ Roses cancelled concerts in mid-performance.

Lead singer Axl Rose, who is known for his hair-trigger temper and delaying the start of concerts until he feels like going on, was involved in several ugly incidents.

In Missouri last November he was convicted of assault and property damage charges after an aborted concert escalated into a riot (Last week in Hamilton, Rose stormed off the stage after he was hit by an object thrown by a fan.)

“I don’t think we would have survived much longer doing all those big shows," McKagan says.

“It was too big, man. Check it out OK? Here’s the deal. We had 140 people working for us. Nineteen semis. Nineteen buses. Two 747s to take the (equipment), OK? And another plane for the band. It was too big It was every day.

“And when it comes down to it it’s myself, Axl and (lead guitarist) Slash who have to take care of all the financial (details) because we started the band and all that. So here we are being businessmen, and trying to get out and rock every night, and you know, you’ve still got faxes falling out of your pockets when you’re up on stage.

“It’s like, this ain't happening, man. It was cool for a while, but it just got too much. And you’ve got the backup singers and the horn players scream-ing that they want bigger rooms — it just goes on and on. So we’re back to square one, and it’s great.”

The Skin N' Bones tour that Guns N’ Roses will bring to Northlands Coliseum Sunday evening with opening act Brian May — the former lead guitarist for Queen — is the final leg of the Use Your Illusion tour.

But in reality, it’s a whole new rock show — a back-to-the-basics concert tour that started in late February and will hit 26 North American cities before the end of April.

Gone are the horn players, the backup singers and their demands for bigger rooms. Also shelved are the two-tiered stage, 270 metres wide, and most of the equipment that was piled on and around it.

“It was a cool thing to do,” says McKagan, “but we got it out of our system and we re back to what we are, which is a rock band. Now we’ve got an acoustic set in the middle, and a small stage, and we’re playing smaller places, arenas, and it's really cool. It’s just good to have that band feeling back and not like this obscene huge circus going around the world.

We’re coming back to prove what we are — Guns N’ Roses, a few guys on stage trying to play what they like to play.”

The new concert features songs from the group’s first EP and songs from the two Use Your Illusion albums that didn't get heard in the big shows. On stage this time around will be only the Gunners themselves: Rose, Slash, McKagan, Clarke, drummer Matt Sorum and keyboard player Dizzy Reed.

McKagan says the sheer size of the Use Your Illusion tour at its most grandiose was overwhelming. To cope with the pressure of performing to huge audiences, he'd try not to think about anything else than the songs he was playing.

“On this tour alone we played to over 25 million people. If you start thinking about it you’re going to start going nuts. ‘OK, we re going to go out tonight and play in front of 145.000 people.' If I were to let that bounce around in my head for a while, I’d lose it.

“We played Sydney (Australia) a month or so ago. We played the biggest gig ever played in the Southern Hemisphere. We were told that before the gig and you can’t think. You've got to put that out of your head. That’s pretty major, you know? And here we are, just a couple of lunkheads.”

Have things really changed for Guns N’ Roses since Use Your Illusion was transformed into Skin N' Bones?

Talking to McKagan, it doesn’t sound like the difference has been all that dramatic. When he spoke to The Journal at 4 p.m Winnipeg time, he had just woken up. In his hands was a fresh copy of a local newspaper.

“Axl (Rose) and I are on the cover, and it’s a really horrible picture of me,” McKagan says.

“I’ve got like 15 double chins. Really nice. But it was a good review and was a good show last night really good, although we went on a bit late.

“Which is par for the course, I guess.”

***

PREVIEW
Guns N’ Roses
When: Sunday night
Where: Coliseum
Tickets: Sold out

‘Gunners’ worth the wait for fans of raucous rock

Rose passes beer, pizza to front row

DAVID HOWELL and HELEN METELLA
Journal Entertainment Writers

Edmonton

Although they had to wait for well over an hour Sunday night, 17,000 raucous Guns N Roses fans finally got to go ape in the rock "jungle" of Northlands Coliseum as the biggest rock show of the season wheeled into town.

It took Guns N' Roses about 75 minutes to take the stage after warm-up act Brian May, formerly of the rock group Queen, had finished a one-hour opening set. But if anything, the delay — a standard concert tactic for Guns N' Roses — played into the band's hands beautifully.

For every extra minute the fans had to wait, the air had grown thicker with tension. By the time lead "Gunner" Axl Rose took the stage, a frenzied crowd was on their feet thrusting their fists into the air as Rose launched into the band's best-known song, Welcome to the Jungle.

"I wasn’t too impressed with them coming on late, but the music was great,” said Guns N' Roses fan Curtis Ruvuliak, 21. Keith Bayrak, 20, gave the show a five out of 10. “There was no big light show like Def Leppard."

At deadline there were none of the major incidents that have plagued some Guns N’ Roses concerts. Ambulance personnel reported several people sick to their stomachs, possibly from alcohol consumption, as well as a number of asthmatics who were overcome by cigarette smoke. One fan was wheeled into a medical room at Northlands after hitting his head in a fall.

Edmonton was the 18th city on the band's current 21-city North American Skin N' Bones tour — a back-to-basics rock show with all the backup singers, horns and lights shows of past Guns N Roses concerts. Yet it wasn't all "loud n’ proud." The band performed a well-received acoustic section during which an overstuffed couch was wheeled to the centre of the stage. In the middle of the set, four topless women dispensed drinks to the band — all in keeping with the band's image as the most notorious rockers on tour today.

At one point, Rose passed out beer and pizza to fans in the front row.

The “unplugged’' segment included the band's popular cover of the Bob Dylan classic, Knockin' on Heaven’s Door.

The show was hampered by a poor sound mix that rendered much of Rose's vocals inaudible, but the "Gunners" nonetheless put on their usual rock extravaganza.

Rose, wearing a Charles Manson T-shirt and his trademark shorts and a thick blue headband around his long red hair, worked the crowd like a hyperactive showman.

Mr Brownstone, a tale of heroin addiction, had the crowd singing along to the chorus.

The band also played their cover of Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die — unbearably loud — after which Rose took a break and let bassist Duff McKagan step to the microphone with a cover version of The Misfits' Attitude. It is anticipated to be on the band's much-awaited album of punk cover tunes.

May, former guitarist for the British group Queen, did a 65-minute set that seemed lost in Seventies nostalgia. May dipped into the Queen catalogue with his well-known rock anthem We Will Rock You that is now a standard at every hockey and sporting arena in the world. Other Queen chestnuts included Tie Your Mother Down.

The rest of May's set was drawn directly from his new solo album, Back to the Light, but like his old material, even that didn't sound relevant to 1993.

Guns N' Roses' popular lead guitarist Slash was decked out in a lumberjack shirt, torn jeans and runners —his usual grungy uniform.

The band also includes drummer Matt Sorum, guitarist Gilby Clarke and keyboardist Dizzy Reed.

The delay in the concert Sunday night was nothing new for Guns N' Roses.

On Jan. 13 of last year, fans in Dayton. Ohio waited until well after midnight for the band to start a concert. The temperamental Rose was having personal problems, Sorum said in a recent interview, describing the scene backstage as "a ... nightmare.” The concert's late start made national news, including coverage in USA Today and Rolling Stone magazine.

“What happens with Axl is, if he doesn’t feel good about playing the gig, he just doesn't... want to play,” Sorum said.

“It’s a weird thing to make people wait, but it’s almost as if he wants to put on the best show for the people. He'd rather not go out — that’s the only way I can explain it. That's what used to go on with him.”

SEARCH N’ SEIZURE

Rock band prompts heavy security

Police, scalpers out in force as Guns N’ Roses performs at Coliseum

STEPHEN ERWIN
Journal Staff Writer

Edmonton

Jeff Hunter paid $50 expecting to be spit on, insulted and stood up Sunday night.

And he thought he was getting a bargain.

‘‘This is going to be the best concert that ever hit Edmonton and some guys are paying like $200 a ticket," said Jackson, one of 17.000 hard-core rock fans at the Coliseum to catch an earful of Guns N’ Roses, a rock band with a reputation for abusing fans and walking off stage in the middle of a show.

“They’re the wickedest badasses in rock and roll and they don’t take crap from anybody ever," said Hunter, slapping down $30 at a concession booth for a T-shirt bearing the Guns N’ Roses logo — a skull with a blood-drenched rose in its mouth.

The band’s raunchy performances and the bad manners of lead singer Axl Rose, have proved to be a big hit with young rockers and the show’s $30 tickets were sold out weeks in advance.

Scalpers had a field day as fans scrambled around the Coliseum with cash in hand looking to buy their way into the building.

“This is the easiest money I ever made. All I’ve got to say is 'Eh, 200 bucks and you're on the floor or 100 bucks and you’re in the back,’ and they buy it," said one scalper, who called himself Mooch.

“I think I just might retire after this show.”

Legal vendors also did brisk business with the band’s followers.

“It’s unbelievable. We’ve sold about 2,000 shirts at this stand and they’re selling thousands and thousands more inside,” said concessionaire Roxanne Lorentz.

“These shirts are $30 each and 13-year-olds are buying five at time. Hey, kids with money, you’ve got to love it."

Some Guns N’ Roses performances have become violent and security was beefed up at the Coliseum. More than 140 security guards and at least 30 police officers were stationed throughout the building. Hundreds of fans were searched at the door and police arrested a least one man for selling drugs.

“They’re rebels. It’s all part of the show, they’re defiant and Axl doesn’t let anyone intimidate him. They also play awesome music,” said 16-year-old Jackson Williams, who was among hundreds of screaming teenagers crammed into the LRT hours before the concert.

“The best reason to come to a concert is because your parents don’t want you to."

But 23-year-old Kendra Showers brought her mom.

“I love Axl's singing, it's that simple. He’s got an amazing voice and they play great music," said Kendra's 54-year-old mother, Carol. “Some of my daughters thought it would be too rough a show for me, but the heck with that, I wanted to hear them.”