1993.04.01 - Portland Coliseum, Portland, USA

PORTLAND

GUNS N’ ROSES with special guest the Brian May Band, will perform as part of their “Skin and Bones” tour at 8:30 p.m., Thursday, April 1, at the Portland Memorial Coliseum. Tickets are now on sale at all G.I. Joe’s Ticketmaster locations for $24 reserved seating.

Skin ‘N’ Bones for Guns N’ Roses

Hartford Courant

Only two days into the latest Guns N’ Roses’ tour, guitarist Gilby Clarke knew he should be calling from some hotel or tour bus. Anywhere but from home in Los Angeles.

“Are you kidding, man?” he asked. “We love playing. It’s things like this that we can’t stand: sitting at home, when we’re a week into the tour. I mean, we were goin’, man.”

As fate would have it, a week’s worth of concerts were going, going, gone when they were abruptly canceled for reasons never officially explained.

But the tour is up an running again, making a stop tonight at the Portland Memorial Coliseum.

Ironically, the new show is not as complex as earlier tours that followed the two Use Your Illusion albums.

The current Skin ‘N’ Bones tour without the two backup singers, three horns and additional keyboardist that had made the band nearly as big as Chicago since Clarke joined it in December 1991.

“After doing that for a year and half, the band was going, ‘Let’s be a rock band again.’ We stripped everything down. We got rid of the whole background section. The set is like a club stage; there’s just one level and a back line,” Clarke said. “And it’s cool. It’s just down to us. And we’re playing songs that we’ve never, ever played before — a lot of songs off the Lies record and stuff off the Illusion albums that we’ve never played. It’s kind of like a harder, faster tour.”

But despite going back to basics, there were technical problems.

“It’s, like, wherever you were walking, you were not hearing anything. And Axl was just losing it. He just wasn’t hearing his vocals.” No less than rioting has occurred when impetuous lead singer W. Axl Rose has lost it in previous cities.

‘The band still is the same — it’s very unpredictable,” Clarke says. “It’s, like, one day everything’s going fine . . . and then it changes.”

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A brief history of Axl

Statesman Journal news service

Axl Rose, rock star archetype or symbol of the dysfunctional American family? Let’s take a look at a few red letter dates in the life of W. Axl Rose.

 Feb. 6,1962 - Bill Bailey, aka W. Axl Rose, enters the world with the first of many screams: "My mom’s pregnancy wasn’t a welcome thing.”

 1964 — Rose sees his stepfather beat his mother: "I figured that’s how you treat a woman.”

 1982 — Rose and guitarist Izzy Stradlin’ move to Los Angeles: “Welcome to the Jungle.”

 March 1985 — Guns and Roses plays its first show in Hollywood. Two people attend.

 August 1986 — Guns N’ Roses signed to Geffen Records.

 October 1989 — Guns N’ Roses open for their obvious mentors, the Rolling Stones, in Los Angeles. Fans refrain from rioting.

 April 1990 — Rose marries Erin Everiy, daughter of '60s vocalist Don Everiy. They separated less than 48 hours later.

 August 1990 — Rose arrested for hitting a female neighbor over the head with a bottle of wine.

 October 1990 — Rose’s marriage to Everly annulled: "I used to love her, but I had to kill her....”

 February 1991 — Rose begins regression therapy. Late shows are standard.

 July 2, 1991 — Infamous St. Louis show in which Axl stops show to confiscate a camera from a fan. Fans riot. $200,000 in damages to the hall, 60 people injured, 16 arrested.

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Fast Facts

Guns N’ Roses, Brian May Band
When: 8:30 tonight
Where: Portland Memorial Coliseum, 1401 N Wheeler.
Admission: $24 at the door. Information: 248-4496.

Members of Guns N' Roses need to stop, catch their breath

By J. Michael Stockman
The Statesman Journal

It’s been called the most dangerous band in the world.

After the sold-out performance at Portland’s Memorial Coliseum, one might wonder just how dangerous Guns N’ Roses can be.

By the end of the two-plus-hour show Thursday night, band members looked tired on the video screens.

“It’s no longer total decadence. The older you get, the harder it is to get out of bed in the morning,” drummer Matt Sorum has said of the band’s current attitude.

His comment is a fitting description of the show. Opening with It's So Easy and Mr. Brownstone, vocalist Axl Rose dashed across the bare, multi-level stage, his Lon Chaney voice in prime form. It appeared that they were ready to play for keeps. By mid-set, that energy level was obviously lagging.

Eight songs into the show, they slowed the mood down with a six-song acoustic set. Lounging on a sofa, they created a realistically casual setting as they cracked jokes between songs. They may have been catching their breath, but the expected energy boost never materialized.

A lengthy piano solo by Rose, the inevitable drum solo, and a dying elephant guitar solo dominated the final part of the show.

Most dangerous band? Perhaps most exhausted band is a more apt title.

Ex-Queen guitarist Brian May opened the show with his distinctive guitar tones. Rebuilding after the tragic death of Queen vocalist Freddie Mercury, May turned in a brief set of songs from his solo album, leavened with a few Queen tunes.