1993.07.16 - Estadio River Plate, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Guns ’N’ Roses escape charges in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES (AP) - Members of the U.S. rock group Guns 'N' Roses were charged in Argentina with cocaine-possession and indecent exposure Friday but the charges were dropped an hour before they were to perform,

A former state-intelligence agency officer, Juan Imbesi, filed the charges, saying band members bought 50 grams of cocaine from drug dealers in their hotel.

Federal Judge Nerio Bonifatti ordered the band's hotel rooms searched for drugs but nothing was found, radio station Rivadavia reported.

Imbesi also accused the group's guitarist, Slash, of indecent exposure, saying he posed nude Thursday in front of a 12th-floor hotel window in view of hundreds of teenaged fans in the street below.

The judge had Slash agree in writing not to expose himself, Rivadavia said.

The group later performed before some 70,000 people at River Plate Stadium.

Craig Duswalt wrote:Before the first of the two shows, we all hung out in our hotel rooms, slowly getting ready. About 70,000 fans were already in the stadium, anticipating the band’s arrival. Axl was with Steve, getting his daily adjustment.

At approximately 5 p.m., a group of about fifty police officers from the city’s narcotics division descended on the hotel. They were looking for a large amount of cocaine, which had allegedly been stashed in one of the band member’s rooms.

They forced their way onto our secure floor and were met by our security team and Doug.

I heard on my walkie-talkie that something was going down, and it didn’t sound good. I came out of my hotel room, and there, by the elevators, were a ton of armed policemen talking to Doug and a few others.

I took position in front of Axl’s door. At that point he had no idea what was going on. He was eating dinner inside his room, while Steve was taping his ankles for the show.

The chief of police was demanding to see Axl’s room. But none of us were telling him which room was Axl’s. That was until the guns came out.

Now we were singing like birds. Not really, but this was not funny anymore, this was very serious. Real-life serious.

But before they went in any of the rooms, Doug did something very smart. He negotiated with them that we have an American representative go in the rooms with their team of policemen while the rooms were searched. We were all afraid of drugs being planted in our rooms.

I was prepared. While we waited for the American representative, I ran back into my room and called my mom and dad. From the hotel phone, which cost a small fortune. But I didn’t care—I seriously thought my freedom was on the line.

I knew that they would freak out, but it was better than the alternative—having to fly to South America to visit me in prison. I told them what was happening, and that if they didn’t hear back from me within the next two hours, I was probably being taken to jail somewhere in Buenos Aires.

I’m a parent now, and I pray I never get that call from any of my kids. My parents were freaking out, but I told them to calm down, and for them to call the police in New York, and the New York press if I didn’t call them back in two hours.

I hung up the phone and went back in the hallway.

Eventually the American representative showed up, and the chief of police and his posse started searching the rooms.

Of course, they wanted to start with Axl’s room. And because we now had an American representative, we showed them which room was Axl’s.

At the same time, down the hall they were searching Robert’s room, and they found some of Axl’s bath salts in one of his suitcases. [...]

Robert, standing in the hallway dressed only in a bath towel, was now being questioned by police, and he tried to explain to them that they were only bath salts.

They arrived at Axl’s hotel room door, and the chief of police knocked. At this point Steve had now heard what was going on in the hallway through his walkie-talkie, so Axl knew as well.

But Steve and Axl didn’t answer the door.

“Does anyone have a key?” the chief of police asked.

Damn, I thought to myself. What do I do now, I do have a key.

I didn’t say a thing.

The chief of police yelled through the door.

“Open the door, immediately, or there will be trouble.”

There was lots of banter back and forth, but Steve eventually opened the door. The chief of police, the American representative, and about three policemen entered Axl’s room. I entered as well, along with Doug. Axl was calmly eating dinner. He allowed them to go through his stuff. He had nothing to hide.

However, there was one problem. The bath salts were also in Axl’s room, and I was sure this would give them an excuse to detain him for a few hours.

Then Robert entered the room in his towel, escorted by a policeman; they wanted to test the bath salts.

At the same time, one of the policemen in Axl’s bedroom thought he hit the jackpot when he came across about five clear baggies full of more bath salts. More bags of "cocaine," according to the chief of police.

We all tried to explain, very carefully, that they were bags of bath salts.

I forget how they did it, but somehow they ran tests, ran more tests, and finally determined that we were telling the truth.

No cocaine.

After all that, the chief of police and his team were about to leave Axl’s room, when the chief turned to Axl and asked for his autograph.

Happened all the time. Give Axl, or members of the band, crap for a few hours, accuse them of something illegal, threaten them, and once nothing is found instantly turn into best friends and expect an autograph.

Incredible.

Axl signed his autograph. Good for him!

All I could think of at that point was, Damn, they didn’t search my room yet, and now they’re going to be pissed.

They came into my room and started searching. Flipping over the mattresses, dumping all my suitcases all over the room, they were determined to find something, anything. All the time though, I watched closely, with my new best friend, the American representative, to see if anyone got any ideas of planting drugs. It was so stressful.

They found nothing.

In two hours they had searched all our rooms and nothing was found.

Axl had Doug and I set up an impromptu press conference and within minutes we had a meeting room, and a room full of reporters, and television crews.

Axl released a live statement of what had just occurred, adding that no drugs were found in any of our rooms. It was fed live to all local television stations.

Only an hour and a half later, Guns N’ Roses hit the stage and put on another amazing show.

We found out later that while they were checking our hotel rooms, drug squad officers arrived at the stadium and searched through the band’s equipment and instruments as well.

The next night was the last show of the tour. No drug searches, no riots, no one killed. Just one last great show.

And it was now time to say good-bye, until the next tour...

But there was no next tour. Not with this group of guys. No one knew it at the time, but July 17,1993, would be the last time that this great lineup would play together as members of Guns N’ Roses.

THE SHOW

River was a party

More than 100,000 souls burned to the sound of the music of Guns N' Roses in the final dates of the Use Your Illusion tour. The Núñez stadium was a cauldron that never lowered its temperature during the two-hour show each night. In spite of the raids and the provocations, Axl and Slash's band proved that when they step on stage, delivering to their audience is the only important thing.

"What, here, too?", asked a journalist coming from the Hyatt, as he quickly entered the River's press room to cover the concert. Los Guarros were still on stage and the resigned look from the rest of us was a clear answer. As at the hotel, a search for drugs took place on the stage, in the dressing rooms and in some rooms on the second floor of the stadium. In the arena, meanwhile, everyone was unaware of the matter. Expectations for the Guns' first show of their second visit were growing and the incident was, thankfully, just one more anecdote in the Californians' travel diary.

The delirium begins

At 8.50 p.m., the wait was over. The band, which had arrived at River a few minutes earlier after being delayed by the police hassle, was about to play in front of their loyal fans. The stadium lights went out, George Harrison's song Stuck In The Middle With You started to play through the speakers and the unprepared fans rushed to get a good spot to see the show. The screams were non-stop, thousands of lit lighters formed a real mattress of fire and Axl's figure appeared on the stage, causing an explosion.

Without making any reference to the bad moment they had experienced a while before, the guys, who one by one took their place on stage, started with It's So Easy. By then the magic and the Gunner energy had taken hold of the 55,000 souls that populated the field and the stands.

Before the initial shock had worn off, the demolishing Mr. Brownstone and Live And Let Die took the breath away from the crowd and the suffering sound speakers. By then Slash switched his Les Paul for his double fretboard guitar (which he commanded throughout the evening like a true master), purple and blue lights created an intimate atmosphere in the slow parts of the McCartney cover and Axl was as if crucified, holding the microphone stand with his hands stretched upwards. A snapshot for a postcard...

The rock of the ants

From the top of the stalls the spectacle was priceless. A sea of heads moved across the turf, as if a giant boot had stepped on an anthill. On the fence in front of the stage, boys and girls who had broken down or fainted from the heat and the crush were being carried by security and the Red Cross. Meanwhile Axl, looking at the crowd, asked in his native language, "Do you know where you are?", to reply a little later amidst an inferno of screams, "You're in the jungle!!!" And, as expected, the first chords of Welcome To The Jungle soon started to pour out of the curly-haired guitarist's instrument. But halfway through the song, the unexpected happened. A power outage caused the set to be halted for a couple of minutes, for which Axl apologized. Cut or no cut, the bonfire didn’t lower its temperature one degree and the party continued with Attitude and Duff taking over the microphone. The bassist, with a renewed hairstyle, his classic open-legged posture and the instrument held at his waist - like Sid Vicious-, didn't get tired of interacting with the audience during the whole night (he even picked up the occasional crowd waving).

The acoustic set

One of the most anticipated moments of the concert was the advertised acoustic set. As soon as Double Talkin' Jive finished playing, the stage crew set up in a few seconds a kind of living room on the front of the stage, where the set would take place. They chose to kick off the set with the Stones cover, Dead Flowers. Then followed You Ain't The First, You're Crazy, and Used To Love Her, a song in which Tím Doyle - Matt Sorum's tech - came in dressed as a pizza delivery boy. He ended up playing the drums after Guns had tossed the two large pizza slices to the audience. The band achieved a truly homey atmosphere in that part of the set, which was followed by Patience - sung by everyone and with the full engines turned on again -, an instrumental version of Lennon's Imagine by Slash and Gilby, Knocking On Heaven's Door (by Dylan), Dust In The Wind (a song by Todd Rudgrenn (song by Todd Rudgrer sung by Axl alone at the piano) and November Rain (while the video screens fused the band with images of rain and thick clouds). Impressive...

On the attack

If the acoustic set became the most exciting part of the night, what would come in the last part of the show was the most energetic. The final onslaught began with Axl - guitar in hand- and Dead Horse. The singer introduced the band and then Matt Sorum's drumheads shook River's walls in a forceful solo. The ex-Cult man sweated his guts out, ending up half naked, and the crowd didn't hesitate to give him a loud and warm applause as the powerful intro of You Could Be Mine made the stands explode once again. The last instrumental section came with Slash's solo which, as last year, included a Gunner version of the theme from the movie The Godfather. Despite the Buenos Aires cold, the guitarist also ended up bare-chested, killing it with the sound of his instrument. With Sweet Child O' Mine the guys threatened to leave, but as expected, the encores came soon after. Don't Cry, Paradise City, the usual greetings and Axl throwing a mic to the audience, put the finishing touch to an evening in which the crowd, once again, had to save words like violence or starting trouble for a better opportunity. River was a party... and some regret it.

Martin Gimeno

*

THE OPENERS

Warming up the atmosphere

SCHANZENBACH
THE GUARD OF FIRE
THE GUARROS

Historically, in our country, the tradition of having opening bands at the concerts of foreign groups ends up being a lottery. The obvious idea is to make the wait for a show - which in this case started at 8 p.m., not too late - more pleasant. But there were people who had been waiting to see Guns N' Roses since Wednesday! And they weren't too keen to hear anything other than Axl, Slash and the rest of the band. Much less if the sound coming out of the equipment was as bad as the one the three bands were treated to.

The first band was Schanzenbach, who took the stage at River Stadium on Friday at 5:30 p.m., as scheduled. The trio formed by Alejandro Schanzenbach on bass and vocals, Marcelo Ferraro on guitar and backing vocals and Carlos Franqueira on drums had the difficult task of kicking off the show in front of the sparse audience that had entered the stadium by that time. In that mixture of hard rock, tango and rhythm and blues that characterizes them, they played five songs from their debut album, Cuatro Caras, plus a "Rodríguez" version of Sábado a la noche, the Morís classic. The problem was that the audience didn't give them much of a chance -despite being a good band- and they ended their set without much applause. La Guardia del Fuego sounded compact and tight. In the songs they did from their debut album Primera Vista, you can tell they have a lot of gigs under their belts. The people paid attention to that sound with roots in the 70's and even acknowledged with a big applause the song El amor es más fuerte, which the guitarist Ulises Butrón played for the film Tango Feroz. They were the only ones who, when their set was over, returned to the stage to play their own version of Pescado Rabioso's classic, El Monstero de la Laguna, as an encore.

After a long intermission, at 7.30 p.m. Los Guarros came up and finished warming up the audience that, by that time, almost filled the stadium, shouting "Buenas noches, pecadores" (Good night, sinners). Although the sound was still terrible (the vocals were practically indistinguishable), the band played old songs and some from their latest album Veneno. They paid tribute to our pioneer musicians with El tren de las 16 by Pappo and Bienvenidos al tren by Sui Generis; and to legends such as Jimi Hendrix (the song was Crosstown Traffic), and Deep Purple, in a powerful solo by Gitano Herrera (presented by the singer as "the best guitarist in the country"). Three quarters of an hour later, the audience was ready to get in the jungle. Job done.

Ariel Martínez

***

COOL OLD FOLKS

The presence of parents in the stadium was one of the characteristics of this second visit of Guns N' Roses. Fortunately, the yellow press didn't focus too much on the (non-existent) danger that a concert by the band entailed, and that was reflected in the audience. Many mothers -and fathers, of course- religiously bought their tickets and stood on the grass or in the seats trying to feel what the kids felt.

Standing in the crowd, some even felt like jumping up and down and screaming for Axl or Slash. We saw it, no doubt about it. Susana (39) went with her daughter Miriam (15). This mother's case is special because she didn't go with her daughter out of fear, but because she likes rock. "I already went to last year's show and to the Metallica show, and this one was great, amazing. I was impressed by the large crowd and the enthusiasm of the kids", she said (what a great lady). Those who probably forbade their children to attend the concert in December last year, this time joined in and accompanied them.

***

YOUR OPINION

After the show, everyone agreed that it was a real blast. Axl, Slash, Duff, Gilby, Matt and Dizzy proved to be a team able to make the kids, and even some parents, happy.

Fearful mother

A sign of these two concerts was the presence of parents in the stadium. There were really many, and among them Liliana (41), a mother who admitted going "with a lot of fear". But I got over it," she admitted, "and it was very good. What did I like the most? Axl, Slash... the hairy one, and I loved the drummer". Next to her was her daughter, Marianela (15). She, like so many others, was blown away by Axelito and was on the verge of crying during November Rain.

"Better than last year"

Many concert-goers, encouraged by our presence, were eager to give their opinion on what they had experienced during the last hours, like Carina (17) and Maximiliano (16). For Carina, "it was better than last year, with much better sound". She also admired the impressive moments when the dark-skinned Slash used the strings of his many guitars. As for Maxi, it was the first time he had seen them and he described the show as "spectacular". But he also had a lot of praise for the cartoon that was projected on the giant screens when it was all over.

A party group

Nothing better than going to a party with a bunch of friends. Alejandra (19), Pablo (23), Lorena (16) and Geraldine (16) made up a huge group of friends who offered themselves for a photo. They all commented that this year's concert was better than last year, that the screens were excellent and that Slash is the best. Among their favorite songs were You Could Be Mine and Mr. Brownstone, of which Lorena swore she knew the lyrics by heart. The dissatisfied one was Geraldine: "I didn't like the stage and the backing vocals were missing".

Experts on the subject

On the way out, we met Alejandro (21) and Rubén (22), both convinced that they had seen a show that left them satisfied. Alejandro liked it better than the previous ones; "it was more relaxed", he said. And Rubén, almost like a music critic, declared: "They showed up more solid as a band, they played music for enjoyment".

Roses for Slash

Paula's (18) comment was more or less a common denominator of the audience. "It was great, spectacular. I was impressed by the acoustic part, everything new that they added. This time around it was more of a concert than a show. Besides, Slash's playing is amazing". On the other hand, the boys (who didn't give us their names), were not very happy with Guns N' Roses, although we don't know if they were at the show or not.