2010.01.27 - Centre Ball, Montreal, QC, Canada

Is Montreal ready to welcome Guns N Roses back to the jungle?

Tour announcement brings back memories of 1992

By Justin Go

"Thank you, your money will be refunded."

These were the parting words from Axl Rose to a crowd of 53,000 Guns N' Roses fans at Montreal's Olympic Stadium on August 8, 1992, delivered right before leaving the stage.

As the evening's co-headliners, Metallica had been forced to cut their performance short after singer James Hetfield was rushed to a hospital following a pyrotechnics accident; the crowd had been hoping that Guns N' Roses would salvage the night. With a set cut short at 55 minutes, Rose's performance didn't cut it.

Thousands of angry fans proceeded to go on a rampage, setting fires and breaking windows and concession stands in the stadium, eventually spilling out onto streets. It took 300 riot police to keep the violence contained. At the end of the night, 12 people were arrested and 20, including three police officers, were sent to the hospital. The total damage to Olympic Stadium was estimated at $300,000.

Reflecting on it later in an interview with MTV, Rose was far from apologetic. "There were technical difficulties in Montreal, and we had to leave and the crowd was very upset about that," he explained. "They didn't really take the time to think about what went on for us. Now that's kinda hard to take, and I don't feel responsible for that."

Maybe the fans should've seen it coming. A year earlier, Rose had been accused of instigating a riot in St. Louis, Mo., after he ended the concert early due to being unimpressed with the venue's security. It took third-degree burns for Metallica to cut their Montreal show short, but all it took for Rose to decide he'd had enough was the Big O's PA system. (Fan speculation ranges from Rose having vocal problems to his personal fortune teller advising him earlier to avoid all things with the letter "m.") And while Metallica made good on their promise to finish the concert at a later date, there would be no refund from Rose, nor would he play the city again.

That's all set to change after this week's announcement that Guns N' Roses will tour 13 cities in Canada next year, with the Bell Centre in Montreal scheduled for Jan. 27.

"I've been waiting for this a long, long time," says an elated Laurent Lépine. Now 36, Lépine was a teenager when he saw Guns N' Roses on that infamous night. Lépine felt so strongly about it that he started an online petition and MySpace page called GNR Fans Around the World, trying to rally together like-minded devotees to the cause.

"They came to Quebec City in 2006, but that's not the same. We want to see them here."

Philippe Renaud, music critic for La Presse, is a bit more skeptical about the event. "I doubt it's going to be a good show," he says, siding with the many detractors who believe Guns N' Roses in its current incarnation - without co-founding guitarist, Slash - isn't the real thing. "But Axl Rose will make sure to be there. He's getting old, and he needs the money."

And it shouldn't be surprising if, this time around, there's some resentment among those who were treated to half a concert and then put in harm's way.

"It was terrible and I cried all the way home," Lépine admits, adding that his contribution to the mayhem involved throwing a hot dog stand down the stairs of Olympic Stadium. "I watched the news all night, I couldn't sleep. ‘But it's rock 'n' roll,' I thought."

That's a sentiment amplified by Metal Mike, host of the radio program The Metal File on Montreal's CHOM-FM.

"It was the most fun rock 'n' roll night ever!" he says. "It was the best summer to be a teenager. I was 17, and we had the Habs riot and Guns riot within a few months of each other!"

Metal Mike also claims that many who attended the concert wear the experience as a badge of honour. "It was just a bunch of metalheads running around breaking things. We knew it was the last hurrah for metal," he says. With this new date, he's wary of bandwagon jumpers. "All of a sudden every Montrealer acts as if they were there."

Rose's most recent Canadian fanbase altercation came in 2002. After years of hiding, he honoured Vancouver as the city to open the Guns N' Roses comeback tour, and then proceeded not to show up. But even then, there was something affirming in the singer's disrespect of his fans. "When I saw the Vancouver stories about a riot, I knew Guns N' Roses were back," Metal Mike recalls.

Calls to the Montreal police could not confirm if there would be more security than usual for the event. But it is worth noting that while every other show on the upcoming Canadian tour is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., the Bell Centre lists a start time of 6:45 p.m.

Ever the true believer, Lépine, who named his youngest of four children Axl in honour of his musical hero, believes the early start time might mean Rose and company will play an extended show to make up for the last one. And while he admits apologies aren't in the front man's nature, he's convinced a solid performance will clear the air.

"Twenty years after, if he gives a good show and kicks ass, it will be fine," Lépine says. "But I'll believe it when they're here. You never know if he cancels," he says, only half-joking.

Guns N' Roses: Appetite for redemption

Axl Rose brings his reformed Guns N’ Roses back to Montreal on Wednesday, Jan. 27 for the first time since his infamous 1992 Big O show that left rioting and looting in its wake

By Mark Lepage, Special to The Gazette

MONTREAL – Do you know where you are?!?!

You are in early 2010. Ready for the longest-delayed makeup gig in rock.

Guns N’ Roses have backstory everywhere, but they have a ... special history in Montreal. Plenty of Guns, no Roses. But take the long view: the Big O events of August 1992 were presaged years earlier, and confirmed every step of the way, with every release, every tour, every spittle-flecked pronouncement from singer, leader, Last Man Standing and GNR President for Life W. Axl Rose.

Hey, you knew what he was like when you married him.

Flashback: You are in the Verdun Auditorium in 1987, where headliners the Cult relax backstage while shirtless, sweat-gleaming hellions race from end to end of the stage. Slash races one way, brandishing a Les Paul like a weapon while Rose shrieks “They’re out ta get me!!” into the echobox of a venue. Sweet Child O’ Mine is still just an evil twinkle in the eye of the mass audience, but these unknown miscreants are not your parents’ metalheads. The review is somewhere in cyberspace, something on the order of “this band will be huge if they survive.”

That night, Guns N’ Roses announced the arrival of hard-rock modernism in Montreal, and the end of metal romanticism. No more dragons, demons and damsels. The Hollywood street rats injected the real – a seedy punk docu-dramedy detailing the victimization of the young by urban predators, drugs, violence, streetwalking succubi and the city itself – screeched with schadenfreude glee by a strawberry-blonde hayseed-turned-antihero. “Watch it bring you to your knees / I wanna watch you bleed!”

Who was this guy? He had a voice like a cobra that seemed to coil within it every warped, furtive, livid sentiment. Here, we would have the herald of the new heartland dysfunction, announcing the revenge of the children. And with Appetite for Destruction, we had a glimpse at justification for his future megalomania. Rose was a mini rock revolutionary, as singular in his way as Cobain was in his. In all the ugly, overamped realism, Rose was the FX.

Of course, with the real came the volatile. Rose may have been the latest offender to believe there was no-such-thing-as-bad-publicity, but as the years unfolded, he proved not to be acting, but acting out. These were genuine psycho-emotional wounds, and the press was eager to give them ink.

Endearingly, we still had the capacity for shock and outrage in 1988 when One In A Million delivered a catalogue of right-wing resentments, not only against cops but “immigrants,” “faggots” and “niggers.” Youtube is scattered with videos of an agitated Rose delivering onstage diatribes against the hustlers and pervs who abused him as a runaway, and he would frame the song as a personal plaint rather than manifesto ... which altered not at all the fact that he was enacting a classic victim-on-victim dogfight to the secret glee of the true oppressors.

And before Marilyn Manson, there was the real one, Charles, who finally landed that “record deal” in a sense when Rose covered his song Look At Your Game, Girl on The Spaghetti Incident in 1993.

And so, instead of a saviour rising from the streets, an avenger – or rather, a scourge. In the zany early ’90s, Rose was the perceived rival/opposite of Kurt Cobain, a conflict spurred in no small measure by the Widder Cobain, Courtney Love. In actuality, his opposite was Bono. One here to redeem, one with a heart full of hate intent on making you feel his pain.

And you would.

Do you know where you are?!?!

Flashback: You are in the Big O on August 8, 1992, 53,000 of you, anticipating a seven-hour riffathon. And seven hours you would get.

At the time, a friendly Slash had told The Gazette that neither medical issues – Rose had a hole in a vocal cord – nor the band’s “typhoon of chaos” could derail GNR’s first-ever headline gig here.

“It’s very much like that. It’s great for variety, hunh?” he’d laughed.

Boom! Metallica’s James Hetfield is headed to hospital with second-and-third-degree burns to his hands and face after a pyrotechnics misfire. And speaking of misfires …

Rose and Guns N’ Roses take the stage 135 minutes later, far too long after the abbreviated Metallica set. Rose is visibly disturbed, radiating his disorder vibe. The following day’s review ran:

Rose seemed agitated after the first few songs of the set, perhaps at a crowd that received the music enthusiastically but did not go ballistic.

Whatever the reasons, Rose followed a doper’s blues version of Bad Obsession with a speech about how the band had honed its act on a seven-week tour of Europe just to have it all fall apart last night.

“In case anybody here is interested,” Rose said, “this will be our last show for a long time.”

Cue the self-destruction as fans bonfire their own souvenir T-shirts, and the real destruction that follows, spilling into the cavernous corridors and out into the east end streets:

They overturned garbage containers, smashed concession stands, tables and a car in a glass display case.

One young girl was injured when she was slammed through a glass display case by the departing crowd. She was later taken away on a stretcher.

About 200 security guards cordoned off the crowd, extinguishing flames, forming a line and shepherding the fans toward the exits.

Olympic Stadium’s screens flashed the message: “The show is cancelled. Please check the media for news.”

The trouble spilled out on to the street where midnight ramblers overturned a police cruiser, lit trash can fires, smashed car windshields and slashed tires.

A phalanx of riot-equipped police took up positions on Pierre de Coubertin St. on the south side of the stadium.

In the post-show recriminations, it was important to remember, as I wrote at the time, that “Some (most of whom were not there) saw scary TV news footage of kids throwing rocks and jousting with police, heard tales of teens trashing concession stands and stealing Expos caps. Others saw a reaffirmation, albeit a twisted one, of the very power that makes rock ’n’ roll music our truest, realest art form.”

Mainly, after the ugliness, lack of apology and $400,000 in Big O damage, the OIB banned the group for life.

Scant weeks later, U2 is in the Big O, four songs into the set. “What time is it?” Bono asks the crowd. “We gotta go …” The crowd gets it – haha, a GNR reference. And as the band opens into One, Bono head-shakingly mutters “Axl …” So there’s another twist in their “relationship”: Bono as dad, ruefully watching the angry teen blow up his life.

And then – where does the time go? 14 Years that are gone forever / and I’ll never have again. Who knew that in the GNR lexicon, that wasn’t just a song but a time frame? Fourteen-odd years between Use Your Illusion and Chinese Democracy. In a preface to its release, I noted the cultural touchstones we had welcomed in that span: Pentium processors, MacBook, iPod, Blackberry, Segway, Viagra, Google, Yahoo, Youtube – hell, the Internet.

But perhaps to his credit, Rose once again needed to make an album that was bigger than hard rock or genre itself. When he could have made Welcome Back, Jungle in two years and wallpapered every Hollywood whorehouse with Benjamin Franklins, he went through half a lifetime, zillions of studio dollars, half that in whiz-bang guitarists and a dozen false release dates to release an album that bears forth a few great songs (Better, IRS) and the unavoidable bombast of something so delayed and overcooked it had to be Who’s Next Calling The Stairway to justify the wait and hype.

And to his discredit, he cannot simply have been motivated by some sublime Joycean artistic fire. The thing he needed the album to be bigger than was his ego.

It’s been awhile since the real Rose had to smell spicy buffalo wings in the air as he took the stage. But here we are in Times Square, in BB King’s Blues Club, anticipating November Rain in mid-January.

Why not ease into Wednesday’s real GNR gig with a little artifice? Here in BB King’s supper-club venue, cover bands are a staple: Black Dog, Tramps Like Us, Bobby and the Jets … Tonight, featuring a fat Slash and a doughy rest of the band, November Rain pays tribute to GNR.

“Good evening New York City. Hey, we’re New York City boys arselves” says not-Axl, using a southern accent for some secret tribute-band reason. And it soon becomes apparent which members of a rock tour they resemble: they look like roadies.

Their version of Mr. Brownstone is respectable. Paradise City is lugubrious and missing the high, frenzied edge. During Live and Let Die, some guy at the bar asks me if they’re lip-synching.

But then, after Don’t Cry, something remarkable. November Rain is cranking through the incred-ugly riff of Welcome to the Jungle to a solid response when a girl’s friends somehow compel her onstage. Awkward and in braces, she’s up there with no moves whatsoever, beaming with a tremulous confusion of over-adrenalin and please-let-me-hide. She waves her arms nerdishly behind fat Slash in a parody of rock ’n’ roll ecstacy … but then begins to open to the moment, to feel her place on the stage, to enjoy, and suddenly we have a cover-band revelation.

All the glamour and pretense dissolve as a band of non-Guns crunch through their long-lapsed dream of stardom while a girl has her gawky epiphany onstage, stripping away the veneer of cool to reveal the need and desire that power the rock ’n’ roll lust-dream. It may be a beautiful accident. But this is no illusion. These Xeroxes are delivering the real thing.

Back on Earth, what will Rose do? Some fans from their last Montreal headline gig have their own teenage kids (and second mortgages) now. What they never had was their GNR moment. Reviews of this latest leg of the real GNR tour, which opened in Winnipeg, have been positive. A thorough, expansive, professional performance, ending with explosions and Rose’s “We love you.” Equal parts Guns, and Roses. And 17 years after the interruption, Montreal deserves at least that.

Guns N’ Roses, with opening acts Danko Jones and Sebastian Bach, perform Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010 at Montreal's Bell Centre. Tickets are $49.50 to $84.50 (plus service charges) and are available via geg.ca or by calling 514-790-1245.

Guns N' Roses rock Montreal fans

By Mark Lepage, The Gazette

MONTREAL - There’s waiting, and then there’s waiting.

There’s a teenage lifetime of dashed expectations, a lot of Patience, and an eventual 10:30 start time attending some kind of payment on an old debt.

And there’s Axl Rose, so toss the script aside and let’s see what flag we’re flying when we take ‘er home.

Guns N’ Roses finally made it back to Montreal, 17 years after a Big O riot, minus all other original members save the singer. But there would be no angry recriminations, or formal addressing of a past event that many in the crowd only heard about from their tattoed parents or older siblings. There would be a huge three-guitar arena show for just under 12,000, with enough happy pyro for a Vegas New Year’s Eve, a run through the hard rock touchstones from a 28-million-selling debut album, and the professionalism and honest rock’n’roll bonhomie we’ve come to expect from Axl Rose…

But the surprises would mark this as something else, something… unexpected: witty musical nods to Elton John, Henry Mancini and the Immigrant Song, a self-deprecating story about being winded, a reference to Kid Rock, sly references to 17 years ago, a masterfully-avoided apology, a song called Sorry, and 2 ½ hours of what can only be described as a likeable Axl Rose earning a barely-qualified win in the Bell Centre.

Let’s get to the explosions.

They came early, late and often. Chinese Democracy opened with a guitarist (either DJ Ashba or Richard Fortus) riffing atop the drum/keyboard riser, Axl running out in pin-striped shirt, jeans and fedora as the pyro went off. The stuttering guitar of Welcome to the Jungle brought the crowd up, Rose striking his fire-eater pose with

the mic. It’s So Easy brought more kabooms, bassist Tommy Stinson taking backing vocals. Still, there was a sense of much to live up to, or live down.

After Mr. Brownstone, Axl said “I think I recognize some of you… yeah, that’s right. That’s right.”

It might be reading too much into the ballad that followed – Sorry – but who can blame us?

During Live and Let Die, you noticed he was beefier (but who isn’t?).

During Street of Dreams, his Bruce-anthem move, you could finally confirm that either the screech-yowl had lost some puissance in the lower register, or the mic wasn’t picking it up. I’ll actually lean toward the latter, because for all Axl’s mini-exits during guitar solos (three of ‘em, including Ron Bumblefoot Thal’s speedfingers Pink Panther) for quick offstage shirt-changes (about six of ‘em), his energy never flagged.

And incredibly, neither did his humour. You know what’s funny? Those snake-hipped moves and stomps seemed fun rather than angry now.

You know what else is funny? The story Axl told about being chased by cops and mistaken for Kid Rock while trying to get into an MTV Awards ceremony.

At about this point, the pacing seemed off, as Rose began trimming songs from the set list – a good half dozen of them by my sheet.

The late start? Some warning about the Metro closing at 1 a.m.? No idea, but that set list was flipped around. The burbling If the World was a brave choice in this arena/hard rock context, but then, that was the point of all this band-recreation and endless recording, wasn’t it?

Better was as remarkable live as on record, revealing Stinson to be the absolute anchor of this band of whiz-bang guitarists. Rose keyed on him, drawing energy or balance from the former Replacements member.

You Could Be Mine brought the first crowd explosion, and justly so.

Sweet Child O’ Mine brought the next. And the friendly, lighthearted demeanour proved to be genuine. When he segued from an oblique reference to a ridiculous press rumour about top hats being banned at GNR shows into “You fuckers just like to tear shit up, doncha? That’s okay, I get that way myself sometimes,” you realized he had just kinda referred to the Big O while somehow bonding with the crowd and blaming no one – including, especially himself. And you were in the presence of stagecraft brilliance.

Naturally, he had to almost blow it. After the whistlin’ Patience, after Out Ta Get Me (kablammo!) and Night Train, a ballad-heavy encore had some fans heading for the exits.

When they finally pulled into Paradise City terminus at 1 a.m. (!), all those fans came streaming back to see Axl draping himself in a Fleur-de-Lis flag to the biggest roar of the night, tossing a whistle into the crowd, and kicking and roaring and beaming his way to the front of the stage. The fans had their moment, Axl had his, and it had only taken 17 years and 2 ½ hours.

Guns N’ Roses Live In Montreal

Come inside for a review of Axl and co’s performance in Quebec, Canada on January 27.

Guns N’ Roses/Sebastian Bach/Danko Jones
Montreal Bell Centre

By Clay Marshall

“All I’ve got is precious time,” Axl Rose tellingly proclaims in tonight’s opening track, the title song of Chinese Democracy. After all, why else would he seem to revel in keeping fans waiting, whether for his infamously late on stage arrivals, an album of mythical proportions that was nearly two decades in the making, or – perhaps most curiously – the overdue kickoff of the subsequent world tour?

Although the timing is perplexing, coming more than a year after the record’s release, there is one upside – it calls for a fresh reconsideration of the album’s merits: the driving chorus of Shackler’s Revenge; the unmistakable vocal cadence of the verses in Better; and the heart-wrenching ride-out of There Was A Time, among others.

It also, however, serves as a reminder of Chinese Democracy’s flaws – namely, the lack of timeless, memorable hooks that people will still pay to hear performed live in 23 years. That’s how long it’s now been since the release of Appetite For Destruction, the recording that rightfully made Guns N’ Roses an overnight sensation. Its material provides the brightest moments tonight, GN’R’s first performance in Montreal since a disastrous 1992 concert halfway through the marathon Use Your Illusion tour during which Axl left the stage after singing only nine songs, prompting a massive riot.

In contrast, tonight’s show – part of a winter tour of Canadian hockey barns, the group’s first performances in their home continent since the release of Chinese Democracy – goes off without incident. Openers Danko Jones, perhaps rock’s best-kept secret, deliver a libido-fuelled 30-minute set that drips with swaggering confidence, while ex-Skid Row front man Sebastian Bach – who seems content continuing to play a Robin- or Dr. Watson-like foil for Rose – gamely energizes the crowd with a 10-song performance culled primarily from his former band’s self-titled debut.

As for the headliner, it’s instantly clear that GN’R is now little different than any number of classic hard rock acts with only one remaining original member. Having surrounded himself in recent years with a revolving door of competent yet ultimately faceless replacements, Rose has, perhaps unwittingly, turned the spotlight even more on himself, no matter how many solos he lets his band members enjoy tonight. (His frequent wardrobe changes don’t help.)

Still, Rose – sporting a Fu Manchu, and flanked by video screens and LED back drops – admirably avoids the easy path of nostalgia taken regularly by so many of his peers, as tonight’s workmanlike, nearly three-hour set is split almost evenly between older and recent material. One only wishes he’d take to heart the most basic tenet of democracy: give the people what they want. All too often, the Chinese Democracy material falls flat next to classics such as Welcome To The Jungle and You Could Be Mine, but the magnetic presence of the slithering, itinerant front man holds your interest nonetheless.

His only overt references to the riot come during Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door – “You fuckers just like to tear shit up,” he playfully prods the crowd before thanking them genuinely for their support – and after the show-closing Paradise City, when he gives a tantalisingly cryptic tease before exiting: “You deserve the truth, but tonight’s not the time.” More proof that the King Of The Jungle sets his own hours.

Guns 'N' Roses returns to Montreal: No riot this time

It was a night that thousands of fans have waited 17 years to see.

The rebel rock group Guns 'N' Roses was back in Montreal on Wednesday night for the first time since their riot-marred 1992 concert at Olympic Stadium.

It’s not quite the same band – lead singer Axl Rose is the only remaining member of the original group.

Everyone else has either left or been fired over the last two decades, but Rose still has the rights to all of the band’s songs.

It was those tunes that attracted thousands of fans to the Bell Centre, though Rose was an hour late taking the stage.

Classics

The fans went wild when Guns 'N' Roses played classics including Welcome to the Jungle and Sweet Child of Mine.

It was part of a world tour to promote the long-awaited release of their new album Chinese Democracy – the group’s first album in 14 years.

The Bell Centre crowd included young fans who might not have been born when Rose and his gang exploded onto the music scene in the late 1980s.

Peaceful

The show was peaceful, unlike the last time Guns 'N' Roses played in Montreal.

Rose walked off the stage at the Olympic Stadium after a shortened set, setting off riots that spilled onto the streets.

Angry fans looted and caused about $400,000 in damage to the Big O.

The rock group was banned for life from the venue, solidifying their status as rock's bad boys.