2017.08.11 - BB&T Field, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

Eddie Huffman wrote:Guns N' Roses coming to Winston-Salem

Guns N’ Roses, the volatile hard rock band that exploded onto the American music scene 30 years ago this summer, returns next week to a region where they played one of their most legendary concerts.

The band that created the classic rock staples “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City” and “November Rain” performs at BB&T Field Aug. 11. It will be the first major concert there in years, and the only Guns N’ Roses show this summer between Pennsylvania and Florida.

“That’s a show where most people would be going, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta go to Atlanta to see that,’ or ‘I’ve gotta go to D.C. to see that,’” said Brian Meyer, a Greensboro singer and longtime Guns N’ Roses fan. “And here it is in Winston.”

Guns N’ Roses—also known as GNR—play a mix of blistering metal and melodic, yearning rock ballads. Front man Axl Rose has a voice once described as “a power tool with attachments” by rock critic Robert Christgau. But he also has a hard time keeping his band together, and the current “Not in This Lifetime Tour” has reunited original members Slash and Duff McKagan with Rose for the first time in two decades.

The group has always had a strong appeal with young men and adolescent boys, and many of the band’s current fans weren’t born when the group played its earliest shows in the Piedmont. All of GNR’s previous appearances in the Triad were at the Greensboro Coliseum, where they opened for Motley Crue in 1987 and headlined in 1991 and 2006.

Meyer saw that 1987 performance before he heard their debut album and was leery of the hype that had GNR pegged as the new Aerosmith. Meyer sings for several tribute bands: Deconstruction, Alexis Machine and AC/DCeased, which combines zombies and AC/DC songs.

“At the time I was a huge Aerosmith fan and thought, ‘No way. This guy with the sprayed-up tall hair is not Steven Tyler. No way,’” Meyer said. “I went to see them with Motley Crue and they were pretty good, then ‘Appetite for Destruction’ came out and I was like, ‘Wow, this album’s great. Maybe I was wrong about these guys.’”

Patrick Collins saw the 2006 show, in which Rose was the only original member left in the band. Collins, a former Greensboro resident, is now an outpatient therapist who lives in Asheville. He had been obsessed with GNR as a teenager growing up in Maryland.

“Axl was the like the Mick Jagger of our generation,” Collins said.

The 2006 concert in Greensboro was solid but not spectacular, he said.

“It didn’t have the edge, but I wouldn’t say it was like a shell of the band,” Collins said. “You expected them to play Guns N’ Roses songs without the characters of Slash and Duff, and that whole energy and cohesion that they had. As long as you didn’t have your expectations high, and realized it was really ‘Axl Rose and Company,’ I think they pulled it off as well as they could.”

The concert that entered GNR lore was the 1991 show, an epic performance before the group splintered. The band came to Greensboro ahead of “Use Your Illusion” I and II, albums that were delayed in what would become a pattern for the band. Clay Howard saw back-to-back GNR shows in Charlotte and Raleigh that summer.

“Greensboro was like twice as long,” said Howard, a Kernersville resident and veteran front man for several area bands who now performs under his own name. “They were good shows, both of them. In Greensboro they played forever.”

He’s only exaggerating slightly: The band played for nearly four hours that night, taking the stage long after the opening band, Skid Row, finished its set. The crowd was as volatile as the band that night, with multiple fistfights breaking out during the lull between acts.

“That was back in the days when you could drink and smoke in the coliseum,” Meyer said. “Beers didn’t cost $9, and you go load up in the parking lot, then come in and see a show.”

He wondered what was happening backstage. The band had a reputation for heroin abuse and other extreme behavior. Original drummer Steven Adler had just been replaced by Matt Sorum. Izzy Stradlin, a founding member and rhythm guitarist who co-wrote the band’s biggest hits, would leave before the end of 1991.

“You didn’t know if somebody had OD’d in the back, or if there was a fight,” Meyer said.

Parke Puterbaugh, a veteran music journalist and author, gave the show a glowing review for the Greensboro News and Record.

“They are as electrifying as any band that has ever taken a stage,” he wrote at the time. “Quite simply, they are the heirs apparent to the rebellious rock and roll tradition of the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith — and to be honest, neither of those band has ever exuded the raw power and outright danger the Gunners summon at will.”

Tim Beeman of Winston-Salem also attended that 1991 show. He is a singer and host of multiple podcasts on The Less Desirables network. He remembers Rose promising a memorable show.

“He said, ‘We’re gonna make it up to you because we’re so late,’” Beeman said.

The band proceeded to deliver, playing songs from “Appetite” as well as every song from the then-unreleased “Use Your Illusion” I and II.

“Some of the new songs chugged along in the bluesy, boozy vein of ‘Exile on Main Street’-era Stones,” Puterbaugh wrote. “‘Bad Obsession’ featured a sinuous slide-guitar intro from Slash, while ‘Dust ’n Bones’ was sung by rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin while Rose shook a tambourine. Another new one, ‘Perfect Crime,’ was taken at a manically fast tempo; Axl Rose sang it as throttlingly hard as I’ve ever heard anyone sing.”

Beeman noted the stark contrast between the onstage personae of Slash and Rose.

Slash was “just so laid back about it,” Beeman said. “To borrow a youngster’s term now, he’s just chill. He would play his bluesy, soulful solos and let Axl run around like a chihuahua.”

Rose went through several outfit changes over the course of the show, taking the stage wearing only cycling shorts and Doc Marten boots along with his trademark head bandanna. He donned a kilt during another segment of the show, and sang some songs wearing a baseball catcher’s mask and chest protector. During the encore he wore a stopwatch around his neck.

“After the last note of the last song, he looked at the stopwatch and said, ‘Yeah,’” Meyer said. “He announced to the crowd, ‘That’s the longest we’ve ever played.”

The show’s instantly legendary status was confirmed the following day on “MTV News.” Beeman woke up to the report after a very late night at the Greensboro Coliseum. The news anchor noted that it was the first time GNR had played every song from both “Use Your Illusion” albums.

“Kurt Loder said, ‘Guns N’ Roses played an epic show in Greensboro, North Carolina, last night, blah blah blah blah blah,’” Beeman said. “I’m like, ‘Whoa, that’s us!’”

Courtney Devores wrote:Review: Guns n’ Roses prove pros at long-awaited Carolina return

Seventeen months into its Not in This Lifetime! Tour, Guns n’ Roses touched down in North Carolina, bringing the much anticipated tour that reunites Axl Rose with fellow original members Slash and Duff McKagan to Winston-Salem’s BB&T Field. While the hype of the initial regrouping has dissipated somewhat since the tour first hit the Southeast in July 2016 at Atlanta’s Georgia Dome, the event was no less electric.

It’s hard to say if the production has been tweaked since last year’s show, or if my head was just in a cloud the first time. Although I’d seen Slash solo, Axl Rose’s incarnation of Guns n’ Roses in Greensboro in 2006 and Greenville, S.C., in 2011, and even Velvet Revolver doing Gn’R songs live, I’d been waiting to see the members on stage together since I was 12.

My son didn’t have to wait quite as long, but his anticipation matched mine. So the eye-catching images that flashed on the giant backdrop screen and the subtleties of Slash’s solo may have gone unnoticed the first time around or maybe we just had better seats this time.

To its credit — despite its football stadium setting — the Winston show was more intimate. Even at capacity, Wake Forest University’s stadium holds fewer people than were in attendance in the massive Georgia Dome (41,500). The Winston crowd may have numbered half that and the sound benefited from the open air set-up without a cavernous concrete structure to bounce off of. The ticketless folks who set up lawn chairs in the grass next to the road could hear everything crystal clear.

The setlist has changed little since the tour began.

The show still begins with the gnarly bassline of “It’s So Easy,” the scratchy guitar of “Mr. Brownstone,” the late era “Chinese Democracy,” and the introduction capper “Welcome to the Jungle.” The latter elevated by digital imagery that played on the concept of the original video. Rose was a tad breathless by the end of that run, but after he disappeared under the stage (the same tactic he used for the near-four hour show in Greenville in 2011, for what I’m betting was a hit of oxygen), his vigor was renewed.

At 55, he’s still capable of banshee wails and his scale-climbing caterwaul, which I imagined could be both a stress reliever or downright stressful given his facial expressions.

He showed restraint when he wanted to. Instead of imitating Chris Cornell on the cover of “Black Hole Sun” late in the set, he held back a bit during the song’s crescendo. The tribute to the Soundgarden frontman played under an image of the Seattle Space Needle (McKagan’s hometown) was a nice addition to the setlist, introduced by Dizzy Reed’s piano, and served as a musical answer to the preceding “November Rain.”

Of course, like Jagger and Richards, Tyler and Perry, Rose’s foil is as big of a star as he is.

That’s not lost on the frontman, who saved the guitarist’s simple introduction of “Slash” for last as he ran through the band’s members. Still shaded by curls and a top hat, Slash was at his best diving into classical influences during he and Fortus’ instrumental showcase of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” and his own take on the love theme from “The Godfather” that segued into “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

Once plagued by Rose’s chronic tardiness and unpredictability and the other members’ substance abuse, the band now operates as a well-oiled team of pros with the help of utility players drummer Frank Ferrer, long-time guitarist Richard Fortus (stepping in for long-gone, reclusive original guitarist Izzy Stradlin), and additional keyboardist Melissa Reese.

Reese and McKagan’s backing vocals were seamless this time around too. McKagan again proving that he’s so much more than rhythmic backbone, he sang lead on the punky cover of the Damned’s “New Rose.”

While Guns clearly have it together, it’s fans aren’t professional partyers. In fact in some cases it seemed like throwing on a bandana and a ripped black t-shirt with a skull graphic was like Halloween for some, which I guess isn’t much different than dipping yourself in glitter and six-inch heels before Beyonce`.

What was more obvious (and annoying) is the alcohol consumption that seems to trump whatever song is playing. There should be concessions on the field level because the constant stream of people climbing the stairs toward the bar continually obstructed the view from the stands during songs like “My Michelle,” which I would think would warrant staying in your seat.

While the production, the sound, and performance all fall into the pro column, there were a few cons. Rose rarely wore a shirt without a sexually explicit image on it – we’re talking genitals - that were greatly enlarged on the giant screens that flocked the stage (but anyone, including myself, that accepts and even loves Guns n’ Roses despite its blatant sexism over the years, shouldn’t be surprised).

I hoped my son was studying the guitar and drum-work (as he’s apt to do) and not the images of skeletons in compromising positions flashing above the band during the lengthy “Rocket Queen.” He wasn’t the only kid in attendance. His best friend from pre-school was with his dad belting the words to “Civil War,” and the girl from his first grade class who he bonds over music with was somewhere in the sea of faces.

Parking was a nightmare with single lanes often in use when a second lane sat vacant and rows of full lots. We finally parked after they opened up the camping lot to cars on our second pass.

As soon as we got to our seats, which was occupied by a seemingly incoherent (read severely inebriated) woman who tried to hand me a crumpled piece of blank paper presumably in trade for my tickets, then declared, unprompted, with a string of expletives that likely made my 8-year-old’s ears burn, that she wasn’t (blanking) moving. I marveled at her charm with a laugh and escorted my son away, but by the time I returned with security (after being passed off by both the ushers and the cops) she was gone. She later stumbled passed us, shaking and hardly able to stand, held up and pushed along by some poor soul who’d accompanied her.

Despite the buzzkill, and me goofily pirouetting on the stairs trying not to fall over as people pushed passed us on beer runs, the experience was largely positive and with the initial anticipation of seeing Gn’R after 30 years, less of a whirlwind.

Besides it’s not the first time I almost came to blows with someone at a Gn’R show (me sober, mind you, them not). Thankfully the boys have grown up so much that the band can sustain what once seemed unsustainable for what might be a very long time, and do it without seeming like a bunch of geezers looking for a pay day. Although they are raking in several million at every show, they actually seem to be enjoying it. As are the fans.