1992.09.DD - MTV - GN'R & Metallica: Live and Loud

TRANSCRIPTION:
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Axl: One of the big things I learned was that everybody has wanted this tour so bad and worked so hard to make it – to be able to do this tour; you know, Metallica through their touring and through our touring to be able to do a stadium tour together, that we thought that when we got here it would just be “perfect!”, that it would be so cool. Well, it kind of turned out to be that, “Wait a minute, this is so cool, that why shouldn’t it be the hardest thing we’ve ever done?”

Lars Ulrich: What you basically have on here, is you have two full – you know, you have all the steel and all that crap, but you have two bands that have basically each their own production. We have our own thing with the mirrors, and the snakepit, and drum kit to flip around everyone, and all that kind of crap.

Dizzy: We have a horn section now, we’ve had it for a while. And we have Teddy - Teddy Andreadis plays harmonica, and keyboards as well. So you have that, you have backup singers...

Lars Ulrich: We wanted to do this right and give the kids – you know, we could have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars a week if we had had the same stage setup, both of us, the same lighting rig, the same everything.

Axl: We didn’t feel it’d be right for Metallica to come and do a normal open, like an opening act amount of playing time on stage. That would really be unfair to their show and we’d, like, kind of make them look smaller, and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted them to look big as they are.

Tabitha Soren: Now I’m on stage with Duff McKagan. It’ a couple of hours before the show and Duff is gonna take us around back here to show us how this stage set is actually put together. After Metallica goes off, it can take up to about two hours for their stage set to be ready, and Duff’s gonna show us what they’re actually doing during that time. Ready?

Duff: I don’t really know what the hell they’re doing.

Tabitha Soren: You’d better know.

Duff: I’ll weigh in.

Tabitha Soren (outside Axl’s backstage tent): This is Axl’s.

Duff: Yeah, Axl. And the reason it says “no smoking” is because of the oxygen thing.

Tabitha Soren: What do you do to keep your voice interesting? You drink honey and tea or... What’s this?

Duff: Honey and tea.

Tabitha Soren: “Honey and tea” (laughs).

Tabitha Soren: How many basses do you keep with you on stage?

Duff: I have three.

Tabitha Soren: Are they tuned differently or they sound exactly the same?

Duff: No. It’s (?).

Duff: That’s the monitor board. This guys get fired (?). Let’s walk out there. Come on.

(They walk on the stage and Duff waves to the fans)

Duff: I’ve never done this before.

Duff: It’s Teddy’s washboard, ain’t that cool? And this is my stuff. You know, male punk rock thing and vests and...

Tabitha Soren (points at a pink suit jacket): The new punk rock trend?

Duff: No, no, this is Gianni Versace.

Tabitha Soren: Oooh, very nice. It could be a favorite among the band, I presume.

Duff: Yeah. He loves us too. Slash’s stuff. Wow, those [snickers] are really nice. I haven’t seen these ones yet. I guess that’s when he plays tennis. Slash, you never knew. Okay.

Tabitha Soren: What do you do for keeping...

Duff: Water-skiing.

Tabitha Soren: Water-skiing. Why is that? Have you always water-skiied?

Duff: Yeah, I was, like into it. You know, I was, like, in the competition once.

Tabitha Soren: Really?

Duff: Yeah, I used to be really active in sports; in football, (?) boxing, baseball, basketball...

Tabitha Soren: And how did you end up in a band? How did you have time to learn all these things?

Duff: (Laughs) I don’t know! Help me! I don’t know!

James Hetfield: There’s a lot of people we get to play in front of, that probably wouldn’t come see us on our own. So that worked good for us.

Tabitha Soren: Do you think that a typical Guns fan is someone that also likes Metallica?

James Hetfield: Probably now. Hopefully (laughs).

Gilby: This tour is a perfect example of – you know, there’s a great package, you were not gonna never, ever see this. Recession or not, nobody’s gonna miss this.

Lars Ulrich: When you say to people, you know, we’re out co-headlining with Guns N’ Roses, “Wow, you guys are out with Guns N’ Roses?!” And then, the next minute or two, you get everything that’s just the bad stuff. And it’s funny how general people, just when you play for 50,000 people as opposed to 15,000, it’s a lot more a general audience, d’ya know what I mean? And they just know bad-boy rocker Axl Rose.

Slash: He’s been really easy for lying about a lot of the stuff lately, so to give credit where credit’s due, I know what his reputation is.

Tabitha Soren: How do you think that he’s changing, though? It just seems –

Slash: He’s just been a lot more positive and a lot more willing to deal with the sort of the possible technical pitfalls, instead of, like, shying away from it and just getting pissed off and making it worse. He actually is into making everything better.

Tabitha Soren: I read that you said you had seven years of therapy in one year or something.

Axl: Yeah. I mean, I was like, I’d come off stage, and either get on the phone or have the person fly out personally into four or five hours right after stage. You know, where someone goes, like, once a week to work out their problems for half hour or an hour, I was doing four-five hours a day; like, every day.

Tabitha Soren: Is it helping?

Axl: You were at the show tonight. It seems to be fine. I’m in a good mood now, so...

Tabitha Soren: Yeah.

Axl: And the negative aspect to go and try to do something bigger, like, if we did a long show and – you know, we did those shows, we would play, like 3.5 hours in one of the Carolinas, North Carolina or something; Greensboro, North Carolina. And then there was this comic book about how the crowd was bored and leaving, and there was no one there. Some of the people in the back were leaving because they had to get up in a couple of hours for work or something.

Matt: I mean, I remember, when I was a kid and I waited for Aerosmith for hours, waiting and partying (?), and just everything’s changed.

James Hetfield: People now, all these younger kids, are very into – I mean, they want something more than the last person did, you know? Maybe they’re a bit spoiled.

Tabitha Soren: What about the people who are actually paying to come see Guns N’ Roses and Metallica play? We wanted to find out what they thought of the show, so we sent a not-so-objective reporter, Guns’ guitarist Gilby Clarke to find out.

(Gilby interviews concertgoers backstage)

Gilby: First of all, have you guys ever been backstage before?

Male fan: No.

Female fan: No, never.

Gilby: So is this what you expected?

Fans: No.

Male fan: Not really.

Gilby: What did you guys expect?

Female fan (laughing): Drugs...

Gilby: Naked girls and stuff like that?

Female fan: Exactly.

Gilby: That’s why you guys are here, you know? As far as this tour and stuff, is it, like, the biggest thing probably you guys are gonna see, like, you know, why you wanted to come.

Female fan: (?) I was excited on my way here. (?)

Male fan: I never thought I’d see Guns N’ Roses or Metallica or anything.

Gilby: “Oh, god.”
Male fan: I mean, we kind of paid a lot of money for our tickets.

Gilby: Big bucks.

Male fan: Yeah. But it’s worth it.

Gilby: My paycheck, thank you. I’m gonna ask you some questions that people ask me, and sometimes, like - I mean they’re always after me about, you know, what about the kids. “Do you worry about the kids?” Does a concert this big, like, worry you guys that it’s gonna be trouble or that you guys are gonna get in trouble or anything?

Female fan: No way!

Gilby: No way?

Female fan: No way.

Gilby: It’s not your first one.

Female fan: It’s not worrying me at all.

Gilby: Do you feel safe?

Female fan: Sure. Of course.

Gilby: Really? Don’t trust us. So our reputation doesn’t bother you guys about going to the show or anything, right?

Female fan: No. That’s why we’re here.

Female fan: What do you think of Houston?

Gilby: Houston is a pretty wild town. We try to, like, you know, extend our trip. Whenever we come to Texas, we like hanging in Texas.

Female fan: What is your favorite city?

Gilby: Probably my favorite city is New Orleans – in America, anyway. It’s a really strange place. I don’t think there’s, like, another city in the world like New Orleans.

Gilby: I’ve played clubs in New Orleans for, like, the last six-seven years. I’ve played everywhere in New Orleans. Every time I played there, we’ve made that joke, “Oh yeah, we’re playing (?). But we just drilled in to play, and it was like, I’d look and I went, “We really are playing.”

Tabitha Soren: (?) also when you were in New Orleans. As sort of the antithesis of the Superdome you went to a small club and just got on stage.

Gilby: Yeah, we always do that.

Tabitha Soren: You do?

Gilby: Yeah.

Duff: We’d done some taking over and there’s a club next door, and he said, “You’re a genuine band.” «Yeah, great».

Slash: I don’t love sitting around in my hotel room doing nothing. If I was gonna pick something to spend my time with that I like doing, it would be playing, so...

Tabitha Soren: Do you miss playing smaller places?

Slash: No, cuz I do it all the time now.

Teddy Andreadis: We have these great parties that Axl’s been kind of putting on, theme parties and stuff. In Indianapolis (?) they brought two performers (?)

Duff: We brought, like, a big checkered grub and had a bunch of girls that looked like – You know, when someone wins a race, then the girl kisses the guy.

Tabitha Soren: Is this the room where it would be?

Duff: No.

Tabitha Soren: No. Okay.

Duff: I think the theme party would be... Where is it? Not there.

Teddy Andeadis: We had voodoo night. And we had a Roman, like, orgy type night, a (?) party and they had all these big muscle guys bringing in a pig, roasted pig. At 4:00 in the morning, of course - you know, who wants to eat a roasted pig?

Roberta Freeman: (?) That’s what I’ll be wearing. (?)

Gilby: Basically what it is, you know - this tour (?), like, the ultimate thing. And we’re gonna take advantage of it in every way.

Lars Ulrich: These stadiums and stuff like that, any show has kind of a different personality, and, you know, when we played Pittsburgh, the whole time we were on stage it would be pissing down.

Tabitha Soren: Raining?

Lars Ulrich: Yeah, yeah. Raining (laughs). You know, for, like, 2-1/2 hours you’re just out there with these, like, storms and stuff. It really created a great vibe.

James Hetfield: Our New York shows were really good.

Tabitha Soren: Flying?

James Hetfield: Well, it just happened, I guess. And then we’re on later in the night, you know, it’s all dark, you utilize your lights more. I think we look better in the dark (laughs).

Tabitha Soren: You mentioned Giant Stadium, the first night, was a really good show?

Axl: Mmm-mmm.

Tabitha Soren: Was that because the fans went nuts, was that because...

Axl: They weren’t nuts. There was just more energy coming off of them. And I think a lot of it had to do with Bas and Mike Monroe were standing on the side of the stage and that made me really happy. It was just like, you know, go off. I was really happy that they were there.

Tabitha Soren: Who’s Bas?

Axl: Sebastian.

Tabitha Soren: Sebastian. Okay.

Axl: And Mike Monroe. And that just made me, like, work harder. I really liked that. And the second night in Giant Stadium was, you know, I got hit with a couple of things a couple of different times, once when I was, like, thanking the crowd and then I got hit later, and we just kind of like – you know, I’m not gonna allow this.

Tabitha Soren: It seems like Guns N’ Roses attracts a whole career of controversy into just one tour. The Guns N’ Roses-Metallica shows have not gone off without a hitch. There have been riots, legal hassles and technical problems.

James Hetfield (on stage): You haven’t noticed I ain’t playing a guitar tonight (coughs) for obvious reasons.

Slash: In Montreal it was just really creepy. Nothing against the people in Montreal, we had a great time hanging out there. I think it was the building itself.

Lars Ulrich: It was, like, the first show back after four dates that Axl had some problems with his throat and so on. So we’re back again in Montreal, everybody was very excited to be back and playing, and for the first hour and 10 minutes or whatever we played, I mean, it was great. It was really good buzz. It was looking to be one of the best ones.

James Hetfield: Basically our pyro guy will come in and say, you know, if something is gonna be changed. If not, he won’t come in there and everything will be the same every night. He came in and said, “Okay, the Fade to Black stuff is gonna be out on the wings, so don’t go out there.” I said okay. But he didn’t specify that it was in addition to what’s already there. So I walked from the wings right on to where one of them was and it just...

Lars Ulrich: The last couple of seconds before the cue, I knew it was just this area. I could just tell him that he shouldn’t be standing where he was standing. And then the flame from hell just comes, like, moving down the stage, eight feet tall and just completely engulfs him.

James Hetfield (on stage): We’ve got a friend of ours, brought him out from a band called Metal Church and he’s filling in for us. I want you to give Mr. John Marshall a hand over here. All right.

Tabitha Soren: So how are you? What is it the prognosis with your arm? When do you get that over with?

James Hetfield: The burn... Well, it’s minor second-degree, most of this and a little of the back of this one. But the back of the hand is where it was the worst. And right here it’s okay, it’s where my wristband was, so I’m alright here. I should’ve had a longer wristband (chuckles).

Matt: When I left the hotel and they said James was burnt, I just felt it, it just felt wrong. So we hustled on as soon as we could – it was a couple of hours people were waiting. So already they were like, “uhh”, you know. And when we got up there it was just really dead. The people were sitting down...

Tabitha Soren: What happened then? I mean, you got out there and you played anyway.

Slash: We got out, the PA fed back the entire time, the monitors fed back the entire time, the crowd was, like, non-existent.

Axl: We had just stopped the tour because I had a throat problem. I came back and I realized: “I’m gonna hurt myself.” I told Slash, “Two more songs; if we can’t get it fixed, I gotta go,” you know? And then we did more than two more songs, and finally I was just kind of like, I don’t know what to do, and I looked over, and Gilby was like, “Dude, I can’t hear.”

Slash: I mean, it was driving me crazy.

Axl: And Duff was like, “I can’t hear either.” We had a little huddle, kind of, and it was like, “we’re out of here.”

Slash: I’ve gotten to the point where I’m starting to realize how powerful an effect having the band come to town really is. So, even - in all due respect to the people that got pissed off or disappointed by any of the situations that went down, we were just being as real as humanly possible about our own situation. At this point we’ve been through so much and I’ve gotten to the point where I just look at life and just go, you take the good with the bad and just deal with it instead of stressing. You know, I mean, obviously there’s a lot of stress all the time anyway, but I try and control it as much as possible. So I’m pretty laid back and just like, okay, what’s the problem, what’s the solution for it, and try to deal with it on a logical level. And then you get to go out and blow steam on stage for 2-1/2 hours. I think there’s a happy medium in there without having to kick anybody’s ass or, you know, start a riot.

Matt: Yeah, I’ve been in, like, traditional drummer crap (laughs).

Tabitha Soren: Bang on things?

Matt: Yeah. But I hit things for a living, you know.

Tabitha Soren: I guess playing must (?)

Matt: Yeah, that’s the best (?) for me. That’s why I started to play drums, you know?

Tabitha Soren: Really? Because you were angry?

Matt: I was, yeah. That’s something.

Tabitha Soren: You don’t know why?

Matt: Yeah, I do. You know, just life in general, my life at the time.

Tabitha Soren: Do you feel like you had a tough childhood?

Matt: Maybe. Yeah. But, you know, it was my way of getting it out. It was great that I’d come home from school every day and thrash (imitates playing drums). And right after that I’d feel really good and mellow.

Tabitha Soren: Therapeutic.

Matt: Very therapeutic.

Tabitha Soren: Do you do it –

Matt: I’d say for anybody out there that, like - let’s say people down in, like, East L.A. that want to go out and beat somebody up. They should just buy a drum kit or something, you know? Really. Beat on a drum, don’t beat on each other or something. I think that’d be a great model for the world. You know, everybody buy drum sets. And when you feel like you wanna go, like, hit your kid or something, go in a room and play a beat.

Tabitha Soren: Is there a physical regimen that you go through before you go on stage? Do you do anything special?

Axl: If I notice that I’m getting run down, if I notice I have a show where I’m really tired, then I get back into a workout program. And I have, like, this special machine called the ROM, that you can do a half-hour workout in four minutes, you know. It’s like this thing some scientists built in UCLA. And I have that on the road and I use that, and we work with a chiropractor who, little by little, helps keep all the muscles in tune and everything. I’m on a vitamin program and stuff like that, basically general health, but something I’ve never concentrated on, and this show, the way we perform demands it.

Lars Ulrich: What’s keeping this together is the respect that we have for each other, and the desire to just make this happen and kind of shove it down people’s throats, you know what I mean; and proving to people that the tour – you know, I mean, considered that it’d never happen. It’s a great thing to be out here and proving them wrong, despite all the difficulties that we’ve run into.

This clip is from the same interview sessions (recorded in Houston, Sept. 4, 1992). Slash talks about the interview he did with Rolling Stone that was released in January 1991:



Slash: They twisted what I said around and they only focused on certain things definitely at the relationship between Axl and I, that they are always trying to make a real negative issue out of; which is not like that at all. When that came out, and there were certain things in there that I said that were true, but in the context of the conversation they would have read completely different than the way the guy edited the whole thing.
I was pissed off because I was like, you know, this is why I don’t like getting involved with this kind of stuff, because I don’t like being misrepresented and having a hit so close to home.