2017.08.24 - Investors Group Field, Winnipeg, MB, Canada

Every Rose has its thorns

Rockers Guns N' Roses have had their ups and downs on the Winnipeg stage

By: Erin Lebar

Thirty years ago to the day, Guns N’ Roses played their first show in Winnipeg.

On Aug. 24, 1987, the hard-rock band from Los Angeles were cutting their teeth as openers for the Cult at the Winnipeg Arena; accounts from some of those in attendance, as well as a brief Free Press review, were mixed. Some say it was a mess, while others say it was the beginning of something great.

John Kendle, editor for Canstar News, was at the show, and even bumped in to the now-iconic frontman Axl Rose and guitarist Slash the night before at the Blue Note Café on Main Street, which was a popular live-music spot in town in the 1980s and early ’90s.

Kendle, who was freelancing for the Winnipeg Sun as well as working at Sam the Record Man at the time, recalls he and some friends were sitting in the Blue Note after a Crowded House concert at the Centennial Concert Hall; among the group at his table was a British teen, Dave Wall, with whom he was discussing Guns N’ Roses.

“Almost serendipitously, Dave turned around and went, ‘Holy f—, is that Axl?’ And it was Axl and Slash. No one really knew who they were other than the people with whom they’d arrived — a couple girls and a guy. Dave was really excited, he was maybe 16-17 at the time and I was 22, and Dave leapt over and said, ‘I saw you guys in Manchester.’ They loved that,” Kendle says. “I started talking to Axl about what I’d read in a music magazine about them having trouble at the border in southern Ontario and he said it was because they get hassled a lot and he took to carrying around a cattle prod on the bus, and the guards said it was an offensive weapon and it was confiscated at the border, but it wasn’t a big deal,” Kendle says, laughing.

“They had a few beers, other people were talking to Slash — he had just this wild, unruly mane of hair and his eyes were hidden behind it and he was wearing the original version of the top hat — and they hung out. I took off because I had to open the store the next day, and they stuck around… and at one point, they got up and did Heartbreak Hotel and my friend Mitch Potter said the guy (Axl) has a siren of a voice. It wasn’t the best version of Heartbreak Hotel you’d ever heard, but you could tell Axl had something.”

And obviously they did have something — more than 30 years and six studio albums later, they’re still going strong and are about to play their largest show in the city to date with the reunited power trio of Rose, Slash and bassist Duff McKagan at the helm.

To help conjure up some more nostalgia and get you prepped for tonight’s gig at Investors Group Field, we’ve done some digging in our archives to compile snippets of reviews for all of Guns N’ Roses’ performances in Winnipeg, starting with that 1987 show.

Aug. 24, 1987, Winnipeg Arena (opening for the Cult)

Attendance: 5,000 (sold out with “attenuated concert bowl arrangement”)

Reviewer Randal McIlroy was not having a good night — between the Cult and GnR, his eardrums were about to burst.

“Guns and Roses (sic) seemed even louder in its opener. The Los Angeles band was bearable so long as the singer kept to his lower man-who-breakfasts-on-raw-buffalo-meat range, but when he started shrieking in the venerated Robert-Plant-having-his-lemons-squeezed high range, the pain threshold was not so much crossed as bulldozed. None of the band’s 11 songs stood out, bar the surprising choice of a Bob Dylan song, Knocking in Heaven’s Door, played as a funeral march. Still, like the Cult, the band kept its songs short. No drum solo, either; a small mercy.”

Kendle remembers things a little bit differently:

“Slash came on smoking a Marlboro while playing and he kind of spit the butt out and it landed between me and Dave and we were blown away. There were other people who didn’t like them, but I thought it was the start of something, I thought this band was going somewhere,” he says.

“The other thing I remember is that during the show, while the Cult was playing, I was walking around the arena aisles… and I ran into Axl in the hallway, which was deserted because everyone was in the auditorium watching the show, and he and I stood together at the back of the hall looking through the curtain at the Cult, and he said, ‘See ya later, man, nice to meet you.’”

May 23, 1988, Winnipeg Arena (opening for Iron Maiden)

Attendance: 3,500

Guns N’ Roses opened for Iron Maiden, and reviewer Stephen Ostick made a few comments about the band at the end of his piece, which ran in the May 24 paper:

“But as the crowd showed, it’s hard not to like a band that seems so friendly and that works so hard without posturing. Surprisingly, the same rings true for openers Guns N’ Roses. This five-piece Los Angeles-based outfit has a notorious reputation, mostly because the jacket to its first album, Appetite for Destruction, has been banned. True, the record cover is grotesque, even disgusting. But the band isn’t.

“Guns N’ Roses managed to do the impossible for a rough-hewn metal act — it sounded better live than on vinyl. And singer W. Axl Rose is a completely commanding presence on stage. The band has mature songwriting and arranging ideas and played with dynamics under an appealing rough, explosive edge. Far superior to Mötley Crüe and their ilk, Guns N’ Roses deserves to be tough metal’s next star.”

March 24, 1993, Winnipeg Arena

Attendance: 16,000 (sold out)
★★★ out of 5

The next time they were in town wasn’t until 1993, this time as a top-billed act at the Winnipeg Arena on March 24. According to a news story about the tour, fans had been getting rowdy and violent in other cities, so Winnipeg police amped up their coverage of the event. Because the band went on so late (an hour later than expected) the actual review for the show didn’t end up in print until March 26. This time around, Ostick was less enthusiastic about Guns N’ Roses’ performance, describing Rose as “morose” and looking as though “he wanted to strangle somebody.”

Ostick wrote: “For some reason, the Guns N’ Roses singer was in no mood to entertain for the first hour or so of the group’s Winnipeg Arena show Wednesday night…

“Gripping the microphone in those famous tattooed arms, he glared at the crowd while cutting loose with that famous wail of his. Then he sat down. And there he stayed on the front left corner of Sorum’s riser, for the next tune, as well. And the next…

“But this was the world’s greatest rock band? Well, not exactly. Only Rose, Slash and McKagan remain from the GnR that rocked the same rink in May ’88. THAT GnR was so hungry, and played so powerfully, that it threatened to rip listeners to pieces. This version could stand to regain some of that hunger.”

Dec. 4, 2006, MTS Centre

Attendance: 11,000
★★★★ out of 5

Again, the notoriously late band went on stage at MTS Centre (now Bell MTS Place) at midnight on Dec. 4, 2006, far too late for the paper’s print deadline, causing the review to be run in the Dec. 6 paper. For this show, Rose was backed by a cohort of musicians, including former Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson and Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck, and more than 15 years after their last appearance in the city, the tone of the show had changed from “band in their prime” to “nostalgia act.”

Reviewer Rob Williams wrote: “(Rose’s) distinctive nasally whine sounded as strong as always on It’s So Easy and Mr. Brownstone, two more favourites from 1987’s Appetite for Destruction that opened the show. Rose looked and sounded good, but the years have taken their toll on the 44-year-old in other ways — he relied on a teleprompter to help him with the lyrics.”

Jan. 13, 2010, MTS Centre

Attendance: 7,500
★★★★ out of 5

Guns N’ Roses most recent stop in Winnipeg was in 2010 at the MTS Centre. Williams reviewed the band for a second time, saying: “The unofficial over/under betting line on the band’s start time was 10:30 p.m., and anyone who knows anything about GnR would have had their money on over. The group took the stage at the perfectly decent time of 10:45 p.m., 75 minutes earlier than in 2006, but still more than an hour after opener Sebastian Bach left the stage…

“And he (Axl) even appeared to be enjoying himself, flashing the occasional smile and offering up some between song banter with the crowd.”

Guns N’ Roses make 3-hour set look like It’s So Easy

By: Erin Lebar

How many roadies does it take to switch the stage over for a Guns N’ Roses stadium tour?

Around 25, apparently, all of whom immediately charged forth with immense purpose when the openers were done in order to get the gear ready for what turned out to be a more than three-hour set by GNR at Investors Group Field Thursday night.

The Looney Toons theme ushered the seven-piece band on stage almost exactly when they were scheduled to start, and they looked exactly as you’d expect them to — guitarist Slash in his now-famous top hat, his messy curtain of curls hanging down into his face, almost covering the dark shades he also had on; frontman Axl Rose in a hat, jacket, T-shirt, expertly torn up jeans with a plaid shirt tied around his waist, his hands and neck sparkling with tons of bling. He would go on to change his outfit half a dozen times (maybe more), but all were similar variations on this classic Axl look.

The first full song was It’s So Easy from 1987’s Appetite for Destruction; at the sound of the first note, the crowd jolted to their feet and many stayed there for the rest of the night, especially enthused by the unexpected set of fireworks that burst into the sky after the opening track.

Immediately, Rose seemed energetic and in good spirits; he cracked out his signature sideways slither within minutes of getting on stage and twirled his purple mike stand around his head with reckless abandon. He ran, he jumped, he spun, he prowled and he danced. He was sassy and a bit of a ham, but in the best way. It was like he was 20-something years old again and the stage was his playground.

And his vocals? He was givin’r.

No one expects a flawless performance from Rose, but he more than held his own; it was easy to tell he was pushing his upper register pretty hard, but he got up there and knocked out some impressive shrieks that were totally on pitch and as powerful and impactful as they were in the band’s heyday. Producing quality vocals consistently for more than three hours, working through a back catalogue as unforgiving as this band’s, definitely deserves praise without a caveat.

A particular highlight was ballad This I Love; the toned-down number was one of the few times Rose’s voice was truly at the forefront and he sounded delicate and controlled. And again, much later, his rendition of November Rain (which featured Rose on the piano and a ridiculously amazing solo by Slash), was stunning.

Speaking of Slash solos, there were a lot of them. Like, a lot. Some (me) would say too many. However, watching one of the greatest living guitarists do his thing right in front of your eyes is a moment to absorb, appreciate and remember.

Slash was awarded one formal solo during which the stage was all his, and what he went on to perform was the face-melter of all face-melters; his fingers were moving so fast that it looked as though they weren’t even moving at all. It’s almost sickening how easy he makes it look — though he did break a sweat during this particular solo, which lasted nearly 10 minutes.

In the final seconds, his head tilted back and his mouth was open as he ripped through one last blistering lick before drifting into the universally familiar opening line of Sweet Child O’ Mine, which, of course, sent the crowd into a tizzy.

Rose isn’t much of a talker on stage, choosing to throw out just a few lines here and there, the first time being more than an hour into the show. He commented once on how loud the crowd was, once about the weather and said a few thank-yous near the end. That was about it, but no one really seemed to care.

Likely the most enthused portion of dialogue was the moment he bared his impressively straight, white teeth and screeched the iconic line, “You’re in the jungle baby, you’re gonna dieeeeee,” at the top of his lungs, his voice cutting like a knife through the chilly summer air.

Around the 120-minute-mark, every song seemed to have the ramp-up feel of a main-set closer, but GNR just kept right on going after each one. My Michelle, November Rain and covers of Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun and Bob Dylan’s Knocking on Heaven’s Door all had finale vibes, but it was Nightrain that was chosen as the end to a truly massive main set, ending where they began — with a track from Appetite for Destruction.

Guns N’ Roses quickly returned to knock out a handful of songs as an encore, ending, unsurprisingly, with a dance-party sing-along to Paradise City.

The thing to appreciate most about Guns N’ Roses is the effort that was put into this tour; it would have been easy to completely phone it in, but instead, they got fiery and produced a show that is objectively excellent and entertaining.

After their show at the Winnipeg Arena in 1993, Free Press reviewer Stephen Ostick wrote that he felt GNR had lost the hunger that often develops in a band’s embryonic form. Now, 30 years later, it oddly feels as though GNR’s hunger has returned, and it’s really working for them.

To open the show, Toronto-based rockers Our Lady Peace plowed through a brief but powerful set.

The band had a pocket of fame from the mid-90s until the early ’00s, and honoured their longtime fans by filling the majority of their set with songs from that era — including Superman’s Dead, Clumsy and Innocent — even though they are gearing up to release their first new record in five years, Somethingness.

Some sound issues plagued the first couple of tracks — the vocals were almost too muddy to decipher — but as they pushed forward, things seemed to balance out a bit.

Frontman Raine Maida (whose wife is Winnipeg-born songstress Chantal Kreviazuk) has one of those voices that is almost instantly recognizable. It held up well in the stadium setting, even if it has lost a bit of the almost unsettling edge it carried in his younger days.