1993.05.31 - The O-Zone (BBC One) - Guns N' Roses in Athens (Slash, Duff, Matt, Dizzy)

Source of the video: ScottishTeeVee on youtube (channel with a lot of great stuff)

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Transcript:
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Female host: A visual clue as to what’s coming up in the O-Zone - and no, it’s not plastic water pistols and plastic plants. It’s Guns N’ Roses, of course.

Interviewer: After two years on the road, the Guns N’ Roses tour once again rolls back into Europe. The O-Zone is here in Athens to find out exactly how the world’s biggest rock band puts on its show.

[Break]

Text on screen: Guns N’ Roses have sold nearly 46 million albums worldwide since 1985. GNR have spent the last two years on a world tour.

Interviewer: Guns N’ Roses. A unique insight into a two-year long tour and over a million satisfied customers. And now the show rolls out through Europe.

[Cut to interviews at the Olympic Stadium in Athens a day before the show (May 23)]

Wendy Laister (International tour publicist): The whole thing with the steel and everything is about 150 tons. Most of the crew that are working have been on the road for the whole time, and they will be the same this morning. A lot of the crew got married on the road. It’s been like – we’ll rename it “the love tour.” During this tour people met somebody, got engaged, got married and are now having babies (laughs).

[Footage of crew members working at the Olympic Stadium – dialogues]

Interviewer: If you think this show looks like a big one, well you’d certainly be right there. Here’s some startling statistics about the tour: The stage itself behind me is 200 feet wide and 80 feet deep, and 75 meters high. The equipment is transported across Europe in no less than 11 tracks. I’m told that Slash travels on this tour with no less than 13 of his own guitars. And the show uses 250,000 watts of power and a minimum of 900 lights on stage.

Member of the local crew (carrying bouquets of roses): I think that Axl Rose will throw them to the crowd at the time of the concert. But I don’t know (laughs). I’m not sure.

Opie (Production manager): We started at 7:00 this morning and proceeded to put the sound. The lights went up last night, so that they could focus at night because, of course, we can’t see much in the daylight. And we’re continuing working like on all the other shows. Basically the crew is on automatic pilot given they’re people that go to work, they set up.

Interviewer: What are the main problems that you’ve encountered day-to-day, doing your job?

Tim Doyle (Drum technician): Well, my main problem during a show is mostly that Matt hits so hard that he breaks things, and the problem is replacing them in time or in the middle of a song while he’s playing still, and that’s the thing I have to deal with the most. Mostly it’s just snare drum or cymbals – he’ll break them quite often.

[Footage of crew members working at the Olympic Stadium – dialogues]

Interviewer [inside Axl’s tent/dressing room]: This resembles something like an operating theatre. Does he take it through, everything you set up here?

Tom Mayhue (Axl’s on stage health consultant): Basically we’ve got an oxygen rig with a humidifier, which puts moisture back in his throat during the show. Then later we’ll have assorted teas and things like that that he uses. It’s a make-up table with what-have-you - towels, mic stands, tea pot, you name it. We’ve got it all in here.

Interviewer: How many bottles of water does he get to drink during the show?

Tom Mayhue: Not too much water. It’s mainly teas.

Interviewer: Right. And he must be physically exhausted when he gets off. So you’ll have to sort of bring him back down.

Tom Mayhue: No, basically he’s got another group of people who handle him once he’s off stage. I just handle him during the onstage and performance time.

Jeff Condon (Merchandise manager): This is one of our best selling t-shirts. It’s got the album cover, so it kind of identifies with the tour, Use Your Illusion, and the dates on the back – this tour – kind of give the kids an idea of where the show was and gives them something to identify the show with. So yeah, these are real popular.

Interviewer: How many shows in total have you been to date?

Christopher Crist (a fan from Philadelphia): Today it makes 97.

Interviewer: Have you met the band?

Chris: Yeah, every show.

Interviewer: So what’s Axl like?

Chris: He’s normal. He’s just a normal person, he’s just like you and I. You know, we all get hyped up sometimes, and he’s just a normal person.

Mc Bob (Duff’s guitar technician): This is a standard Duff pick here. (?) backwards “Duff,” “GN’R” on the back, torch X medium. Kind of a semi-light pick. A lot of bass players use their fingers, but Duff has a unique picking style, and he can get almost a harmonic thing happening with this pick.

Interviewer: So what is it like, Tina, working in what seems to be a predominantly male environment?

Tina Skjereeth (Carpenter): It’s like having 30 big brothers. Basically, it seems like this crew – you run across men who are chauvinistic towards women, but this crew is not that way at all. We’re one huge family and it’s really, actually, like having a bunch of big brothers.

Interviewer: From the air, the Olympic Stadium looks huge as fans start to drift in for tonight’s show. For the O-Zone it was off to the group’s hotel for a last minute rescheduled meeting with Slash.

[Cut to interview with Slash]

Interviewer: Slash, you’ve played out to millions of people – I’m thinking of the stadium tour. Do you find it a frightening sort of affair?

Slash: You know, we’re used to doing it. We’ve been it for a while, but I have to admit that the couple of hours before we get on stage are pretty tense, especially because we’re not what you’d call a very rehearsed band. So if we have a good night it totally depends on how we get on together on stage and the way the building sounds, or the venue sounds, and what the kids are like. So you never know exactly what it’s gonna be like every night.

Interviewer: How do you feel the tour has changed over the last couple of years?

Slash: Well, right now we don’t have that big band that we were carrying around before, and we’re doing an acoustic set. That’s a big difference. The thing is, like, we did the show in Israel the other night and Izzy was playing with us because Gilby broke his wrist, so that was interesting in itself - I think we’re one of the first stadium bands who’s replaced their replacement with the original guitar player. And we went up there and we played pretty much like a club band. There was a small stage and we were loose, and Izzy hadn’t played with us in a long time, and, basically, had no idea what the set was like, and we didn’t know what he was gonna be like – and it was all pretty much spontaneous.

Interviewer: So what sort of (?) did you take there that you think it was spontaneous?

Slash: I couldn’t verbally explain that to you, because it’s a feeling that we have between the members of the band that we’ve just – you know, we’ve grown over the years to - sort of like without a word, maybe just a nod or maybe just a vibe - know what the other person’s gonna do. And so I couldn’t say that there’s any set way of communicating or a system whatsoever.

Interviewer: What inspired you to cover that particular song [Live and Let Die]?

Slash: Really the same thing that inspired us to do Heaven’s Door – because everybody used to ask us why we did that. It was a song that I just grew up loving and Axl really dug, but we never talked about it. And somewhere before we went to rehearsals or pre-production to do the Illusion records, we got to talking about different songs and that song came up, so it was mutual. So we went into rehearsal to see if we can make it sound half decent, just to give it credit where credit’s due, and it sounded good. So that was that.

Interviewer: The Axl-Slash partnership, would you say it is as much of a phenomenon as Lennon-McCartney?

Slash: You know, I never even think about stuff like that, and I would never try and compare myself to a combo as overwhelmingly great as that; just I wouldn’t even bother. I mean, I have a lot of admiration for what it is that Axl and I, if you want to call us a team - it’s really a band, but for what we do as composers or writers and what we come out with. But, I mean, the people that I grew up with that I really admired - you know, the influences that helped shape how I turned out – I would never even try to compare us to them.

Interviewer: (?) musical side, you’ve got many video awards as well. How important to you is the visual side of the band?

Slash: I don’t really get into the video aspect of it that much. I come up with my idea for my guitar solo, and then Axl – you know, the big cinema graphic sequences that Axl gets into writing and all that. I’m just, you know, driving a car off the cliff, okay?

Interviewer: (?) a magazine that makes a (?) comparison to Spinal Tap.

Slash: It’s inevitable when you’re touring and all that. That movie hit really close to home. I think a lot of bands have the same way of looking at that movie; there’s no denying it. So when you’re stuck in the hallway trying to find the stage and the whole band is, like, hustling through this – you know, getting nowhere – and then you see Spinal Tap, you see how ridiculous it all is.

[Cut to the Olympic Stadium before the show]

Interviewer: Well, here we are at the stadium. It’s now 9:20 Greek time. I’m told Brian May just got off stage, and any moment I think we’re due for the arrival of Guns N’ Roses.

Text on screen: The elusive Axl travelled separately to the concert.

[Cut to interviews with concertgoers]

Interviewer: Why do you like Guns N’ Roses?

Concertgoer 1: Because they play hard rock, that’s why.

Concertgoer 2: I love them very much. They play very good music.

Concertgoer 3: They are the best band in the world. Axl Rose is the best of all.

[Cut back to the Olympic Stadium before the show]

Interviewer: So this is the culmination of all that work. The Guns N’ Roses show finally hits the stage. The stadium isn’t quite full, but the energy is absolutely electric.

[Cut to interview with Duff, Matt and Dizzy on the day after the show (May 25) while on a boat cruising the Greek islands nearby Athens]

Interviewer: Well, most bands after a big concert would probably relax in the hotel bar. But Guns N’ Roses decided to go one step further: take a cruise, a little tour over the Greek islands. Dizzy’s here with me. It’s a lovely way to spend the day after a concert, yeah?

Dizzy: Well, to be honest with you, they actually pulled us out of the hotel bar to come here.

(Laughter)

Dizzy: But that’s okay. It’s pretty nice.

Interviewer: So what time did you get to bed last night?

Dizzy: I haven’t slept yet (laughs).

Interviewer: You’re relatively newcomer to the band, Dizzy. So how do you feel you’re fitting in?

Dizzy: Well, it’s been three years now. I think if I hadn’t settled in I probably wouldn’t be on this boat.

Text on screen: The lure of the boat failed to tempt Axl from his bed.

Interviewer: Did you get much sleep last night?

Duff: Yeah.

Matt: I didn’t (laughs). I went out to a little party, jumped on the boat, and now we’re relaxing.

Interviewer: What are the plans for today?

Matt: For today, a little waterskiing...

Duff: That’s right!

Matt: Waterskiing, maybe a little jet skiing, maybe reeling in a couple of fish...

Duff: Yeah! We don’t do this all the time. We have done it a couple of times or so, but I mean, why are you down here? It’s like, how many people could say they’ve actually been on a boat cruising the Greek islands? So we said what the hell, let’s do it.

Interviewer: So what’s the typical way that you go by?

Duff: You have to take your money with you, you know?

(Laughter)

Duff: Just say: “We’re O-Zone friendly. How about you?”

(Laughter)