2015.10.02 - Louder Noise - Full Disclosure: Bumblefoot on Guns N' Roses 2011 Rock in Rio Show

Transcript:

Bumblefoot: It's just a song, it's one ten-second little flub in the middle of a show in the middle of a tour in the middle of a lifespan of being with a band. And I could laugh at it. Honestly, I don't feel bad about it at all. I honestly don't. Sorry, I don't.

Bumblefoot: That was my first show back on the road after a car accident and I wasn't ready to tour. And I was just doing as much as I could as far as physical therapy, and it was helping that thing, but I got a 35 pound double neck guitar that I'm supposed to put on a broken neck for three hours, running around the stage while drugging myself up and killing myself up with whatever doctors are giving me to try and just get through it all. So Rock In Rio, around that time, like, between then and the next six months or more that we're on the road, my day before a show would consist of any variation and combination, and usually all at once, of Tramadol, flexural [?], steroids, 20 Advil - like a handful of 20 - like, they were amazing, that I didn't blow my organs up, and a bottle of Jagermeister. And still, you know, that would just barely help, you know.

So time to get on stage and in front of this huge wonderful audience, it's raining out so much the rain is getting higher than our pedal boards and they're sweeping the rain off the stage and it's just pouring, it's not stopping, and it's making pyro misfire and all this stuff. I mean, it was just a mess on that stage.

You know, back at the hotel there's so many of the Brazilian fans that we see all the time and everything. And they're friends. You can't even call them fans. At this point you seem them so much and you hang out and they're friends. One really cool girl she had this Star Wars helmet. Lou, sweetheart, hi Lou! And she had this always helmet and I remember I told her, I said, "Yeah, bring it to the show I'll put it on at the show." And so she did, she was at the front row. And so I got the helmet. And playing Welcome To The Jungle and me just being, you know, a bit of a mess but I was coherent. And put on the helmet and it was so wet and the skin was so pruned up and sticky and as soon as I put this helmet on it just went [making sucking noises], like, and it stuck to my face and I'm just like, "Oh shit!" And then as soon as I said, "Oh shit" my breath fogged it up and like, "I can't see and I can't get this thing off," like, "Fuck!" And it was like about time to take the solo, I'm like, "I could try and play this with this on, let me see if I can get this off with one hand and keep playing." So finally I got it like halfway up my head, it was so Spinal Tap, I'm just like nodding like, "Yeah!" it goes back down, "Fuck!".

So I'm trying to play the solo, which I've played a thousand times, I've played it right every time, I mean, you know, you know it, your qualified, you make sure you got it down, and you play. So I just had to stop in the middle of it, it was just such a mess and I couldn't see anything, and I had this thing on my head. So finally I just had to stop in the middle of the solo and take this helmet off and continue the solo. And I'm just laughing to myself, it's like I'm just thinking, "This is so Spinal Tap, this is mu life's Spinal Top moment, this is it." And played it through the rest of the show. By the next morning, hundreds of angry emails from Brazilians that I've destroyed their lives, I've destroyed the show, I've destroyed this, I need to be killed, I need to this, that. And to this day, every once in a while I still get one, "I can't believe you fucked up that song okay," over the helmet. That was my Spinal Tap moment.

Everybody I am Ron Bumblefoot Thal. I want you to subscribe to Louder Noise.

Transcribed this.

I got to say, criticizing someone who so diligently and professionally played the classic solos and went out of his way to make sure to do right by us, for a one-time-mistake - which was kind of funny - is very petty.