When I was at college at the age of sixteen I
was an open, unashamed and vocal fan of Guns ‘N’ Roses and still am to be
honest. For some reason there was a lot of fans of the band who chose to keep
quiet about it, which I thought was a shame because if more people had spoken
up then we could have all enjoyed it. I remember a house party one night where
we all stood in a circle singing (shouting) along to the Appetite for
Destruction album several times in a row and everyone was word
perfect, this is one of my happiest memories from college. At the end of that
academic year, I travelled by coach with three friends to see GnR at the Milton
Keynes Bowl which just happened to be my first big concert. This is during the
time that the band were becoming a cartoonish parody of an over indulged rock
band; backing singers, brass section, bloated solos, and Axl Rose’s rambling
monologues and walk offs between each song. The show we saw at Milton Keynes in
the summer of 1993 was thankfully a different matter altogether. Somebody
(maybe the last living person brave enough to do so) had possibly taken the
band to one side and told them that they looked like idiots and that Spinal Tap
comparisons weren’t too far away because we saw a stripped back to basics
concert with just the band (including a reappearance from Izzy Stradlin
following his replacement Gilby Clarke breaking his arm) playing their arses
off. This included an acoustic set which place seated at the front of the
stage.
We all know what happened next of course; Guns
‘N’ Roses imploded and went a bit shit then kept us waiting sixteen years for a
substandard album. Actually, Guns ‘N’ Roses didn’t do that, Axl Rose did that.
Axl managed to disappear into his own little world with his head wedged firmly
up his own bum for what seemed like forever only for it to not to be worth the
wait. When I went to see them in Nottingham in 2012 I went expecting to be
writing a damning review of a singer who should give up and fuck off. More of
that later.
The reason I am writing about Guns ‘N’ Roses
today is that my interest in the band’s music was stirred up again after
Nottingham singer Ande Hunter posted one of his semi-regular cover versionvideos, this time of the song ‘You’re Crazy’. While working in my office last
night I looked up the band on YouTube and was pleased to find the full concert
from Paris in 1992 (amazingly this was 23 years ago, when did I become old
enough for things to have happened TWENTY THREE years ago?). This was at a time
when only a handful of your friends had Sky Television and would video anything
notable to share at school (or in my case college). Channel Four broadcast a
heavily edited version of this concert later on but it was round a friend’s
house that I watched this full concert, originally a live pay-per-view event.
Watching this through my 38 year old eyes was
rather telling, as not only was I transported back to my youth but also I was
amazed at how professionally the band acted during this show. Guns ‘N’ Roses
have a reputation (mostly Axl’s fault of course) for being less than punctual,
we all know that, but they were trusted to perform a live television event and
they didn’t let anyone down. When they appeared at the Freddie Mercury tribute
concert they behaved themselves for the occasion too, proving that he can do it
when he applies himself.
On his occasion all of the Spinal Tappery was
there; I suppose if nobody dare tell you how ridiculous you look then you just
try and raise the bar until outrageous behaviour becomes normal and nobody bats
an eyelid, look at Michael Jackson for example – nobody reigned him in and look
where it got him. However, the music was of the highest standard and the band
was on top form. When a band has known each other for such a long time they
will of course get used to reading each other, as a result of this the ‘proper’
lineup of Guns ‘N’ Roses played wonderfully together when they were on top
form. The audience thought that Axl had walked off at one point but it was only
because Lenny Kravitz was doing a guest turn, performing ‘Mama Said’,
introduced here as ‘Always On The Run’, before Axl returned to the stage. Later
on they were joined by Steven Tyler and Joe Perry and Axl genuinely looked like
an excited child who had won a competition. It is a shame that the band fell
apart how they did and that the last thing the original lineup did was The Spaghetti Incident, a patchy album of covers.
I went with my notepad and pen to the
Nottingham Arena to see them in 2012 as a reviewer for the Nottingham
Post and as I said earlier, I was expecting to write one of my
scathing articles about a once great name being dragged through the mud by a
lead singer who cheapened his band and reduced them to nothing more than a
tribute act to a time gone by. The fact that they were fifty minutes late did
nothing to prevent my opinion changing, although (as I wrote in the review)
fifty minutes late in GnR time is early to everyone else. My planned review
went out of the window as Axl Rose showed immediately that he still had ‘it’,
and played a blinder. Still the showman running around and striking a pose, he
was almost the Axl of old. There are a few videos on YouTube of him forgetting
words or looking like he’s not entirely in the room, but despite a couple of
missed cues he was firing on all cylinders. Sadly the whole concert from that night
isn’t on YouTube but there are enough clips to patch the show together,
including evidence of a missed cue when he forgot to turn up for the beginning
of ‘You Could Be Mine’. What I did find though was the Milton Keynes concert
that I went to, and although it is piss-poor in quality (filmed on VHS from
miles away on a heavy 1990s video camera that must have been murder on the
shoulder of the poor bugger recording it), you can see what a great show the
original band used to put on. Obviously it is Axl’s attitude that we blame for
the demise, but how good would they be if placed on stage together after all
this time? Other bands have managed it, even bands that hate each other, but I
feel that this is one reunion that we will never find the golden ticket for.
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February housekeeping
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