Guns N’ Roses
Although they were collectively off-the-rails as a matter of course, Guns N’ Roses had been an unstoppable force for the first few years of their worldwide fame. By the time they released their two-album Use Your Illusion splurge in September 1991, Axl Rose and his comrades were simply the biggest heavy rock band on the planet, with only Metallica registering as credible rivals. As a result, when the two bands announced a co-headlining tour for the summer of 1992, it could hardly have been a bigger deal.
Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion tour had started a year earlier, seven months prior to the albums’ release. At a show in St. Louis, Missouri, Axl took exception to someone taking photographs from the crowd, leaping into the throng and physically attacking the culprit. A riot broke out, leading to more than 50 people being injured and assault charges for the volatile frontman. With hindsight, this set the tone for the next two years, which became a rollercoaster of cancelled gigs, onstage tantrums and preposterous showbiz excess. The tour with Metallica began in July ’92. By this point, Guns N’ Roses were a 12-piece live band with backing singers and a brass section. Meanwhile, Axl Rose’s entourage included his own personal psychic (and two assistants). Things were getting silly and Metallica were not impressed. “[Axl is] a really spoilt personality,” James Hetfield observed to Classic Rock’s Johnny Black. “I don’t really have time to figure him out, but he’s a psychiatrist’s fucking dream.”
Whether it was because his band were no longer the unassailable critical darlings of the Appetite years or because he was simply a perpetually difficult bastard, Axl Rose was not endearing himself to James or his bandmates. All accounts suggest that Duff and Slash were amiable enough company at that point, but their leader was becoming an unpredictable pain in the backside. Support band Faith No More were temporarily ejected from the tour for slagging Axl off in the rock press. Even fans in Kansas got the hairdryer treatment, as Axl berated the entire city of St. Louis for the riot that, in all fairness, he had caused the previous year.
After a few gigs were cancelled due to Axl straining his vocal cords, the tour resumed at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium on August 8. During Metallica’s set, James Hetfield accidentally stood in the wrong spot and was roasted by an erupting flame-jet, receiving third-degree burns to his left hand. Less than generously, Guns N’ Roses then made fans wait for hours before finally starting their own set, during which Axl had a meltdown about sound issues and stormed offstage. A massive riot broke out. The next seven gigs were rescheduled as a result. In Las Cruces, Mexico, Axl insulted the local population from the stage and was showered with bottles. In Denver, Colorado, he left the stage midway through Guns’ set, with no explanation, leaving his band to play several songs without him.
“It was hard… dealing with Axl and his attitude,” James later noted. “It’s not something we’d want to do again.”
“Axl is a psychiatrist’s fucking dream”