GNR rolls into Indy this September at Lucas Oil. They have had plenty of tours back in the day, but one was filled with the most excitement and controversy.
On the Use Your Illusion Tour, Guns N’ Roses finally got to prove their mettle as arena- and stadium-filling superstars. After a year off the road, they shook off the rust during two headlining performances at Rock in Rio II in January 1991, debuting a slew of new songs off the yet-unreleased Use Your Illusion albums and a new lineup that included drummer Matt Sorum and keyboardist Dizzy Reed.
From there, they zigzagged across the globe for more than two years, playing 194 shows in 27 countries, making the Use Your Illusion Tour one of the longest treks in rock history. It’s a testament to GNR’s popularity and stubbornness that they stuffed sets with new songs that didn’t get released until several months into the tour — and that these unknown tunes received rapturous feedback from audiences nonetheless.
More than its incendiary live performances, though, the Use Your Illusion Tour lives in infamy for its myriad controversies, both onstage and off. Axl always showed up late and was prone to onstage tantrums. He stormed offstage and cut shows short several times, in some instances causing audiences to riot and rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage.
While Rose was throwing tantrums, the other members of Guns N’ Roses were caught in the throes of addiction. Bassist Duff McKagan was guzzling vodka by the quart, while Slash‘s heart stopped for eight minutes after he overdosed on heroin in a San Francisco hotel room.
Guns N’ Roses’ appetite for dysfunction made them punching bags in the press and enemies of their tour mates, such as their stadium co-headliners Metallica and opening act Faith No More. It also prompted guitarist Izzy Stradlin to quit the band in 1991 after getting sober and realizing he could no longer stomach their hedonistic lifestyle and the glacial pace at which they got things done.
May 16, 1991: Axl Rose Breaks Foot at Warm-up Ritz Gig
The Use Your Illusion Tour hit its first major snag early on: During the band’s third and final warm-up date at the Ritz in New York, Axl Rose took a flying leap off a speaker during “You Could Be Mine” and broke his foot when he landed. “Have you ever heard the expression ‘break a leg’?” he asked the crowd after the song. “Well, I think I just did.” At least it wasn’t a total waste: The band used footage from that night, including Rose’s flying leap, in the “You Could Be Mine” video. Rose played the next several dates in a cast, a harbinger of the costly accidents that would plague the rest of their tour.
June 10, 1991: Axl Rose Leads ‘Get in the Ring’ Crowd Chant
On June 10, 1991, Axl Rose told the crowd at New York’s Saratoga Performing Arts Center that Guns N’ Roses had just recorded the final track for their Use Your Illusion albums. They just needed the fans’ help for the finishing touch. Rose led the audience in a “Get in the ring!” chant, which later appeared on the caustic screed that called out the band’s critics by name. Rose issued a stern warning to the crowd afterward: “If you didn’t yell, don’t tell your friends you sang on this motherfucking record.”
June 13, 1991: Axl Rose Challenges Philly Fan to Fight
Guns N’ Roses’ June 13, 1991, show in Philadelphia screeched to a halt when Axl Rose spotted a fan fighting with band photographer Robert John. “Come up here, you little punk,” Rose dared the fan after he apparently flipped the singer off. “You’re a stupid motherfucker. You just had the shit kicked out of you, and you keep asking for more!” Guns finished their set after security ejected the fan — which wasn’t always the case after Rose’s onstage meltdowns during the Use Your Illusion Tour.
July 2, 1991: The Riverport Riot
The Riverport riot is arguably the best-known moment of mayhem in Guns N’ Roses’ checkered history. During the band’s July 2, 1991, show at the Riverport Amphitheater in St. Louis, Axl Rose spotted a fan taking pictures from the crowd and told security to stop him. When they didn’t move quickly enough for Rose, the singer yelled, “I’ll take it, goddamn it!” and leaped into the crowd himself as the band vamped on “Rocket Queen.” When Rose returned to the stage, he shouted, “Thanks to the lame-ass security, I’m going home!” before slamming his microphone on the ground and walking offstage, followed by his bandmates. The crowd proceeded to obliterate the amphitheater in a riot that resulted in dozens of injuries and arrests and hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage. Rose was charged with inciting a riot but evaded arrest as the band embarked on a European tour. He was finally booked a year later, but a judge found him innocent.
Aug. 31, 1991: Izzy Stradlin Plays Final Show as Guns N’ Roses Member
With the release of Use Your Illusion imminent, August 1991 should have been a joyous time for Guns N’ Roses. But behind the scenes, the band was splintering. On Aug. 31, 1991, the last day of the first European leg of the Use Your Illusion Tour, guitarist Izzy Stradlin played his final show as a member of Guns N’ Roses at Wembley Stadium. He would announce his resignation a few months later, citing Axl Rose’s increasingly dictatorial rule and intra-band dysfunction that didn’t jive with his newfound sobriety. Fear not, Stradlin fans: The rhythm guitarist briefly returned to the Use Your Illusion Tour at a later date — because there’s no such thing as an easy exit in Guns N’ Roses.
April 6, 1992: Axl Rose Gives Explicit Pep Talk in Oklahoma City
Axl Rose was in rare form during Guns N’ Roses’ April 6, 1992, show at Oklahoma’s Myriad Arena. “Do you believe all the shit you read?” he asked the crowd before launching into one of his signature, expletive-laden stage rants. On that night, Rose implored fans to follow their dreams and ignore the skeptics who “[don’t] want people like you to realize that you can do whatever the fuck you want with your goddamn life.” He ended his colorful pep talk with by invoking fellow rock star Paul McCartney. “When they’re trying to keep you down, just hold on and know that someday, you’ll bust out and you’ll get onto your own shit, and they won’t be able to fucking keep up with your ass,” Rose said. “And you can be thinking, ‘Just live and let die, motherfucker.’”
July 12, 1992: Axl Rose Arrested for St. Louis Riot
More than a year after fans tore the Riverport Amphitheater to shreds, Axl Rose was finally arrested for his role in the St. Louis riot on July 12, 1992, when his plane touched down at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. After waiting in custody for 10 hours, Rose hopped into a limo with MTV News correspondent Kurt Loder on the way to his hotel. The singer told Loder he “basically spent [his] time writing autographs for cops” and revealed that he’d agreed to two years of probation. A judge found Rose guilty of property damage and assault later that year and ordered him to pay $50,000 to five local community organizations on top of his probation.
July 29, 1992: Axl Storms Offstage After Getting Hit in Groin With Lighter
TheGuns N’ Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour hit an early snag on July 29, 1992, when Axl Rose stormed offstage in the middle of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” during the band’s performance at East Rutherford, N.J.’s Giants Stadium. The band vamped for another five minutes before Duff McKagan announced that Rose had left because an audience member hit him in the groin with a lighter and that the show was over. On the bright side, GNR cut their set short by only a few songs. According to the Los Angeles Times, some fans booed the singer, but for the most part, “the crowd accepted the announcement and headed for the parking lot.”
Aug. 8, 1992: The Montreal Riot
You’d think Axl Rose would have learned not to storm offstage early after getting arrested for his involvement in the Riverport riot. But old habits die hard, and on Aug. 8, 1992, the hot-tempered frontman left Montreal’s Olympic Stadium after less than an hour, citing throat problems and faulty stage monitors. Guns N’ Roses were in the middle of a co-headlining trek with Metallica, and they were supposed to save the day after a pyro accident left James Hetfield covered in burns and forced them to cut their set short. Instead, GNR showed up late and ended early, and the people of Montreal promptly began smashing windows, flipping cars, setting fires and even uprooting a street lamp. Police in riot gear used tear gas to contain the mob and reportedly made “at least a dozen arrests.” Six co-headlining shows had to be rescheduled due to Hetfield’s injuries, and the Montreal riot further tarnished Rose’s reputation.
Summer 1992: Mike Patton Pees on Axl Rose’s Teleprompter
Faith No More might have fattened their coffers when they opened for Guns N’ Roses and Metallica in the summer of 1992, but the experience was hardly pleasant for the alt-metal misfits. “It was such a drag touring with [GNR], I hate to say it. They treated us like shit,” Faith No More singer Mike Patton told Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian and Sepultura guitarist Andreas Kisser in May 2021. “They paid us really well, but we were really, just every day, looking for something fucked up to do. So one day, I just took it out, and I pissed all over his teleprompter.” There was surely no love lost between both bands when Faith No More left the tour two weeks early to fulfill prior commitments.
September 1992: Slash Dies for Eight Minutes
While Axl Rose’s onstage tantrums garnered loads of press on the Use Your Illusion Tour, the other members of Guns N’ Roses were busy indulging their own vices in private. The debauchery reached its peak one night in San Francisco during the band’s 1992 co-headlining tour with Metallica, when some drug dealers visited Slash’s hotel room around 5AM. “They had everything, and I took all of it,” the guitarist told The Guardian in 2004. “I started down the hallway and I ran into a maid, and I asked where the elevator was and then bam! I collapsed.” Slash reportedly died for eight minutes due to cardiac arrest before paramedics revived him. He recalled: “They took me to the hospital, but I said, ‘I’m fine,’ signed myself out, went back to the hotel and we flew to the next gig.”
Sept. 9, 1992: The Axl Rose / Kurt Cobain VMAs Beef
After Nirvana declined Axl Rose’s invitation to open for Guns N’ Roses on tour, Rose slagged off Kurt Cobain and his wife Courtney Love during a concert in Orlando, calling the frontman “a junkie with a junkie wife” and saying, “If the baby [Love and Cobain’s newborn daughter, Frances Bean] is born deformed, I think they both ought to go to prison.” The couple responded the following week at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards by asking Rose, “Would you be the godfather of our child?” Rose, flanked by bodyguards, then wheeled around and told Cobain — who was holding his three-week-old daughter in his arms — “You better keep your wife shut, or I’m gonna take you to the pavement.” Without missing a beat, Cobain looked at Love and wryly shouted, “Shut up, bitch!” Drummer Dave Grohl further poked the bear by repeatedly yelling, “Hi, Axl!” into the mic after Nirvana’s “Lithium” performance.
April 4, 1993: Sacramento Fan Cracks Duff McKagan With ‘Bottle of Piss’
Guns N’ Roses cut their Sacramento set short when, as Slash put it during his stern rebuke of the audience, “Some asshole just hit Duff [McKagan] up the fucking head with a bottle of piss.” Axl Rose also took his turn excoriating the crowd: “I hate to ruin your fun and our fun, but somebody just hit Duff in the head with a bottle, and now he’s not able to play. So, we’re sorry, have a good night. And if you find the asshole, kill him.”
That one toour had more controversy that most bands see in a lifetime.
UCR
