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So much confusion, in retrospect. Many questions.
To be fair, you were 15.
And when you are 15 and your best friend wants to see his favorite band, it all sorts itself out. Tickets are bought, parents give nervous permission (they pretty much have to be involved: they are your ride for pick up and drop off), and… there you are, with approximately 20,000 other people, five years after Heavy Metal Parking Lot.
This is not to say that you don’t listen to Guns N’ Roses: everyone in your peer group does. It is a simple math: what is forbidden, banned, rebellious, what make parents nervous and upset… clearly, that is what you want to be around. And music corporations of the time would provide. They even put a sticker on it to let you know this was the “good stuff”.
As you recall the events of the evening, the confusion remains. How are you seeing this band on tour for a double album they have yet to release? Did you go on the first night or the second night (Wednesday, June 19thor Thursday, June 20th)? Did you catch Skid Row?
To answer: the bad boys of rock’n’roll don’t play by the rules, man (insert “f word” somewhere in there). Yes, they were touring for an album yet to be released, although one song from it was out and inescapable on radio. Another song was about to have a video on MTV, the song on a movie soundtrack. As one Youtube commenter puts it, “Terminator + Guns N’ Roses = perfection”. No, you can’t remember which night (summer break had begun, days of the week are more fluid at 15). Yes, you caught Skid Row, the crowd egging them on to perform an encore.
If this was an event worthy of a two-night arena stand, why are your memories of it ones of… boredom? The band represented everything that you were told that you should want. Didn’t you yourself have an appetite for destruction? Weren’t you eager to get on the night train, ready to crash and burn?
In any case… for your friend, this was a big deal. No matter what the crowd did around you, he stood, fists in the air, shouting “Slash! Slash!” over and over again. This was his moment and this was his band (you might be able to guess his favorite member). You were glad he was getting to have this experience, sure, but after a while you just… sat there.
You were finding out in real time that the area rock experience wasn’t for you; the acoustics were terrible, the connection with the performers minimal, the reaction from the crowd disconnected but reliable based on the metric of the particular “hit” being played. The band had the hubris to play material from an album not yet released, adding in cover songs that you did not realize were going to be included on the release. You misinterpreted this as set-filler. Live and Let Die? The theme song from a James Bond movie? The lead singer did the typical thing with the extended “chat with the crowd while the band tunes up” part of his stage banter, commenting on “the government” due to the venue’s proximity to Washington DC. He sounded like those guys you grew up with, ranting once again after having woken up at 2PM to catch re-runs of Charles in Charge, lying on the couch, deciding when it wasn’t too early to start drinking. Maybe James Brown put it best about that kind of line of talk.
You were polite about the whole thing with your friend, but noticeably quiet on the ride home as he excitedly recounted the concert to whichever parent had to feign interest. You had a lot on your mind. If this wasn’t for you, what was? Weren’t you a heterosexual white male? Wasn’t this what you wanted… sex and drugs and rock and roll? This whole lifestyle and way of being, served up to you on a silver platter by various corporations… didn’t you want your life to be like a beer commercial?
In 2025, anything that did “big numbers” from these years reliably plays on certain radio stations aimed at stoking nostalgia from a certain demographic. It is all “classic rock” now. But, at the time, you had big opinions about what was good and what was not, what was authentic and what was fake. And you walked away from that concert with a bad taste in your mouth.
When that big ol’ double album was released, a student at your high school pressured the administration on a Monday to announce its sale, at midnight, over the school intercom. You didn’t care. Another album, released a week later, was your area of interest, and you did go that Tuesday to pick it up. They had sold out of the CD, a national problem, no one anticipating the demand for it, but they did have it on cassette.
By summer 1992, you could had zero interest or inclination to make it out to the local bow of that big, troubled Guns N’ Roses / Metallica tour. The weird life you were looking for was elsewhere. Mostly in basements and warehouses, as it turned out.
