Review

Guns N’ Roses Live In Las Vegas
By Ramanathan Sundararajan , Pure Rock Patroller
Monday, January 7, 2002 @ 2:02 PM

This is a late review of the concert. That’s cause I only just reached Sydney. I have to say that I loved every bit of the concert. Even the things that went wrong, I hope that my criticism is constructive and that Mr. Rose would read my insights and respect my views on everything that happened. To start off, I waited 11 hours to get into the Joint as I wanted a really good spot at GA (Golden Arena). The people there were very cool, we talked about GN’R, music, life, etc. Met people from “GNR Bar”. When we entered the Joint, this shocked the hell outta me. We weren’t put through a metal detector. All we were asked was if we were carrying any recording equipment. No one was even body searched. That sucked. I was very worried about the safety of everyone including the band throughout the concert. The concert was supposed to begin at 10:00pm, but it began at 11:00pm.

We were told that earlier, so we waited inside the Joint since like 8:00. I was right near the stage when the concert started off and you could hear Axl’s voice in the background while a video of an American soldier blowing stuff up was shown. Then they also showed money and gambling in Vegas, and the video said something along the lines off, “There is a holy system that runs under money, a system of life, and this is the system that you have destroyed…and for this you shall pay.” I think he was referring to the terrorists September 11th. They showed to a sickening point, money and Vegas, and then out of nowhere. I couldn’t breathe at this point, Axl ran out and started doing “Welcome to the Jungle.” At this point, there were people trying to jump me from the back to get my spot. A girl grabbed my ass and said she would “suck my dick for my spot.” I was like “Bitch, get your fucking hands off me.”

There were about 30 TV sets on screen that were running off a Macintosh displaying shit from what appeared to be very similar to ‘Winamp’. This wasn’t impressive to me. Heck I am a Comp Sci student, I can fucking kick ass with a budget like the thing they got. Axl, send me a mail anytime man. I will fly over and make your stage fucking cool.

Their TV’s were very low resolution and I could actually the see the Mac title on the Window and I thought it sucked really. There was even a time when Axl’s face was morphed and stuff, and I was like, man, with they kind of tech available, and their budget, they really needed some Plasma screens up there doing cool shit. They played a lot of old songs as you know. Like Axl said during Rio, they did play the fuck out of those songs. They sound very, very, very, very powerful with the current band. I think everyone was amazed.

Now to Axl’s speech. This was very confusing. From what I understood, he explained that he wasn’t aware that a European tour even existed as he was working on the new album. No one had told him, and that he had found about it while getting on the net. And he said, “Imagine my surprise when I read that it was sold out.”

He said that the management and the record company, all they cared about was the money they were making and that was precisely why the tour was postponed not cancelled, because they wanted to keep the money. As Axl refused to do the tour cause of time constraints, they had to cancel. Axl further talked about “Oh My God” and how that was just in a demo tape which the management insisted be put on the Arnie soundtrack which Axl said ok to hesitantly. Axl went on to say that they band had been working on the album for a long time, and that it kick everything else out of the fucking ball park. He said he didn’t know if we would like it, but all he could promise was that they would work very, very hard in order to produce a kick ass album. He talked about the fact that Buckethead and Finck hadn’t met before rehearsals for December 31st, 2000 and that was a problem. He said that there were all these people who were joining the band and some of them didn’t want to be here but they liked the image that the celebrity that the title offered.

Some of this stuff was unbelievable considering the common presumption that Axl has strict control over everything Guns N’ Roses, it seemed unbelievable that the management would do so much without his knowledge. The thing about Slash being there for the concert and not being let in, I didn’t see him and couldn’t vouch for that, it could just be a rumor as I am pretty sure Slash wouldn’t bother coming in to the concert as he would know that Axl wouldn’t allow it. That just seems stupid beyond belief.

I saw Robin Finck before the concert, I didn’t recognize him however. Ha ha. I thought he was just a wannabe fan. I looked at him strange and he looked back. He looked freaky, like his head shaved halfway. Looked mental. But in the concert got used to him. Axl looked cool. Lost a lot of weight as we know from the WNBC interview. He nearly tripped and fell while running on the encore. Buckethead was great too. Very talented music. Can’t compare him to Slash. Buckethead is too new-wave, cool, next generation, young, electronic guitarist. Very different from the Blues emotion filled magic that was Slash, but great in his own way. Finck was very talented. The whole band has a Slipknot like feel to it, because there are like eight members now. But, each one of them has distinct personalities. What was really freaky was the fact that Paul Tobias looked EXACTLY like Axl, except he had a beard and hair like Kurt Cobain and he played guitar like Cobain as well. That freaked me out. There was a time when the mike went off and Finck’s guitar went off and they threw that shit and walked off the stage. Axl actually walked off the stage around 4 times. There were people throwing t-shirts and KFC buckets on stage as well as Giving Roses to Axl, which he appreciated.

Concert ended with Axl throwing the mike to the audience, and that was it. They didn’t stay to shake hands or anything. I bought a beanie and two of the Guns shirts on sale.

I just want Axl to know that the concert meant a lot to me. Also the fact that Guns had meant a lot to me when I was a kid going thru my personal issues and listening to a Guns album was the only way I could relate and handle the situation. Thank you for everything, and I am sure you guys are gonna fucking kick ass, sell millions of records and shit. Throw me a line in sometime.

Your Fan. Through the Good, the Bad and the Ugly,
Still waiting for the record.

Source: knac.com