yes i love you Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 Not many bands have a 100% track record for causing sufficient mayhem to bring major festival organisations to their knees mid-set, and still get invited back to headline again.GNR are one such band and the two legendary UK promoters who played with fire and got burned, only to do it again, recount their experiences to VF.To be fair, Guns N' Roses' first disastrous run-in with a British festival wasn't their fault. The event in question, their outdoor UK debut, was Download pre-cursor Monsters Of Rock at Donington in August 1988. What should have been a landmark show for the ascending rock band ended in tragedy when two fans were crushed to death during their performance of 'It's So Easy'. Although the band initially took considerable flak for the incident, the official inquest pointed to a fateful combination of people at the front of the 107,000 strong audience moshing and slipping in the mud (it had rained heavily) in conjunction with a sudden surge to see the band.It would be fourteen years before Guns next graced UK festival soil for one of their most highly anticipated appearances of all time - at Leeds Festival in 2002 - marking the band's British return after a nine year absence and unveiling the controversial 'new' line-up.Speculation mounted in the days and weeks ahead of the event that the band wouldn't turn up and the fact that the stage was still unoccupied over an hour after their billed start-time caused many fans to fear the worst. But then something amazing happened - Axl Rose burst on-stage, flanked by a cast of unfamiliar but wonderfully charismatic freaks (one of which wore an expressionless face-mask and a KFC bucket on his head). It proved a spectacularly successful resurrection and if you closed your eyes, the most loyal fans of the original line-up would reluctantly agree that they had never sounded better. Amazingly, and against all odds, Rose had proved virtually everybody who doubted the validity of his decision to keep the old name alive with new musicians wrong in one dazzling performance.And then it went bad. Past midnight, just halfway into the set, the promoters wanted them offstage so as not to breach the festival's already delicate license."I didn't come all the way to England to be told to go home by some asshole!", fired Rose with a wonderful rebellious sneer, "Tell you what - I don't want to be accused of inciting a riot, but if you stay here, we'll stay, and we'll see what happens." For a moment, there was an uncomfortable air of confrontation. After all, this sort of thing hadn't happened for nearly a decade. Live outdoor music events were now safe, respectable affairs. Axl's beaming eyes revealed that he'd missed all this drama as much as we had and grown men were crying with joy.In an unprecedented turn of events, the council agreed to extend the festival's licence so the band could play on. Not so much as a gesture of good nature, but they sensibly pre-empted the likelihood of a riot otherwise. After all, it wouldn't have been the first time. The band eventually left the stage around 1am - unheard of on an outdoor stage at a major festival in the UK. The show remains one of VF's greatest all-time thrills, and one of the more triumphant outings for Rose and his new crew.But what was it like for the 'asshole' at the end of Rose's wrath? That's certainly no way to address legendary Festival Republic (then Mean Fiddler) boss Melvin Benn..."Yes that was an interesting one!", he tells Virtual Festivals today, laughing, "We really did work hard to make that work. We had the most extraordinary stage set-up with The Prodigy beforehand, so the change-over between them and Guns N' Roses was absolutely immense. We did all that and we worked our butts off, but at show time Axl was smoking his cigar, and didn't want to be interrupted in his own dressing room compound."It was massively, massively fraught backstage. I literally had my hands around his manager's throat at one point! And of course, eventually he came on, he performed and it was unbelievable. In fact I don't think I've ever heard a live band sound so close to the recorded songs. It was definitely worth waiting for, even in my frustrations [laughs] and, of course, I got my knuckles wrapped well and truly by the local authorities but they forgave me and we moved on. And we've got them back again this year."In spite of the above, Download Festival proved themselves to be gluttons for punishment by booking GNR to return to Donington as headliners in 2006. And guess what? The media was rife with speculation that they wouldn't turn up. This time, however, Axl Rose took his famous unpredictability to an all-new height and threw everyone by arriving on-stage seven minutes early!Four songs in, the band were well and truly rocking and the event organisers breathed a huge sigh of relief that would prove premature. Then, during 'Sweet Child O’ Mine', it all went tits up at the front-end, literally, as Rose slipped on a stage that had been lubricated by three days of bottle love, and he fell on his bum. He then stormed off the stage, to the promoters' horror.Backstage, it was unbridled chaos, as a Wild West-style showdown unfolded between the riot-fearing organisers desperate for the singer to get back out there immediately and the band's management demanding the entire stage be carpeted first. While all this was taking place, new guitarist Bumblefoot was despatched to the lions to ‘entertain’ the crowd. His choice of delivery was inspired – an instrumental rendition of ‘Don’t Cry’. But the tears were flowing behind the scenes for a good, tense twenty minutes until a compromise was eventually settled on which met with Axl’s approval – he would have to borrow a pair of rubber-soled trainers for the rest of the set.So in a bizarre Cinderella-style ritual, every member of the festival and stage crew in the vicinity was asked to remove their shoes until Rose selected a pair that met with his approval (and fitted his demure size 5 ½ feet). One shoeless stage-hand then went back to work, as did Guns N’ Roses. It’s fair to say that the set did not go down as one of their best, but it was certainly one of their most memorable.The man in charge of the festival that year, Stuart Galbraith, looks back on the episode as: "A lesson in how not to do a comeback show in one of the biggest markets in the world! It was embarrassing. It was almost like a Monty Python sketch, to be honest."He tells Virtual Festivals: "It all started with Axl Rose wearing leather-soled shoes and slipping over and then the manager and I had to convince the guitarist not to leave the stage because they'd had a fight on-stage and saying 'you have to go back on, otherwise we're going to have a riot, blah blah blah'."Echoing events that unfolded after the previous spectacle at Leeds, Galbraith believes there was some damaging aftermath caused to the festival, as he explains: "He finally got through the show and then it led on to all the trouble in the campsite and I'm sure it was a contributing factor to that."Incredibly, after all that, and having his own first hand experience of the phenomenon, Melvin Benn this year signed Guns N' Roses up to return not just to Leeds, but to Reading too for more inevitable dramas.Yet thankfully fans need not worry about a repeat of the post-show problems that blighted both Leeds and Download previously, according to Galbraith. "The fact is", he says, "That was all caused by a few irresponsible idiots and I'm glad to say the world seems to have moved on now - festivals are much more peaceful now."But surely he's one man sensible enough not to rush back into working with Axl Rose, right?"Actually I did the arena tour with them straight after Download! Was it awkward? They spent a lot of money in curfew charges - let's put it that way! [Laughs] It was fine. On their day, they're still a good band and he can still cut it on-stage."All VF can say is thank goodness for these people who keep going back for more pain by booking a band that is not yet statistically capable of playing a trouble-free show at a UK festival. Summer would be a great deal less interesting without them.Be sure to follow VF's coverage of the inevitable action and dramas as they unfold at this weekend's Reading and Leeds Festivals.http://www.virtualfestivals.com/festivals/reviews/8343/-/Guns-N-Roses-vs-UK-festivals Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yes i love you Posted August 25, 2010 Author Share Posted August 25, 2010 Reading will be totally unpredictable Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bangit Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 I haven't been so worried about a gnr gig since the first time i paid a lot of money to see them abroad in Lisbon 06. PLEASE CHRIST LET THIS GO DOWN WELL! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seely Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 I'm gonna be at both reading and Leeds....should prove interesting, to say the least! (Hopefully, it'll be interesting in a good way...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yes i love you Posted August 25, 2010 Author Share Posted August 25, 2010 Im going to Reading wearing My GNR shirt regadless of how many spotty (children!) sneer at me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seely Posted August 25, 2010 Share Posted August 25, 2010 Im going to Reading wearing My GNR shirt regadless of how many spotty (children!) sneer at me+1It's gonne be my Chinese Democracy shirt, too. Just to piss them off further Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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