Where is the new group that captures the imagination of millions of teenagers around the world and reigns in the music industry over the pre-made products of the time? If we look at which groups are capable of gathering the largest numbers of audiences today, we realize that very veteran bands are those that perform in the largest stadiums: Rolling Stones, AC/DC, or Metallica.
One wonders why it has been so many years since a young band emerged that we can call the Real Deal, with capital letters, destined to break the mold and reign in the industry for a good season, standing up to the veteran dinosaurs already established.
Death At Donington
In that summer of ’88, Guns N ‘Roses traveled to Europe for the first time to play at the British festival Monsters of Rock, held in Donington, in the United Kingdom. The Guns were very excited by the opportunity: none of them had ever set foot abroad, except Slash, who had been born in England and had spent his first five years of life there (although he had never returned afterward). It was a special moment: their first concert outside of their country, before a large audience, just as they were becoming an international phenomenon. They weren’t even headlining at the festival, but they were undoubtedly the most anticipated band and the British public received them with as much or more hysteria than the American. An anticipated triumph.
After the show, while they were waiting to board their plane, manager Alan Niven wandered around with his face contorted in a grimace of distress; he looked almost ready to cry. The “gunners” asked him what was wrong with him and that was when they heard the news: shortly after finishing their concert, while waiting for the next group to perform, someone in the audience in the front rows had seen what looked like a hand sticking out from the mud. Screams of terror began to be heard. The hand belonged to the corpse of a young spectator who had been trampled to death by the crowd and was half-buried in the mud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81pLnPPkDfs
Axl Rose Taking Over The Show
Axl Rose was still the only “gunner” who did not have major problems with drugs or alcohol, but that made up for the fact that he had problems with practically everything else. Fame triggered his neuroses to absurd levels and he began to surround himself with therapists, counselors, shamans, and mediums while developing a strange love-hate relationship towards the press and his volatile mood swings began to blow up the public image – already in itself. bad – of the band, causing serious headaches for his bandmates.
The Band’s Chaotic Touring
Of course, when they decided to go back on tour – for the first time as headliners – Axl Rose managed to continue making the name of the group a synonym for chaos and scandalous headlines. His irascible personality, his growing megalomania, and inability to contain his impulses even in the middle of a performance dwarfed the exploits of what until then had been the most unpredictable “bad boy” of rock on stage, Jim Morrison. The list of incidents related to that tour is spectacular. Axl was not satisfied with always being late to concerts (sometimes two hours late, sometimes three, sometimes four …) but sometimes he would leave the stage for whatever reason, hitting someone in the audience, launching long monologues between song and song insulting his “enemy of the week”, he was engrossed in ridiculous speeches in which he unraveled his traumas of the moment before the perplexity of the public, and basically, he was in charge of guaranteeing a scandalous headline in each city they stepped on, before the despondent resignation of his companions.
The Beginning Of The End: Izzy Leaving
Nobody thought that Izzy’s departure was an announced end for the Guns. Many fans were annoyed that Izzy was being replaced by a less charismatic guitarist like Gilby Clarke, but Gilby was playing Izzy’s guitar parts correctly and the group went on touring. After all, Izzy had always been in the background and the public identified the Guns above all with the image of Axl and Slash. But the reality was very simple: since Izzy’s departure, Guns N ‘Roses have not released original material again.
Chinese Democracy
There are five guitarists, a bass player, two drummers, two keyboard players, two producers, and four “additional producers” in the credits for the highly anticipated Chinese Democracy album. And there is, of course, a vocalist, Axl Rose, the only original member of the band to appear on the album.