Botte and Chaos: the Guns N ‘Roses concert ends up in fight

It is the night of July 2, 1991. The Guns N ‘Roses are in the middle of the “Use Your Illusion Tour”, which left at the end of May after a series of “heating” dates (including the two concerts held on the stage of rock in Rio, in Brazil, in January): according to the initial plans, the series of concerts should have seen Axl, Slash and companions present the songs contained in the ideal sequel to the ideal sequel. R lies “. The publication of the disc, however, originally scheduled for the spring of 1991, was postponed to September of the same year.

Between May and June the tour led the band to perform in some cities of the United States of America such as East Troy, Noblesville, Toledo, Richfield, Toronto, Philadelphia. In music magazines and newspapers, the comments are not so enthusiastic: the press has fun shooting at the Losangeline rock band, especially for the drained and pissed attitudes of the frontman, which argues with the fans, barrels with the security of the various places where the tour makes a stop, it reaches concerts with hours of delay (Axl will take a game of the press and the music critics in “Get in the ring”, A song contained in the second volume of “Use Your Illusion”).

It is the night of July 2, 1991 – we said. Tonight the tour of the Guns N ‘Roses makes a stop arrives at Maryland Heights, a small town in the county of St. Louis, in the state of Missouri. Axl, Slash and companions are on stage on the stage of the Riverport Amphitheatre: the concert opens on the notes of “Perfect Crime”, a new song by the band, one of those that will then flow into the diptych of “Use Your Illusion”, and continues with “Mr. Brownstone” (from “Appetite for Destruction”, the first album of the Guns N ‘Roses) and with the cover of the cover of “Live and Let Die” by Paul McCartney and his Wings. There is no shortage of pieces that heat the crowd as “Patience”, “November Rain” and “Welcome to the Junlge”, the irresistible opening song of “Appetite for Destruction”.

Everything seems smooth, on stage. But inside the Riverport Amphitheatre the atmosphere seems rather hot: the audience is a little unruly and this makes Axl nervous. Kim Neely by Rolling Stone, who had been entrusted with the task of following the Guns N ‘Roses on tour for two months and that he was also present at the concert at Maryland Heights, in an article published on the pages of the magazine in September 1991 will say that some spectators launched bottles towards the stage (also hitting the members of the band) and that a group of motorcyclists bullied other spectators in the first ranks of the Auditerre.

One of these motorcyclists, in particular, begins to annoy Axl from under the stage, who asks for the intervention of the Security. The security officers, however, remain with their arms that do not intervene. The singer leaves the microphone – he was singing “Rocket Queen” – and he gets off the stage to solve the question by himself. It is only at that point that the members of the Security decide to intervene: sensationally, they do not intervene in favor of Axl, but against the singer. Flying Ceffoni, Axl loses a contact lens, sees nothing. They bring him back to the stage, he looks around and leaves: the band sets the tools and follows him.

Fans are waiting for about ten minutes: then, the lights light up. And the catastrophe breaks out, the one that will be remembered as the Riverport revolt, the “Reverport Riot”: the spectators, angry, begin to split everything. Other than “Welcome to the Jungle”. The Guns N ‘Roses, behind the scenes, is reported what is happening in the room: they try to remedy by returning to the stage, but it is now too late. There is nothing more to do: the place is turned upside down, upside down.

To make it short: 60 injured, 16 arrested and 200 thousand dollars of damage to the theater. Tour instrumentation to be thrown away. The Guns N ‘Roses will not put foot in St. Louis until July 2017. Welcome to the Jungle.