“Destroyed everything”: Slash on the scariest show that he ever played
No one thinks that they are going to be risking their lives playing music. It’s all about giving the audience a show, and normally self-preservation mode isn’t a priority when the entire job is to play an instrument to the best of your ability. While Slash was more than capable of wowing a crowd through his guitar playing alone, he remembered one show being among the most dangerous experiences he’d ever had in the public eye.
Then again, no one gets a reputation as being in the ‘World’s Most Dangerous Band’ without having a few run-ins with hairy situations. Before Guns N’ Roses had even hit the big time, some of their shows had them in dire straits, including one show they played in Seattle where they had to hitchhike their way back to Los Angeles by the end of the night.
Once the cash started rolling in, though, that’s when things started getting out of hand. Whereas Appetite for Destruction is the kind of album that catered to their reputation as street rats, Axl Rose kept his wild animal demeanour reserved for the concerts, and when that came out, there was no telling what he was going to do.
Even though he was trying to give the audience a good time, there seemed to be one rule the crowd needed to adhere to: don’t you dare shove a camera in the frontman’s face. Despite everyone recording parts of a concert these days, Rose got agitated when he saw someone at the front of the crowd filming everything in St Louis. And when the security isn’t doing their job, Rose will happily do it for them.
In the middle of ‘Rocket Queen’, Rose dove into the crowd to confront the cameraman, eventually hitting him before storming off the stage and ending the show. And when people only get half a show from one of the biggest names in rock, they are probably not going to have the best time when they are asked to vacate the premises.
While Slash would normally let the show go on no matter what he was doing, he recalled that the audience didn’t even let them back out onstage, saying, “The whole place collectively destroyed everything. It was one of the scariest things I had ever seen. We were in the dressing room and I remember opening the door, and there are people out on stretchers and all bloody.”
This kind of stunt would have been any PR consultant’s nightmare, but Rose wasn’t about to dial things back. Even when releasing one of their later records, the frontman made sure to add a “Fuck You” message to St Louis for what he saw as lax security and no one handling the situation properly.
Fair play, but looking back on how things played out, it feels like Slash and Rose should have been parts of completely separate bands. There have been shows where the guitarist has played a solo with one of his cigarettes falling between his pants and his stomach, and yet if someone in the crowd so much as moved an eyelash wrong, Rose would cancel everything on the spot.
