The hidden message in Guns N’ Roses ‘Use Your Illusion’ liner notes
From its very earliest days, rock and roll has been about more than just music. For many, it is an outpouring of the spirit and energy inside them, a visceral release of their innermost feelings. For some, it’s a joyous expression of freedom, youth, and exhilaration, while for others, it is a spirit of rebellion and anarchy.
Also, from its earliest days, rock ‘n’ roll and controversy have always gone hand in hand. Whether it was Elvis shaking his hips on the Milton Berle Show or Bob Dylan plugging in at the Newport Folk Festival, there has always been a push-pull between the established order and the progress of the youth.
Sometimes, though, that spirit of freedom, rebellion and controversy can turn ugly, like at the Altamont Speedway Free Festival in 1969 when audience member Meredith Hunter was killed by security – supplied by the Hell’s Angels biker gang – when attempting to rush the stage during a performance by The Rolling Stones, or at the Isle of Wight festival in the same year when hundreds of thousands of fans stormed the festival site; tearing down the perimeter fences, heckling and throwing projectiles at many of the performers and eventually setting fire to the stage.
Ten years later came the infamous Disco Demolition Night, in which a crate of disco records was blown up on the pitch at Comiskey Park, Chicago, following a baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and the Detroit Tigers. Following the explosion at the end of the game, the crowd – reportedly over 50,000 strong – flooded onto the pitch wearing “disco sucks” T-shirts, and an “anti-disco” riot broke out. It doesn’t take a sociologist to work out the racial and homophobic undertones in the message from the straight white rioters.
About 300 miles away and 12 years later, another riot broke, this time at a Guns N’ Roses concert in Maryland Heights, Missouri, just outside St Louis.
During the performance of their song ‘Rocket Queen’ at the Riverport Amphitheater on July 2nd, Axl Rose spotted something in the crowd that he took exception to. Seeing someone in the audience taking photos of the band, Rose broke off from singing the chorus to order security – once more supplied by the Hell’s Angels – to confiscate the camera.
When the security didn’t respond to his demands quickly enough, Rose took matters into his own hands, saying, “I’ll take it, goddamn it!” before launching himself into the crowd and entering into an altercation with the offending fan. The music onstage fizzles out while Rose is brawling in the crowd. After striking both the offending audience member and the now-present security, he was dragged back to the stage, at which point he shouted, “Well, thanks to the lame-ass security, I’m going home!” and smashed his microphone into the ground and quit the concert.
The rest of the audience was so angered by the abrupt end to the show that they spent the next three hours rioting, during which time dozens were injured, and the band lost their equipment. Rose was later arrested and charged with inciting the riot, although a judge found that there was not enough evidence to support the charge.
While the charges didn’t stick, the lingering feelings of anger at the audience evidently did. Never a band who are famous for their subtlety, the group hid the message “Fuck You, St Louis!” in the thank-you sections of the liner notes of both Use Your Illusion I and II, which were released simultaneously on September 17th, 1991.
No strangers to controversy or upsetting their audiences, Guns n’ Roses wouldn’t perform in St Louis again for another 26 years until they brought their Not In This Lifetime Tour to the city in 2017. Any bad blood had washed under the bridge, and the show went off without any further violence or criminal charges.
