MUSIC HISTORY 101 AUGUST 8, 1992 - A riot broke out during a Guns N Roses and Metallica gig at Montreal stadium when Metallicas show was cut short after singer James Hetfield was injured by pyrotechnics. Guns N Roses took the stage but frontman Axl Rose claimed that his throat hurt, causing the band to leave the stage early. The cancellation led to a riot by the audience who overturned cars, smashed windows, looted local stores and set fires. The tour represented the hard rock event of the summer, bringing together two of music’s biggest acts at the peak of their commercial power. With Faith No More, Motorhead, and Body Count along for the ride as openers, ticket buyers were promised hours of heavy riffing and musical aggression, and on most of the 25 dates, that’s exactly what they got. The Montreal show, however, was a disaster — in more ways than one. The problems started during Metallica’s set, when James Hetfield was horrifically injured in a scary pyrotechnics accident that sent him to the hospital with second- and third-degree burns. “During ‘Fade to Black,’ I’m up there playing the part, and all these colored flames are going off,” he recalled during the band’s ‘Behind the Music‘ episode. “I’m a little confused on where I should be — I walk forward, I walk back, the pyro guy doesn’t see that I’ve walked back there, and [makes whooshing noise] colored flame goes right up under me.” Blasted by a column of fire in front of a live audience, Hetfield was in shock. “I’m burnt — all my arm, my hand completely, down to the bone,” he continued. “The side of my face, hair’s gone. Part of my back. … I watched the skin just rising, things going wrong.” The band cut its set short and called for immediate medical attention, but Hetfield also remembers the journey to the hospital being less than ideal. “The security guys are kinda walking around, and one guy bumps into my hand. I just lost it — I screamed and punched him right in the nuts,” he laughed. “This is pain I’ve never felt in my whole life and it won’t go away. I’m freaking at this point, you know?” Unfortunately, GNR’s set took freaking to a different level. Rose’s mercurial temper with concert crowds was already public knowledge — shortly before the Montreal show, he’d been arrested for charges stemming from a 1991 riot that erupted after the band walked off the stage during a stop in St. Louis — and he’d been complaining of vocal problems since the tour with Metallica started. In fact, it was just getting back on track after a handful of canceled dates. Slash had warned the Montreal Gazette that Rose had a hole in a vocal cord, but promised that the “typhoon of chaos” surrounding the group wouldn’t derail the show. According to the Gazette, GNR took more than two hours to take the stage after Metallica’s premature departure, and things went downhill from there. According to the New York Times, Rose lasted 55 minutes before ending the set, although the Seattle Times timed it at a far less charitable 15 minutes. Either way, after standing around waiting to rock only to hear Rose say “This will be our last show for a long time” and walk off the stage, the crowd turned to violence. “The PA fed back the entire time, the monitors fed back the entire time, the crowd was like, nonexistent,” Slash later told MTV. Added Rose, “We had just stopped the tour because I had throat problems. Came back, and I realized, ‘I’m gonna hurt myself.’ I told Slash, ‘Two more songs, if we can’t get it fixed, I gotta go.’ We did more than two more songs, and finally I was just, like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’ I looked over and Gilby was like, ‘Dude, I can’t hear. And Duff [McKagan] was like, ‘I can’t hear either.’ We had a little huddle, and we were like, ‘We’re outta here.’” Added Slash: “Montreal was just really creepy. Nothing against the people of Montreal — we had a great time hanging out there. I think it was the building itself.” Ultimately, out of the 53,000 or so in attendance, only an estimated 2,000 were involved in the riot, and aside from grotesque levels of property damage — which reportedly included an uprooted street lamp and an overturned police cruiser — the whole thing was kept from spiraling too far out of control by Montreal police, who showed up in riot gear, sealed off the area and used tear gas to quell the violence. When the dust settled, there were “at least three police officers and 10 rioters injured” and “at least a dozen arrests.” The whole mess made headlines around the world, giving Rose’s list of detractors more ammunition and furthering the band’s growing reputation for bad behavior. The Montreal Gazette recalls that when U2 visited the city a few weeks later, Bono cracked a veiled joke at Rose’s expense from the stage, pausing a few songs into the set and quipping, “What time is it? We gotta go.” READ MORE: aux.tv/2013/08/21-years-ago-today-montreal-rioted-at-a-guns-n-roses-and-metallica-show/ mcbeasty/22-years-ago-guns-n-roses-metallica-concert-ends-in-montreal-riot/ metallica.wikia/wiki/Montreal_1992 chom/montrealcalling/2013/06/25/guns-n-roses-and-metallica-at-the-olympic-stadium
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 20:30:22 +0000
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