Gig of the year, for all the wrong reasons
09.02.10
I had some flashbacks today, to the summer when I was 15 or 16 when I was minding my small niece. My sister had something unheard of in my young life; namely MTV. MTV was a lot different then.
I remember just two songs that stood out. One was Wild Wild Thing by the Escape Club. The video was weird. My niece seemed to like it but she was only about 2 anyway. The other was Sweet Child of Mine by Guns’n'Roses. When I got back home, none of my friends had heard of this band, even the so called metalhead. I couldn’t understand why the song wasn’t a huge hit. I can’t remember clearly, but the song had to be released a couple of times before it got adequate airplay to chart and it’s possible that it depended on festival appearances at the time. I didn’t do festivals when I was 15 or 16.
My brother didn’t think too much of Sweet Child of Mine, but when Welcome to the Jungle came along, he went nuts for Guns’n'Roses. For his short life, apart from Bad Religion, Axel Rose was it. He even got my mother interested. We sort of lost interest in Guns’n'Roses at home sometime after the Use Your Illusion albums, so except for the fact that one of my friends was interested in going, I probably wouldn’t have bothered going to the O2 tonight. Or last night. Not sure which as it’s after midnight now.
The support act was some dude from Canada called Danco Jones or something like that. He came on and played for something like an hour. I can’t say we liked him too much to be honest. Maybe I’m too old. Maybe I drew the line at songs about oral sex and wanting to fuck girls you really like. I don’t know. Not heartbroken when he went off, despite his huge eulogy about how he loved Thin Lizzy and how Thin Lizzy inspired his band so much. I wasn’t such a fan of TL – maybe a little young for that – but I know enough of their music to feel the inspiration was somewhat filtered by time. Either way, I’ve lived in Dublin for 10 years, and while some dude from Toronto might think I’m amazingly lucky to walk the same streets that were walked by Phil Lynott, I can’t say it has ever weighed too heavily on my mind.
We then waited for over an hour for Guns’n'Roses to appear.
I’m not used to this to be honest. I gather the band has a rep but pretty typically in the O2 gigs start and end on time. They have a regular curfew of around 11pm although I’ve been in club gigs there until well after 1. So they can arrange exceptions on occasion. That club gig, however, started on time where the support played 2 hours and the headliner played for 4. So I didn’t worry about the curfew so much. It was clear, however, the crowd were getting more than antsy. Up in the balcony we had well more than enough time to get bored with Mexican waves and down on the floor, they were starting to boo. Quite vocally as it happens. Twitter started to light up with comments along the lines of “no sign of the band yet”, and “no one is sure quite when Axel Rose is going to turn up on stage”. The people you’d get talking to were increasingly frustrated. I knew that they’d been late on stage the previous night in Belfast, but apart from that had only heard that they played two hours. I assumed it had been a late but great gig. I could possibly have lived with this.
When the band eventually arrived on stage, it was after half past ten. They were not greeted with much by way of adoration. The chorus of boos just got louder and louder and louder and the band didn’t really open with anything that would have set the gig on fire at that stage.
A couple of plastic bottles flew and Axel immediately said one more bottle and they were off stage. To be honest, at that stage, I probably wouldn’t have cared. We were at the venue at 7ish, had sat through a woeful support act, and the highlight of the evening had been the trip up the Dublin Wheel which was quite nice. Great view over the port. Plan to do it with a camera some evening. I never saw the bottle that finished his patience – but it came just 22 minutes after they went on stage.
The tickets cost 75E and Axel Rose, who was nearly 90 ,minutes late for his concert anyway lost patience with the crowd after 22 minutes and walked off the stage. Am inclined to think that those waiting 90 minutes are slightly more entitled to a little anger and frustration. But then, since I was one of them, you can make of that what you will.
It’s fair to say the crowd were unimpressed. I can’t condone the flinging of plastic bottles on the stage; however, I have zero time for a band who troop on stage almost an hour and a half late and there is no way the flinging of bottles would be happening if they showed up when they were expected to by the majority of the crowd. Someone came on stage to tell us they had technical problems. No one really believed that they were technical problems of the nature that a fuse might be gone in the firework display.
I watched the twitter stream about the gig on my phone for about a half an hour. We were basically waiting for someone to come back and say whether the gig was going to end at 22 minutes or what…they did admit they were trying to persuade Axl Rose to come back on stage.
I felt sorry for them. When I say the crowd was fractious, this is not an exaggeration. Every movement on stage was greeted with an increasing chorus of boos. I’ve been going to concerts regularly since I was 17, some big, small, good bad, a few indifferent. But I’ve never seen a crowd react like this to a gig,. They were furious they’d been forced to wait; they were furious about the walk off. They were furious that no one was actually saying anything.
We waited until about 20 past 11. I don’t think we really believed the band were going to come back on; just kinda wanted it said officially. When we gave up and went to the loo, somehow, someone had persuaded Axel to get himself back on stage. Who knows how. He opened up with Live and Let Die I think. Do I care? Not really. The first 20 minutes hadn’t set my heart on fire; the band didn’t have the support of the crowd; quite the opposite actually. We missed his arrival but I’ve heard he dismissed the fans who hadn’t walked out as being pathetic. I’d like to hope that wasn’t true but…oh well. They played for about 90 minutes nonstop, and yes, they did play Sweet Child of Mine. At some point, they played Paradise City. There seemed to be rather a lot of solo instrumental pieces, one on the piano that sounded somewhat not unlike elevator music and the Pink Panther Theme on the guitars. I’d probably have loved that last one if it had turned up in the middle of a regular concert, and not in the middle of one that was running 2 or 3 hours late, had consisted of the band blaming the crowd for the mess – the mess which could be traced back to the band showing up nearly an hour and a half late for their own gig, but in truth all I felt was that this was just like filler sound.
Only about two thirds of the crowd hung around to hear the rest of the gig. I don’t think they came on board really for it; I thought it was flat. I played with my phone quite a lot; watched the twitter feed. I’d almost have liked to hear the calls to the Adrian Kennedy Phone show on FM104, a station I hardly ever find on the radio dial. At some point they stopped for about 30 seconds and came straight back on. I honestly think they didn’t even dare try to challenge the crowd to demand an encore and anyway, the boos were still echoing around the O2. When they eventually finished, everyone in the auditorium pretty much just left. No major cheering, no major applause. No one seemed to really care all that much. By the time we got out of the building, a car with darkened windows was leaving the O2. The parting crowd assumed it was Axel and voiced their displeasure pretty clearly. I can’t say I really blame them.
Anyone who had to travel from outside Dublin for this gig; I feel a bit gutted for them. It’s clear to me that for some people, Axl Rose is some sort of hero and something like what happened to night has to be somewhat disillusioning. Do I care that Slash wasn’t there? Not really. I’ll be interested to see what MCD have to say tomorrow. A lot of people are going to be looking for money back I suspect.