October 21, 1989 was a night that I got to see two of my favorite bands for the first time, and all these years later, still the only time. This was a very strange period of my life, just after I got out of the military but before I got married. I should have been assimilating back into society, but I went absolutely bonkers without the military rule over my every move and it wasn’t real smooth.
When I got discharged in August, I had a pile of money and no job and all I wanted to do was…. whatever. At the top of my to do list was getting hammered and I was extremely successful with that. A couple of months later my money was getting low and I came up with the idea of spending almost the last of it on tickets to see the Stones and Guns N Roses at the LA Coliseum. I got a pair from a ticket reseller that advertised in the LA Times. Not great, but not terrible. On the field to the Keith Richards/Slash side of the stage maybe 30 rows back. That ran me about $200 which was nuts at the time, but I decided to have this one last party and then sign up for unemployment. Then look for a job. I was a mess.
I went with a friend from high school and I was all jazzed up to see GnR in all their glory. This was almost a year after Lies came out and about two years before the Use Your Illusions. I thought they were a brilliant band that could do everything a rock band could do and it was them that got me to this show more than the Stones.
This was the third show in a four-night run for the Stones, GnR and Living Colour and there was quite a bit of drama in progress by the time we got there, thanks in part to the song “One In A Million” from the Lies album.
LIVING COLOUR
So, the opening band was Living Colour and I wasn’t crazy about their set. Their huge hit, “Cult Of Personality”, is a brilliant song that I absolutely love but I haven’t gotten into too much else of theirs. During the Thursday night show (the second show), Vernon Reid made a statement about not agreeing with some things that had been said on this stage during the Wednesday show:
“If you don’t have a problem with gay people, don’t call them (epithet). If you don’t have a problem with black people, don’t call them (epithet). I haven’t met a (epithet) in my life.”
Whatever you think of the issue, this whole back-and-forth was predictable as a large part of Guns’ brand was shocking people. But there was another bit of controversey regarding Axl ranting about people in the band playing with “Mr. Brownstone” and the band might break up because of it, etc.,
But as for Living Colour, they played their set and, as I recall, repeated the line about not calling people names if you don’t have a problem with them. The crowd was into their set throughout, but Cult Of Personality really got the place going as their final number.
GUNS N ROSES
This was pretty well everything I had hoped for. Obviously, this was the largest concert venue I had been to at the time and the L.A. Times says there were 72,000 people there. The stage was almost cartoonishly large with the huge lighting truss/superstructure/whatever you call it on both sides of the stage and above it. Guns N Roses was right at home with all that real estate and all those people and put on a great set.
The set was the killer songs from Appetite and Lies, plus “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” The people I was around all thought the whole “maybe the band’s going to break up” deal was kinda dumb and we figured it was aimed at Steven Adler and/or Slash and we really didn’t have the info then like we do now so we talked about it a bunch. But the show delivered and everybody was thrilled.
ROLLING STONES
Touring for Steel Wheels, the Stones were the CEOs of rock n roll and it would have been hard to find anybody in any of the circles I was running in that didn’t like them. Some absolutely revered them. I’ve always thought they were cool and I favored the songs that came out when I was around over the early ones. “Early ones” to me would mean ’60’s, including “Satisfaction.” The 70’s is where I get on board. I love Sticky Fingers and It’s Only Rock and Roll all the way through, which were a bit before my time, and the hits from Emotional Rescue and Some Girls.
I had Tattoo You rammed down my throat, but I really, really liked Undercover and Dirty Work. Not a lot of people would agree with me, but there it is.
Well, of course the opened with “Start Me Up” and that was a great moment I’ll never forget. Then they played “Bitch”, probably my favorite song of their whole history. They did “Sad, Sad, Sad” next and then they went back-to-back with “Undercover Of The Night” (Undercover) and “One Hit To The Body” (Dirty Work).
Couldn’t be going any better at this point as far as I was concerned.
It was a wild ride through the Stones’ unbelievable catalog the rest of the way and they ultimately played 25 songs. “Sympathy For The Devil” was a highlight with everything going dark to start and Jagger appearing way in the hell up on top of the lighting framework.
72,000 fans is one amazing thing to see at a show. Everything was big, big, big. The Stones were maybe the biggest band ever. GnR was the biggest thing going of that era. The stage, the crowd, everything. And when the Stones finished, they had a fireworks show that seemed like it went on forever. The walk to the car was a huge communal experience and when we got to our car, we hung out because absolutely nobody was going anywhere from where they logjam parked us in some lot a ways from the Coliseum.
Should I have spent my last pile of cash on this show? Probably not, considering I didn’t have any plan whatsoever for what kind of job I would eventually get and how I would get it. But this is my history and looking back I’m not surprised at all that I did this. It would be about two years before my wife showed up and my mindset started looking ahead and I got going on making tough decisions. At this stage of the game, I was letting it ride and whatever happened, happened. I wasn’t going to miss this.