Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion Tour: The Crazy South American Leg
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I cite my sources and they may differ than other people's accounts, so I don't guarantee the actual accuracy of my videos.
Guns N’ Roses would take the world by storm with their debut LP Appetite for Destruction in 1987. Their long awaited full length follow up a double album named Use Your Illusion 1 and 2 would arrive 4 years later in 1991 after many delays.
The band supported the double album by touring the world for 2.5 years, playing nearly 200 shows and leaving a path of destruction in their footsteps. While a lot has been reported on the riots that happened in St. Louis and Montreal, one element of their tour that hasn’t been as widely reported was their deadly and dangerous trek through South America. Bombings,military coups, death threats, drug cartels and fan deaths,resulted in a lot of anxiety and tension around that leg of the tour. Guns N’ Roses Former Drummer Matt Sorum would perfectly summarize those dates in South America recalling in an interview with John Adam Meyers “I remember getting back to LA, and I was totally frazzled, like, it was one of the scariest tours I’ve ever that I’ve ever been on my life, and everything was just sort of in (the 500 with Josh Adam Meyers) disarray.” Let’s take a deeper dive into what happened.
A year and a half into the Use Your Illusion Tour, Guns N’ Roses barely made any money. While they sold out stadiums and arenas, their consistent lateness, legal problems, & paying overtime to their union staff night after night & throwing lavish parties left them with little to no money head. In ordre to have something to show for their efforts on the road their manager booked them some dates in south america in late 1992. . While they had played Brazil as part of Rock in Rio 2 in early 1991, it was only two dates and they never played any other countries in the continent.
You have to remember that at this point in time South America’s touring scene was not run by Live nation or ticketmaster, but rather questionable promoters set against a backdrop of political instability. The band would be playing dates in Venezuela, Chile, Columbia, Argentina and Brazil
The tour began on November 25, 1992 and ran until December 12th. The first show took place in Caracas, Venezuela. The band members including drummer Matt Sorum, bassist Duff McKagan and guitarist Slash themselves were suffering from drug and alcohol addiction and a growing rift between themselves and frontman axl rose who was wielding more power in the band.
Matt Sorum would recall in his book arriving in venezuela “By tHE TIME we got to Venezuela, I was in really bad shape. My alcohol and drug habits had long been out of control, but this was when I first began to realize that they might even cost me my life.” He recalled in the same book driving through the jungles of venezuela to score drugs only to wake up on his hotel balcony after several days being told he needed to go to a rehearsal.
The band’s show in Venezuela went reasonably well but as the band left the country and landed in Bogata, Columbia for their next show, the Venezuelan airforce staged a failed coup, the second attempt that year. While the band was already in Columbia their equipment and crew were still stuck in Venezuela.
Columbia at this point in time was extremely dangerous. Drug Lord Pablo Escobar was on the run and by this point in time foreigners were frequently being kidnapped in bogata . Sorum would recall landing at the airport in Bogata in his book saying “We each had an SUV, and I got into mine. There was one guy on either side of me, each clutching a machine gun. Two guys sat up front, and one of them also had a gun. We even had cops with machine guns riding motorcycles in front, beside, and behind us. When we pulled up outside our hotel, a tank and a load of armed guards were out front. I said to Doug, “What the f. . . . What’s the tank for?” Doug gave me a serious look. “To protect you guys. The band was ordered not to leave the hotel for their own safety and Guns N’ Roses were supposed ot play two shows in Bogata but due to their equipment being stuck in Venezuela they cancelled one show Then a torrential downpour caused the stage to collapse resulting in their concert being delayed.
As the band
