It's Deja Vu All Over Again; GnR Cancels - Fans Riot
By
Long Paul,
Program Director
Friday, November 8, 2002 @ 7:46 AM
| Flight Problems Cause Cancella
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For those of you longing for the 80's to return, be careful what you ask for. The first date of Guns N' Roses North Amreican tour, the first in nine years, in Vancouver, British Columbia was cancelled last night because Axl's plane had mechanical problems...or was it due to bad weather in LA? It depends on who you ask. Either way, Axl's plane was stuck in Los Angeles while the rest of the group waited for his arrival at the venue, General Motors Place. Fans had seen it many times before, and they knew what to do.
After opening sets from CKY and Beastie Boys DJ MIx Master Mike, GnR was scheduled to take the stage at 9:30 PM local time. When Axl wasn't in the country by 8PM the show was called off. Pissed off fans used steel barricades to smash windows around the arena prompting the police to come down hard.
Using battons and pepper spray, concert goers said that the police literally went ape shit, swinging wildly at anything that moved and at times assaulting people who were already down.
The following appeared on CKY's website:
"Well, tonight we are in Vancouver, British Columbia. We were all ready to open our first show for GUNS N' ROSES, which I am psyched about, because GN'R is a great rock and roll band and I'm a huge fan of Buckethead and Brain especially. But 30 minutes before we were supposed to play, the show was cancelled — which led to 10,000 people outside rioting and police beating the shit out of people. Every single window and door to the GM arena was busted out and there were handcuffed people lined up outside on the ground. MTV News did a quick interview with us about it, i guess it will be on tomorrow. Now we are leaving to go play Seattle tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes. And I want to stress to people that as soon as December or January, we will be doing another headlining tour and making up whatever shows had to get postponed or cancelled due to the Tony Hawk tour and the GUNS N' ROSES tour. A European tour is coming in the future as well. Rock and goddamn roll."
While Clear Channel Concerts had no comment on the melee, a band spokesman did say that tonights show in Tacoma, Washington will go on as scheduled.
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