05/28/2026
35 YEARS AGO TODAY: May 28th, 1991 - Guns N' Roses play the first of two shows in Noblesville, Indiana at the Deer Creek Music Center. Read a next day review via The Indianapolis News:
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All GN' R fans needed was a little patience / Guns: Rose has little affection for Indiana
By MIKE REDMOND
The Indianapolis News
If tonight's Guns N' Roses show works like Tuesday's, you’d better take along something to read. You’re going to have some time to kill.
Last night GN’R fired up at 9:45 p.m. — an hour and 15 minutes after Skid Row finished its 60-minute opener. Word rumbling around the Media Dude Grapevine was that singer W. Axl Rose was having some trouble working up enthusiasm. shall we say. for playing in the home state he left 10 years ago.
The setting was perfect for a concert: A fat moon was drifting upward through the clouds, and the big stage glistened under huge banks of lights. The night air was warm and pleasant, the audience happy and excited. All it needed was a band.
After an hour of No Band, the crowd began to grow agitated — chanting “Bull·—! Bull·—!“ at the stage. Slasher movie clips and cartoons shown on video screens had long since ceased to appease an amphitheater full of people expecting to be entertained.
But once the music started, all seemed to be forgiven — and not without reason.
What followed was some of the best hard, uncompromising rock and roll played around here this year, backed up by remarkably good sound and video systems.
Playing a 16-song, hour-and-15-minute (plus encore) set dominated by material from its forthcoming ‘‘Use Your Illusion" I and II albums, GN'R didn’t seem to have lost any power in two years of laying low. If anything, the band has grown without sacrificing that street legitimacy that made them such an attractive, real alternative to sissified hair-spray rock back in 1988.
And it’s pretty cool for a band to plow through a set full of songs the audience doesn’t know. It gives the show an edge that can be sadly missing from the Greatest Hits Compilations called concerts nowadays.
Best song of the night? “Estranged.” written about a person but applicable. Rose said, to Indiana ("A place that makes me feel estranged"). It starts as a power ballad and builds, slowly and steadily, urged forward by Slash’s (Saul Hudson's) guitar, to a grandiose finish.
Other good stuff: "Civil War." "Patience," "Fourteen Years," "Dancing with Mr. Brown-stone," "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," and a surprisingly good cover of "Live and Let Die," the Paul McCartney song written for the James Bond movie of the same name.
Slash was in good form. One particularly effective solo segued from hot licks and showoff tricks into the theme from "The Godfather" — and it worked. His solo on "Double Talking Jive" shifted into an excellent pseudo-flamenco ending.
Rose sounded good. too. If all you know of his voice is that nasal, wide-vibrato top end (described as Ethel Merman crossed with Jerry Lewis) then you’re missing his best — a powerful baritone register that stands apart from the air-raid siren school of rock singing. He understands dynamics, too — dropping the volume to give the music drama and anger in that menacing low end.
Rose’s comments about Indiana — “1 grew up in this state for two-thirds of my life and it seems to me there are a lot of (bleeping) scared old people in this state” — indicate there may have been some truth in what the grapevine was saying about an attitude attack before the show.
They also indicate it may be a while before ol' Axl is invited to sing "Back Home Again in Indiana" out at the racetrack.
But that’s Guns N’ Roses. This has always been a band that demanded to be taken on its own terms and has been good enough to make that demand.
The problem is the terms also include a price of $22.50 per ticket. Seems to me the people who pay it have a right to demand that the concert start at a reasonable hour, and a wait of 75 minutes between acts is squeezing reasonable until it screams.
Skid Rows' set began with a take-no-prisoners urgency that was crippled, unfortunately, by muddy sound. The mix started to smooth out about five or six songs into the set and by the end of their hour became ... acceptable.
It would have been nice to have the guitar a little more prominent in the sonic wash. Rock and roll doesn't live by drums and bass alone, even when it’s as aggressive as Skid Row was Tuesday night.
Best songs of their 13: "Monkey Business." the new single, and "18 and Life." "Youth Gone Wild” was okay for a no-brain shout-along.
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