Live Review: Guns N' Roses, Milton Keynes Bowl, 29th May, 1993

To be fair Guns N Roses have stripped off some of the garish excesses of the last 18 months, i.e. there’s no horn sections and sultry, googly backing singers, etc… And they do try and occasionally get back to their old slipshod, punky approach, such as Duff singing THE MISFITS' Attitude, something that helped them gain the accolade of "The Most Dangerous Band in the World."

Well, they're not that anymore, unless Axl happens to catch you with his latest squeeze. As for the songs, well you can’t deny they’ve written the odd semi-classic. November Rain swept over us in all its immense, tear-filled glory. What else? We got some fair acoustic shit – a by now predictably marathon version of Knockin' On Heaven's Door. Then the solos reared their ugly heads, so I went off for a piss. And in the midst of this "Red Beard" ran about like a monkey on speed, attired in his bovver boy chic, and stompin' all over some bloody great sofa.

The encores Sweet Child O' Mine and Paradise City bring things back into focus. But, standing in the rain, I was left feeling that something was missing, and I don't just mean Axl's marbles.

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
August, 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!