USA Today - December 1, 1992

For Guns N' Roses, a jarring Latin beat

Rock's current pied piper of mayhem now is serenading Latin America. Last Wednesday Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses took Caracas, Venezuela by muiscal storm. Two days later there was an attempted coup.

Coincidence? Totally. But the tag-team events may have given pause to Rose, who recently received a $50,000 fine and two years probation for property damage and assault after a 1991 concert riot.

Currently on a South American tour, Rose & Co. failed to avoid controversy on their next stop: Bogota, Columbia, a nation not short on chaos.

Scheduled to play two nights--last Saturday and Sunday--at the Memesio Camacho soccer stadium, a delay with the band's equipment forced the first date to be canceled.

The second show proceded with "calm and joy", cooed Bogota's El Diario, which noted that many fans dressed á la Axl. But outside the venue--whose roof had crumbled hours before show time--a mini-riot was under way. Some of those who couldn't get tickets ($46 to $153) to the show--many of whom traveled overnight from Medellin and Cali and waited in line for 12 hours--broke car windows and attacked residents who peered out of their window for a peek, the newspaper reported. Police quelled the crowd with water hoses and tear gas.

The band was "not aware of the problems outside, and was concentrating on performing in the rain," says Bryn Bridenthal, spokeswoman for the band, performing next in Chile.

What now? An earthquake?

©Copyright Alan Hylands 2001