Saturday evening at the concert hall part 4

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I remember the night like it was yesterday. Jimmy Fallon from SNL stood on stage at the MTV music awards and announced the next band. With excitement in his voice and a stillness in the air he called Axl Rose and Guns and Roses to the stage. The last time anyone had ever heard from GNR was approx. 5 years earlier with their Use Your Illusion double album. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe it. Everything inside of me was going crazy. Even though Axl sucked on stage that night it didn’t matter, GNR was back.

2 months later on Nov. 9, 2002 I was at the Tacoma dome in Tacoma Washington attempting to scalp into my 4th concert, Guns and Roses. I, with no pride at all started asking people for tickets. I warned people that I had no money, I just wanted to see GNR. To my amazement,  someone gave me a ticket, I still didn’t think free tickets was the norm for me. I ran to the gate with my ticket and was denied. The ticked had already been scanned and there was no re-entry. This happened 2 more times before I struck gold.

As the night was rolling on and the concert was already 1/2 hour in a guy walked past me with his girlfriend and gave me a ticket. He was rushing into the show so I figured his ticket was for real. When I got to the gate they scanned the ticket and welcomed me in. Fortunately it was a GNR show so even though by now I was 45 minutes late they still hadn’t shown up.

Approx. 1 hour later Axl came on stage and gave one of the worst performances I had ever seen. He looked tired, fat and left the stage after every song for an oxygen hit. To add to the horribleness of it, his guitarist was Bucket head. I remember that I left the show early. I had seen GNR and the hype was amazing, but it was over after the 1st hour. I drove home with excitement and broken dreams, but in the end I got in free to GNR while approx. 10,000 other suckers payed for it. If you are the dude who gave me the ticket, you are not a sucker, you are a good, good man. Thanks.