Olympic Stadium, Athens, Greece
May 24th 1993
Review



Fotis' Review

At 19:00 p.m. Brian May hit the stage , as a warm up before the first ever live performance by GN'R in Greece....35.000 fans were there at that time.....May had a great band and two wonderful back vocal singers! He played all his new songs, at that point, staff and the crowd reacted very warm....the biggest cheer was when he said that he was sorry cause Queen never played live in Greece....when he finished his set everybody was yelling "Queen, Queen," so he came back for an encore.....his words "Well, I know Freddie would love to play that for you," and they started "We Will Rock You." After some verses he left the crowd take over the lyrics!! He was great...

When he went offstage , the time was 20:15.....people kept coming in the venue for the most important rock show in Athens after the 1988 Pink Floyd concert.... everybody was so anxious to see GN'R. I was in the front row, just a few meters from the stage. We were hearing "Acthung Baby" from U2 and time was 1:15 and still no sign of GN'R. So somebody had this great idea to throw a fill bottled of beer on stage. To cut a long story sort in 10 min everybody was throwing bottles, cans, etc. to each other and on stage. We were one step before going out of line there, some GN'R crew member took the microphone and said, "Well there is a little technical problem, be patient, and if you don't stop throw things onstage, the show will be canceled." After that the crowd went out of line!! The stage was hit by thousands of cans! I started getting worried that something will be wrong, thankfully at 21:50 some crew members started cleaning the stage.

At 10:05 all the stadium lights went off......."And now from Hollywood , CA, ...Guns N' Roses!!!!" GN'R hit the stage at 10:10, at least 50,000 people were there. "Nightrain" was the kick off song, lights went up and they were all there....Axl , Slash, Duff , Matt , Dizzy and......IZZY! The crowd went crazy, everybody was singing along. "Mr. Brownstone" followed , as usual, the crowd was really nuts! Axl was in a good mood , running like a maniac across the stage. Slash had a smile in his face all the time and Izzy seemed so cool. Someone threw a bra (!) at Duff and he was smiling Some girls lost consciousness, they were immediately removed from the venue to the hospital of the stadium. "It's So Easy" was next, same thing, everybody was singing louder than the PA! "Live And Let Die" followed, then Duff took the front lights for "Attitude"…

"Are you ready??" he asked.

"Yeahh," from 50.000 voices

After that song Axl said good evening and he was looking the crowd in a strange way, people calmed down for a moment.

Axl screamed .....you know where the fuck you are ???"

"Welcome To The Jungle " started. I've never seen anything like that before - total panic - everybody was jumping up and down. After that Axl said " ...an old friend of the band , Izzy ...." And you could hear nothing more!! The crowd went nuts , screaming "IZZY , IZZY" for 5 minutes. Izzy just seemed so surprised. Then "Double Talkin' Jive " started....great moments. Next was the acoustic session - "You Ain't The First," "You're Crazy," the crowd responded very enthusiastically. At that point the crew spotted an unauthorized TV crew filming the concert. The crew took the tape , erased it and threw the TV crew out of the venue. "Used To Love Her" was performed at that time. Also, before "Used To Love Her" a guy, dressed with a strange orange uniform, came onstage with pizzas !! Axl threw the pizza in the crowd. The guy then played bongos. Then "Patience " followed and the crowd was once again louder than Axl. "Imagine" was performed in the middle of "Patience" Then "Only Women Bleed " was played as an intro to "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," which got the biggest cheer so far. Axl took his seat in the piano and , after playing a fantastic instrumental song as an intro, he started "November Rain." Great melody, great performance. Then Axl took the guitar and the crowd went nuts again. Axl brought his bodyguard onstage and asked the crowd to say "hello." Axl smiled and started "Dead Horse." People were stepping on each other and Axl tried to calm down the crowd. He started and stopped "Dead Horse" at least five times. During "Dead Horse" people got so crazy again.

After the acoustic session, the introductions followed. Once again when Axl introduced Izzy (saying, "back from motorcycling, skateboarding and from his band, Ju Ju Hounds…" ), the crowd cheered him. Also Axl mentioned Duff's solo album after he introduced him. Matt got into his great solo which led into "You Could Be Mine," once again the venue looked like sea waves from the crowd jumping. After that Slash played his solo, then "the Godfather Theme" and then, surprise, surprise, Axl sang "Since I Don't Have You " as an intro to "Sweet Child O' Mine." During "Sweet Child O' Mine," someone threw something to Axl and he got pissed off saying, "If you don't like this motherfucker, you can go home!" The encore was the band jamming for ten minutes before Slash broke into "Paradise City"

Everybody was exhausted but very pleased, the best band in the world had just finished their show in front of our eyes… and it was a great show!! Axl said the next day that he didn't know Greeks can speak English so good. He found out during the show, when everybody was singing every lyric!