Guns N’ Roses – Live In Chicago

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For some time, having seen this DVD on release schedules at DVD stores, many fans believed this to be a show from the band’s 2006 US tour. It is however, the April 9, 1992 show from the Rosemont Horizon, a show from which a professionally shot video recording, along with one from the previous night in Oklahoma City, was famously stolen from GN’R’s video crew. Since then both shows have, of course, been widely available on various bootleg releases, with the Oklahoma City one always being considered the superior recording, both in terms of quality and completeness.

The advantage the Rosemont show always had, making it quite the curio in the Guns N’ Roses touring history, is that the setlist included the hardly-ever-played 15-minute epic Coma, and a version of Don’t Cry with Blind Melon’s Shannon Hoon duetting with Axl. Coma is included on this DVD but unfortunately Don’t Cry (played immediately after Coma, incidentally) isn’t.

What we do have is 14 tracks featuring Guns N’ Roses at the peak of their World-dominating powers. Several classic tracks from the band’s all conquering debut Appetite For Destruction are here, including Nightrain, Mr Brownstone, first single It’s So Easy and Welcome To The Jungle, alongside choice cuts from the Use Your Illusion pair of albums, and a cover of Misfits‘ Attitude, which the band would later record on their punk covers album “The Spaghetti Incident?”.

As interesting a release as this may appear on the surface, fans are going to have several problems with flawed product. Starting with the smallest of all, the band photo on the front cover is of the wrong line-up, including drummer Steven Adler and guitarist Izzy Stradlin. By this point on the Use Your Illusion tour Gilby Clarke had replaced Stradlin and Adler was long gone, with Matt Sorum having stepped in before the Use Your Illusion albums were even recorded. Probably the next smallest issue would be the lack of bonus material. To me that’s not remotely important, but some people love to have pointless bonuses they’ll only ever watch once.

More important issues are related directly to the concert. First off, it’s only half the show. GN’R played another ten songs that night. This tracklist isn’t 14 cherry-picked songs, it’s simply the first 14 songs of the show. The full bootleg version is the complete show apart from the very last song, Paradise City, which is cut part way through. Surely, if time was an issue, you’d have thought they’d have edited out the band introductions, and even Slash’s rendition of the Godfather theme tune for the sake of adding another couple of songs. Don’t Cry in particular.

The video quality is also no better than the widely circulated bootlegs. Not everyone is able to download or trade DVD quality bootlegs, so this release does mean those people don’t have to spend ridiculous amounts of money to buy bootleg copies of the show, but when they’re not even getting all the available material, even that benefit comes into question. Picky fans will also complain that this show is from the same leg of the tour as the officially released Use Your Illusion World Tour 1992 In Tokyo DVDs, meaning the line-up is the same and the setlist is virtually identical (interestingly, they played Coma on the first of the their three night stand at the Tokyo Dome, but didn’t play it the night they filmed the video).

Licensed from some obscure Argentinean company, and being a show most GN’R collectors already own as a bootleg, this release is unlikely to please the die-hard fans (indeed, already released in Ireland, it has received strong criticism), but those without the bootleg could do worse than pick this up and add it to their GN’R collection. But not much worse.

“ several problems with flawed product ”

Tracklist: Nightrain / Mr Brownstone / Live And Let Die / Attitude / It’s So Easy / Wild Horses / Patience / Double Talkin’ Jive / Civil War / Welcome To The Jungle / November Rain / You Could Be Mine / Band Introduction / Godfather Theme / Coma

Written by Andy Lye
More: Hard Rock, Live DVDs, Guns N' Roses