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flew down to Mexico, ‘had a few too many tequila poppers, got into a fight in some bar and had a bottle cracked over my head’. He was still carrying the scars when the tour resumed, on 8 August, at the Olympic Stadium in Montreal. At this point, a real, much more frightening accident occurred when, during ‘Fade to Black’, James badly injured his left arm after a mistimed pyrotechnic explosion, the twelve-foot flame leaving him with third-degree burns. Forced to abandon their set while James was rushed to the hospital, a frantic call was made to GN’R, still relaxing at their hotel, requesting that they start early that night to compensate for Metallica having to truncate their show. They all agreed, according to Slash, then had to wait for Axl, eventually going on three hours later than their own time slot, before leaving the stage early when the flame-tempered singer walked off after just nine songs, complaining that the onstage monitors weren’t loud enough for him to hear his voice. Others whispered he was just pissed off at Metallica ‘leaving him in the shit’. His parting message to the crowd: ‘Thank you, your money will be refunded, we’re outta here.’ Righteously pissed off, having endured premature ends to both sets, more than 2,000 angry fans rioted as they left the venue, fighting with police, resulting in over a dozen injuries. As even Lars later wryly noted, ‘That was the wrong night to have monitor problems.’ Added James: ‘I was so disappointed in [Axl] because he could have won so many people over by continuing the show.’ Instead, ‘There was a lot of unnecessary violence because of his attitude. He could have turned it into a great evening.’ This time, seven shows had to be cancelled and rearranged. By then, Alan Niven had long-since departed – for talking back to ‘the red-haired dictator’, as he called Axl. But even his replacement, Doug Goldstein, had to admit the tour had become ‘like people who go to watch the Indy 500. They don’t go to watch the race. They go to see the crash.’

Backstage, there were even greater high jinks taking place. ‘Axl was out to impress Metallica and everyone else,’ recalled Slash, ‘having backstage parties every single night.’ Each day Axl would write large cheques to his step-siblings, Stuart and Amy, and instruct them to put together something ‘special’ for that evening’s after-show entertainment. ‘We’d spend a hundred thousand a night on parties,’ recalled drummer Matt Sorum. One night would be ‘Greek night – four greased-up, muscle-bound guys [carrying] in a roast pig’. Another night might be Sixties night, replete with lava lamps, psychedelic lightshows and slogans spray-painted everywhere: ‘Acid is groovy’; ‘Kill the pigs’. The only constant was the presence of a free bar, several pinball machines, pool tables, hot tubs and strippers dancing on tables. According to Roddy Bottum, keyboardist for Faith No More, who opened the show on a handful of dates, ‘There were more strippers than road crew.’

For a while, Lars was in his element. Still doing large amounts of cocaine most days, sporting the replica of Axl’s white leather jacket he’d had made, his was a regular face at these after-show parties. ‘It was like, we’re in Indianapolis,’ he recalled, ‘so there were Formula One cars everywhere, with all the girls dressed up in pit-crew uniforms. It was decadence at the highest level I’d ever seen, a Caligula kind of outlandishness. There were orgies, sure. Was I involved? Yes. Well, I was in the same room – we’ll leave it at that.’ Ross Halfin recalls taking the band for a photo-shoot in Jacksonville, where Lars wore the white leather jacket ‘and the band stood behind him making signs of the cross’. James, in particular, was getting seriously bugged. The GN’R tour ‘was very extravagant, which was so un-me. The hot tubs backstage. I’d go back and drink their beer and shoot pool, that’s what I’d do. By the time they’d come offstage I’d be gone so I didn’t have to hang out with them.’ For non-drug-taking James, Guns N’ Roses ‘were part of the enemy. Lars was out there in the white leather