PLANNING THE TOUR Planning for the tour began around october 1990. Eight months before the tour was to take place. The tour had been conceived about one year before.
The tour began with an unannounced surprise, warm-up gig may 9th 1991, in the Warfield Theatre, San Francisco.
The first official date was May 24th 1991, at the 40,000 seater Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, Wisconsin.
First Leg
May 1991-April 1992.
USA and Europe.Second Leg
May 1992-July 3rd 1992.
Europe.Third Leg
July 17th 1992-October 6th 1992.
US stadium tour with Metallica, 25 shows, 825,000 tickets.Fourth Leg
December 1992.
South America, 9 shows, five countries, 500,000 tickets.Fifth Leg
January 9th 1993-February7th 1993.
Far East.
Sixth Leg
February 23rd 1993-May 1993.
USA.Seventh Leg
May 18th 1993-July 1993.
Europe.
Guns N'Roses' first ever shows in Turkey, Greece and Israel.
25 dates, 22 cities, 15 countries.
Over 1,167,500 people attend the shows.Eight Leg
July 1993
South America.
During 1992 alone, the band played to 3,003,086 people.
In the summer of 1993 when GNR returned to Europe for the last time, they had already played to 853,500, those shows added 1,167,500 more.
By the time the world tour was finished in 1992, the band had played 192 dates, in 27 countries, they had played to more that 7 million people.
1993 EUROPEAN TOUR PRODUCTION The Stages.
The Stages were designed by Phill Ealy and the band. Phill also designed the light show. the stage was 200' wide, 80' deep. the set was 75' high.
The stage took three days to put up and a day to take it down.
Three separate stages were built and used by piggy backing them across Europe for speed.
This meant that at any one time, three stages could be set up!
Each travelling stage weighed 50 tonnes. The total tonnage brought to each show was 150 tonnes.
The P.A.
It took three trailers to transport the enormous P.A. at each site. In total, 200 speaker cabinets were used.
The Buses.
Including buses used for the opening acts, there were eight crew buses travelling from show to show.
The Trucks.
In total 11 trucks were used to transport the equipment around europe.
The Instruments.
Slash Travelled with 13 guitars, most of which were Gibson Les Paul Studio's, a B.C. rich Mockingbird and a twin neck Gibson SG.
Duff used two Fender bass guitars and Gilby, also had a selection of Gibson guitars, mostly '70s vintages.
Axl played a grand piano on the song "November Rain".
60 microphones were used at each show.
The Power.
The show used 250,000 watts of power ,for sound, lighting. Two huge generators provided the power for this.
The Inflatables.
The inflatable were erected during "Welcome To the Jungle", and were each operated by four men.
The Video.
The show used three video walls,one on either side of the stage, and one at the back.
Paul Becher was employed as director, his job was to ensure that the best shots were used on each of the video walls.
The Crew.
80 personnel travelled with the band, including management, carpenters, caterers, site co-ordinator, power technician, video production crew and 60 people were needed to construct the stage.
During the whole world tour, Dale Skjereeth was production manager and in 1991, Performance magazine honoured Guns N'Roses production team, with "Crew Of The Year" award.
Since forming in 1985 Guns N'Roses have sold 46 million albums worldwide.
