History
The Use Your Illusion Tour was a promotional tour for the albums Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II. The tour started on May 24, 1991, approximately when the long-awaited follow-up to Appetite for Destruction was to be released, and ended over two years later. The release date of the album, or albums, since there were now two of them, was pushed back to September but the tour began as originally scheduled. The tour marked a high point in the popularity of Guns N' Roses, with a total of over 7 million fans attending, and accompanied by high worldwide album sales.
Live recordings from the tour would later be issued as a two video/DVD set, Use Your Illusion I and II, featuring footage from a 1992 concert in Tokyo, Japan and would also provide content for the 2-disc set Live Era: '87-'93. The tour also provided a large volume of footage for music videos, including "Dead Horse" and their popular cover of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die". Also, at one time, footage of much of the tour was to be released as a documentary, titled The Perfect Crime. The footage consisted of Guns N' Roses' time on the road, concert footage, and information about the riots and other major events of the tour. It was never released and never spoken about after the tour. Slash mentioned in his biography that Axl is in control of the footage, and that Slash would be interested in viewing it, as he thought it captured some "killer moments" from the tour.
The conduct of the band, and particularly Axl Rose, during the Use Your Illusion Tour generated negative press, notably from the magazines Spin, Kerrang!, Circus, and Hit Parader. These magazines were mentioned in the song "Get in the Ring" where Axl Rose attacked writers who had written negative articles dealing with Rose's attitude.
The shows were all varied, as a set list was never chosen by the band. They did, however, usually open with "Welcome to the Jungle", "It's So Easy", "Nightrain", "Perfect Crime" or "Right Next Door to Hell" and would shortly after one another play "Mr. Brownstone" or "Live and Let Die", and closed with "Paradise City". Each show featured many guitar solos from Slash and a drum solo from drummer Matt Sorum, usually 6 minutes in length.
The Use Your Illusion Tour was massive not just in the number and size of performances, but also in its technical aspects and the size of the crew. A total of 80 working personnel traveled with the band during the tour. The trade magazine Performance named the tour crew "Crew of the Year" for 1991.
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