On this day · 34 years ago · 1992
34 Years Ago Today: Guns N' Roses and Metallica Launch Their Ill-Fated Stadium Tour
Two of the biggest rock bands on Earth shared a stage for the first time on July 17, 1992. Kurt Cobain, offered the opening slot, said no. He knew something.
By Jaxon, Metal-rhythm desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Guns N' Roses and Metallica launched a joint stadium tour on July 17, 1992, at Washington, D.C.'s RFK Stadium, with Faith No More opening after Nirvana's Kurt Cobain turned down the slot. Metallica's self-titled Black Album and Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion I and II were all still selling by the millions. The tour started smoothly but later became infamous for a Montreal riot and pyrotechnics that burned James Hetfield's arm.
Two of the biggest bands on Earth, one bill
On May 12, 1992, at a press conference at the Gaslight in Los Angeles, Guns N' Roses and Metallica announced they'd be touring stadiums together that summer, and tickets sold out fast, per Loudwire's retrospective on the tour. Both bands were at a commercial peak: Metallica's self-titled 1991 album, since nicknamed The Black Album, was still climbing toward more than 16 million copies sold, and Guns N' Roses' twin Use Your Illusion I and II albums had already moved a combined 14 million. Faith No More, already tight with Bay Area comrades Metallica, took the opening slot after Nirvana's Kurt Cobain turned it down, a decision that looked wiser with every week that followed.
Opening night at RFK Stadium
The tour opened July 17, 1992, at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., per Metallica's own tour archive, which lists that night's 12-song set: Creeping Death, Harvester of Sorrow, Fade to Black, Sad But True, Wherever I May Roam, Of Wolf and Man, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Unforgiven, The Shortest Straw, a short Master of Puppets, Seek and Destroy, and Whiplash, followed by a five-song encore, Nothing Else Matters, Enter Sandman, Last Caress, Am I Evil?, and Damage, Inc., then a separate closing encore, One. Sound system problems plagued the show, a gremlin that would follow the tour for weeks, but the night itself came off largely without incident. A film crew documented Metallica's set for the year-end documentary A Year and a Half in the Life of Metallica, catching James Hetfield joking about Guns N' Roses' backstage rider.
A tour that got worse from there
It didn't stay clean. Axl Rose walked offstage more than once in the weeks that followed, citing throat trouble, and on August 8 in Montreal, a pyrotechnic charge went off directly beneath Hetfield during Fade to Black, burning his arm badly enough to end Metallica's set on the spot. Guns N' Roses, given a chance to keep the night together, instead made the crowd wait roughly three hours and then left early themselves, and a riot broke out in the streets outside Olympic Stadium. With his arm bandaged and unplayable, Hetfield sang for the tour's remaining dates while Metal Church guitarist John Marshall, who'd been teching for the band, filled in on rhythm guitar. Faith No More was eventually let go from the bill that September, replaced first by Ice-T's Body Count and later by Motorhead.
The rigs behind that night
Both headliners' rigs are fully catalogued on CYS today: Hetfield's down-tuned rhythm setup, and Slash's Les Paul and Ernie Ball strings, documented on the Guns N' Roses gear encyclopedia alongside Duff McKagan's Rotosound-strung basses. Neither guitarist's exact string gauge from that specific Washington, D.C. night is independently documented, so we won't guess at it here. If you're chasing that era's tone on your own guitar, Ernie Ball's Regular Slinky is still the closest thing the instrument has to a default set.
Regular Slinky
Why this one: A widely played, balanced electric set and the same nickel-gauge family both bands' current signature sets descend from.
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