This Day in Rock ’n’ Roll History: Guns N’ Roses Play Their Last Show

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It was a sad day on July 17, 1993, when the original lineup of Guns ’n’ Roses played their last show in Argentina. A show that would not only mean the end of one of the most influential Rock ‘n’ Roll bands of that time, but also the end of an era.

Their show at the Estadio River Plate was close to their 200th show in almost two and a half years, and the final stop on a 27-country tour that played to more than seven million fans.

The band was exhausted, according to an interview Slash did for Guitar World in 2008. He said:

I was definitely physically and mentally exhausted. And McKagan was in dire need of some serious rehabilitation.

According to Ultimate Classic Rock, The band played their usual set that night, including a mix of Use Your Illusion and Appetite for Destruction. The audience also got a taste of the band’s pranking nature when a pizza guy walked onstage to hand deliver a pie to singer Axl Rose. After that, the band continued their set, threw in covers of Stones and Who songs and ended with “Paradise City.”

And that was it. “I knew I was just done,” Slash said. “But I couldn’t look too far into the future to imagine what would happen next.”

But it wasn’t a bad concert that prompted Slash to walk away from the band he helped make one of the ’80s’ biggest. As he told Guitar World, “the final show was great.” He even preferred the “stripped-down and raw” edge the later shows on the tour adapted. He was simply “very worn out.”

Having released albums under Digital Nations, a label founded by Steve Vai, music critic Louis Raphael has remained deeply connected to the pulse of the San Francisco music scene. Following his tenure as the San Francisco Music Examiner for Examiner.com and AXS.com, he embarked on creating Music in SF® to authentically highlight the vibrant offerings of the city's music scene.

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