After Guns N' Roses plays its three-plus-hour concert on Wednesday night, the 6,400 chairs installed for the show on the floor of Sports Authority Field at Mile High will have to be moved — quickly.
"They’re in the way," says Guns N' Roses production manager Dale Skjerseth the day before the third stop on the North American leg of the band's Not in This Lifetime tour. "They all have to be gone in thirty minutes. The chairs are the biggest nuisance."
It's not the hundred-person crew or the fifteen production trucks that transport the steel used in the massive stage structures, the sound gear, the lights and the ginormous fireworks display that's worrying Skjerseth. It's the chairs. And he should know what to worry about: He's toured with all sorts of artists, from club bands to stadium acts, since 1979. At the top of his list: the Rolling Stones.
Skjerseth has even been on the road with Guns N' Roses before, on the Use Your Illusion tour from 1990 to ’93; he says the difference between then and now is that everybody is a lot older – and smarter.
"We’ve all had great experiences between then and now and learned," he says. "And we’ve all learned a lot from how to do it."
Below is a sneak peek of what the setup is going to look like at the Wednesday, August 2, Guns N' Roses show at Sports Authority Stadium. For more information and tickets, go to Sports Authority Stadium online.
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