Riot acts

"'For the love of Grohl,' I asked myself while watching Netflix's Trainwreck: Woodstock '99, 'where is the three-part documentary on Leeds Festival 2002?'" So begins JR Moores' latest article for the Quietus - notable, personally speaking, because I had that very same thought myself.

While I can't quite compare notes (this site lurched into life a month after the festival took place), Moores' descriptions of the carnage that unfolded on the Sunday evening definitely ring bells: Portaloos inverted and incinerated, lampposts toppled, exploding gas canisters, police intervention. The chaos was frankly terrifying.

And yet, despite it all, like the two Beavis and Butthead interviewees from Trainwreck, I can't help but look back on it as one of the best weekends of my life. Just look at the line-up, for fuck's sake.

Moores is spot on about how electrifying The Icarus Line's set was, and also about how quickly it became evident that The Strokes had been prematurely promoted to main stage headliners, turning in a listless, lifeless performance. (He's right, too, to pick up on the way that the organisers took sick pleasure in serving up the likes of Daphne & Celeste in 2000 as sacrificial lambs to be slaughtered by baying Slipknot fans.)

Where we differ, though, is on the 2002 festival's biggest coup: the exclusive appearance of Guns 'N' Roses. Yes, the "washed-up sleaze rockers" finally showed up two hours late due to Axl Rose's ludicrous demands and gargantuan ego. Yes, visually they were a comically rag-tag bunch featuring only one original member, a guitarist with a KFC bucket on his head and former Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson wearing some trousers that were offensive even by golfbro standards.

But the anticipation and excitement around the site was palpable, and not only among the punters - ... And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead admitted they were hurrying through their set so as to be able to watch. And if you closed your eyes as they performed nine of the twelve songs from Appetite For Destruction, it sounded pretty much perfect to a twentysomething for whom that album had been formative influence.

And that's not even to mention how it felt to be front and centre when the reformed Jane's Addiction played 'Three Days'...