Guns’n’Roses @ Rock for people 2025

I still had a bone to pick with Axl Rose for 33 years. Shortly before leaving school, we travelled to Würzburg in the midsummer of 1992 for the “Use Your Illusion” tour of our childhood heroes. I had the ticket long before the plaster cast on my leg.

We survived Faith No More way out in front. Then it would have been Guns’n’Roses’ turn. Would have been. But Axl Rosette was a real diva back then. In Würzburg too. He kept us waiting for more than two hours in bright sunshine at over 30°. The girls were keeling over en masse long before he appeared. Paramedics whistled “Civil War” at the top of their voices. Stewards cooled us down with water hoses.

None of it helped. At the very front, the pressure from the fans grew and grew. For hours I couldn’t even get down to scratch my leg. It swelled up more and more in the plaster. At some point, not even the cooling water could find its way in.

Axl’s rosette is a damn incontinent diva. My leg hurt like hell. I fought my way out of the masses. I trolled my way to the car park, pissed off and utterly disappointed. Just as I was putting my leg up in the cool car, Guns’n’Roses started their concert. I defiantly warbled “Waste your youth”…

33 years later, my wife is a huge Guns’n’Roses fan at my side. For her birthday, she gets her ticket for the last day of the five-day Rock for People festival 100 kilometres from Prague. The Czech province around Hradec Králové is just as cosy as the festival.

As Guns’n’Roses are not allowed to camp on the festival site beforehand on the final day, we take a slightly more distant campsite by the lake seven kilometres further on. Compared to the cacophony at “Silent and clean” in Roskilde, the wedding rock band 200 metres away is at worst “cutely quiet”, even with the hotrod tubes and martial arts on the next door neighbours’ projector.

Visitors travelling to Rock for people receive a 30% discount with the Czech Railways. There are free buses and hire bikes to the festival. We opt for a five-kilometre Nextbike hire bike to the centre. We refuel at a good and cheap restaurant and then hop on the packed transfer bus to the start of the last day of the festival.

After walking a good two kilometres, we arrive at the check-in. The entire festival is cash-free. As an e-commerce web designer, I take a very critical view of the payment chip. Yes, it is very convenient. Any remaining credit can be refunded. But Rock for people certainly gets a lot of money from the payment service provider NFCtron – and my health insurance company gets deep insights into my consumer behaviour from them.

The Rock for people festival takes place on an old airport site. Some of the old hangars house craft beer bars, merchandise, information stands and even a fully-fledged supermarket where you can buy really cheap food. On an almost treeless ground, the hangars offer welcome cooling in the 30°C weather.

Excellent beers are available from three euros for half a litre. Food costs between five and 15 euros, depending on the stand. Only the Guns’n’Roses T-shirts are simply outrageously expensive at at least €50.

On the last day of the Rock for people 2025 festival, five stages are still being played by a total of 21 bands. The sound everywhere is excellent. The sound pressure and bass at Self Deception on the second largest stage is pure heart massage: it doesn’t just hit your stomach. The entire chest is rhythmically deformed. But the smaller tent stages also let it rip. Every band really does fulfil their slot to the second.

I bet with several Czechs how long we can wait for Guns’n’Roses. And lose. They start just 20 minutes late as the headliner at 8.00 pm. After my last experience in 1992, this is a weekend that starts on Monday.

No important song is missing. Everything is there, especially Use Your Illusion II. We are just really happy on our first two-day break together without a child for a good two years. Only the mixer really sucks. Axl’s voice and Duff’s backing vocals are constantly way too loud or way too quiet. Guns’n’Roses play for a full three hours. The predicted thunderstorm doesn’t materialise for a while.

We leave with the first wave of visitors after the fireworks. The transfer buses are packed. We don’t even try to wait, but go straight to the first Nextbike station in front of the airfield. But all the bikes there are gone or reserved. The same goes for the next two stations and kilometres. I put my thumb up. A man from Prague takes us to the centre, and from there we quickly get our bikes to the campsite.

Rock for people is definitely a big recommendation. Well organised, affordable, a great line-up and, last but not least, beautiful grounds and clean campsites. They do exactly what Roskilde only claims to do.