2012.02.23 - The Fillmore, Silver Spring, USA

Music In Review: Guns N' Roses Live at the Fillmore in Silver Spring

For me, it’s always been about the music. My father was editor of the iconic hard rock publication RIP Magazine, which was birthed when Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite for Destruction appeared out of nowhere to take over the world.

When I informed now author Lonn Friend that I was going to review Guns N’ Roses, it was as if my life had come full circle. “You know, Meg,” said my dad, “You actually saw GN’R when you were an evolving fetus. Through the portal of your mom’s womb, you witnessed Axl Rose stage dive at the Park Plaza Hotel during the 3rd Anniversary RIP party in October 1989.”

Ever since that prenatal concert experience, I’ve longed to see the explosive energy attributed to “Paradise City” live and hear the revolutionary defining screams and squeals of Axl Rose in person.

Last Thursday night, despite the ramblings circulating around as a result of mixed reviews and harsh criticism of Axl Rose’s performance during GNR’s Chinese Democracy tour, Rose’s persona and pipes soared to infinite degrees in the quaint Fillmore Club in Silver Spring, Maryland for three and a half electrifying hours.

Starting just after midnight, the show contained a hearty combination of old and new by intertwining many of the band’s classics with those songs born from the second incarnation of the group that’s poised to enter the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame next month.

The faithful crowd mimicked every heroic lyric as Axl wailed memorably through beloved ballads like “November Rain,” Sweet Child of Mine,” and “Patience.”

For the 2,000 lucky locals in the sardine packed room, there was sheer acceptance of all the material passionately delivered from one of rock’s most enigmatic and dazzling figures.

Guns N’ Roses’ songs have helped define a generation of music. They were raw, unscripted and jammed pack with the luscious allure of pure sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Guns N’ Roses was not just a band. They were a movement, a musical revolution of human expression, imagination,and freedom.

And it is clear that the songs of such an archetypal band in human history will continue to reverberate, influence and delineate for decades to come.

Review: Guns N' Roses at the Fillmore Silver Spring Feb. 23

Guns N' Roses performed at the Fillmore Silver Spring Thursday night. Contributor Jeremy 'Jay' Trucker has this review.

Say what you want about Axl Rose’s erratic touring schedule and late-night performances, but when the man shows up for a gig, he sticks around for a while.  That was certainly the case at the Fillmore on Thursday night, where Guns N' Roses took the stage just after midnight, playing a three-hour set of more than 30 songs for what looked like an at-capacity crowd.

Openers Electric Sun handled the unenviable job of playing to a packed house of fans more engaged in prognostications about GnR’s enigmatic singer than in watching them.

For those wondering,

Axl’s hair: covered with a large hat, but at least not cornrowed

Axl’s weight: covered with layers.  Paunchy but not his paunchiest.

Axl’s face:  covered with sunglasses.  Lifted.

As the Chinese Democracy Tour begins its second decade (the band has been performing in the U.S. in support of the long-in-the-works album since 2001), Axl’s latest band includes an impressive stable of musicians.

Standouts include a guy named Bumblefoot, who looks like he may have wandered directly off a six-month hiking trek and into GnR, and former Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson, who has now been a replacement member of GnR longer than he was a Replacement.  Drummer Frank Ferrer was turned way down in the club mix, but his precision and force is more Matt Sorum than Stephen Adler.  DJ Ashba seems to have been brought in for his ability to wear a top hat and smoke cigarettes ala Slash.

The technical proficiency and sheer size of the band, now an eight-piece with two keyboardists and three guitarists, lends itself more naturally to big, busy songs like “Estranged,” which they brought out surprisingly early in the set.

After opening with “Chinese Democracy,” Axl got the crowd going with three consecutive Appetite-era songs - “Welcome to the Jungle,” “It’s So Easy” and “Mr. Brownstone” followed shortly thereafter by a funked-up version of “You’re Crazy.”

But oldies like “Rocket Queen” felt a bit hollow without Slash and Izzy’s loose blues rock or the swing original drummer Stephen Adler brought to the group.

The current group could have played to their strengths by venturing further into the back catalog of "Use Your Illusions" songs and digging out big, broad opuses like “Coma” and “Locomotive." But instead, it built the set around "Appetite for Destruction" and "Chinese Democracy" songs, with a few instrumentals thrown in for good measure.

Newer songs - and by newer I mean songs that Axl tinkered with for 17 years before releasing "Chinese Democracy" in 2008 - sounded great, but even in an intimate setting there was an inevitable lull each time a "Democracy"-era song came on.

One exception was “Better” an  up-tempo encore inclusion with a full light show and harmonies that got the crowd buzzing.  But Axl knows where his bread is buttered, and so "Appetite" classics “Patience” and “Paradise City” closed the show as the house lights went on not long before sunlight started peeking into the morning at 3 a.m.

If Axl Rose doesn’t want to cash in on a reunion tour with Slash, he’d do well to stick to venues like The Fillmore, where he can pack in a full house of die-hards. Still, it's clear that while he may not need his old bandmates to play a Guns N' Roses show, he certainly needs their old songs.

In Long-Awaited Show, Guns N’ Roses Plays For Too Long

By Martin Austermuhle

If you didn’t happen to catch Guns N’ Roses when they played Baltimore in 2006, the last chance you would have had locally was the 1992 co-headlining tour with Metallica, when the band played RFK Stadium. That was two decades ago.

Axl Rose seemed to want to make up for lost time yesterday at The Fillmore in Silver Spring, working his way through some 35 songs over a three-hour set featuring the band’s most recent lineup. Joined by three guitarists, former Replacements bassist Tommy Stinson, a drummer and two keyboardists (one of which, Dizzy Reed, is the longest-surviving member of the band), Rose showed that he’s still got the moves and the windpipes that made Guns N’ Roses one of the world’s most popular bands in the 1980s and 90s.

But much like the rock stardom excess that felled many of its contemporaries, Guns N’ Roses went for a little too much last night. At times, the show felt about as long as it took Rose to make Chinese Democracy. (That’s 15 years.) And while anyone thirsting for Guns n’ Roses would have been pleased with such a lengthy performance, it unfortunately flowed about as well as the Use Your Illusion double-album that stands as the last recording by the band’s old lineup. (Not well.)

Opening with the quasi-industrial “Chinese Democracy,” the band really hit its stride in the seven songs that followed. “You know where you are?” Rose famously shrieked as the band tore into “Welcome to the Jungle,” which was quickly followed by “It’s So Easy” and “Mr. Brownstone” off of 1987’s groundbreaking Appetite for Destruction. A trudging version of “You’re So Crazy” was next, followed by a beautiful rendition of “Estranged” and driving performance of “Rocket Queen.”

And that’s where Guns N’ Roses shot itself in the foot. The next 20 songs included some classic renditions of “Live and Let Die,” “You Could Be Mine,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Used to Love Her,” “November Rain,” Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Civil War,” “Don’t Cry,” and “Nightrain,” but any semblance of energy or flow was repeatedly sapped by meandering instrumentals and solos for each of the three guitarists, Stinson, Reed and even Rose. The band’s new lineup features some extremely talented musicians, but over-the-top guitar theatrics by D.J. Ashba and Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and Reed’s solo piano cover of The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” made Guns N’ Roses seem less like a band and more like eight guys who just happen to share a stage now and then.

That’s too bad, because the renditions of classic Guns N’ Roses songs were powerful, well-executed and as memorable as they were 20 years ago. Ashba must have known that he’s got large shoes to fill, because he performed Slash’s almost lyrical guitar solos with exacting, almost clinical precision. And though Rose may not be able to hit the highest notes he once could, he still remained a spotlight-deserving frontman throughout the show. (Multiple hat, jacket and t-shirt changes included.)

By 2:30 a.m., the band closed out its main set and quickly kicked into an encore. But of the seven songs, three were instrumentals and two were off of the simply mediocre Chinese Democracy. The remaining two, “Patience” and “Paradise City,” were absolute classics that could well have stood on their own as a final farewell to the audience.

But as the houselights came up at 3 a.m., some members of the audience seemed relieved that the show was finally over. That’s not because they want to wait another 20 years to see Guns N’ Roses again, but rather that after 20 years of waiting, seeing a band struggle to find a rhythm over the course of a three-hour show was a letdown.