2006.12.11 - Rose Garden Arena, Portland, USA

Live Music
Weekend! Nightlife

Guns N' Roses

The only thing certain about the current inception of Guns N' Roses seems to be uncertainty.

The band supposedly is gearing up for the long-awaited new album, 'Chinese Democracy,' and notoriously mercurial frontman Axl Rose booted one opening act off the current tour. Previous shows have been delayed for hours or postponed.

If it were any other band, that kind of drama might be detrimental, but it (and reports that G N' R still retains its incendiary live energy) seems to only add fire to the legendary flame.

Besides, if you miss the band this time around, it could be decades until you have another opportunity to witness the spectacle that is G N' R.

8 p.m. MONDAY, Dec. 11, Rose Garden, 1 Center Court, 503-235-8771, www.comcasttix.com, $39.50, $49.50, $75, all ages

Axl rolls on

Unpredictable as ever, frontman Axl Rose reinvents Guns N' Roses

By LUCIANA LOPEZ; The Oregonian

The first time I saw Axl Rose was in the video for "Welcome to the Jungle." Axl was a long, lean, red-haired streak of rage and menace, his voice as raw as his looks. I was in junior high, and though I didn't tell anyone at the time, I found him to be a little scary. Not funny scary. More like, "Please don't ever let me be in an alley with this guy" scary.

His bandmates were almost as frightening: shaggy-haired men who looked pared down to bone and sinew but still strong enough to wreak havoc. And Slash, well, he didn't even care enough about you to look at you --or anyone else. With a cloud of dark curls hiding his eyes and a stovepipe hat, everything about him felt mysterious.

March to self-parody

That was almost 20 years ago. Now, Axl is back, and so, in a sense, is Guns N' Roses --even if Axl is the only one left.

But the sense of menace and danger that gave such an edge to their music has been replaced by just about the worst thing for someone like Axl: a buffoonish attempt to recapture an image that no longer fits. It's like a 40-year-old man trying to fit into the black leather pants of his early 20s.

When GNR's debut full-length album, "Appetite for Destruction," came out, it dropped like a bomb. It was 1987, when New Wave was still relatively new and the faces of artists such as Duran Duran and Janet Jackson wallpapered many a prepubescent's bedroom. Madonna's album "Like a Virgin" had been released three years before, and her remix album "You Can Dance" was getting people into the groove.
Then came Axl, Slash, Duff, Izzy and Steven.

Scruffy wasn't the word; scruffy implied unkempt, a haphazardness to appearance. No, these men had cultivated their sleaziness. When Axl yowled, "You're in the jungle, baby, you're gonna die!," we believed him. When the perennially shirtless Slash ripped savage riffs from his guitar, he made sure we saw that his genius was laced with contempt for us, the schmucks too pathetic to be a guitar god like him.

"Appetite for Destruction" sold in droves. The studied rock star personas of Guns N' Roses had connected with kids who never found a place in dance-pop. The group released "G N' R Lies" in 1989, combining its first independent label EP with four new songs, including "Patience." That tune, an acoustically based ballad, was downright pretty, and the video accompanying the song, featuring the band in hotel rooms with various females, had the kind of melancholy tinge that makes women think they can tame bad boys.
In stark contrast was another song on that same record: "Used to Love Her." Over an almost bright guitar strum, Axl sings, "I used to love her, but I had to kill her," then goes on to complain about a girlfriend who complained too much. "One in a Million" was worse, with Axl railing against gays, immigrants and African Americans in hateful terms. The anger that the band had once made interesting, a combination of predation and pain, became dumb, pedestrian bigotry.

In retrospect, the run-up to Guns N' Roses' next album was loaded with harbingers of the future. For one, the band replaced drummer Steven Adler, citing his problems with drugs, and hired Matt Sorum, a powerhouse previously with the Cult. In 1991 the Gunners at last dropped new work, the simultaneously released "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion II." Both the replacement of band members and the delay in releasing new albums would become GNR hallmarks.

The "Use Your Illusion" albums showed a deep ambition and heavy influences from the greats of rock 'n' roll, such as GNR's covers of Paul McCartney's "Live and Let Die" and Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." But the albums also revealed tensions within the band, a widening schism between its hard-edged rock of the past and sprawling epics, such as the almost-nine-minute "November Rain" --the video of which depicted a tragic wedding between Axl and then-real-life girlfriend, Victoria's Secret model Stephanie Seymour, complete with the band playing at Carnegie Hall, all filmed in cinematic swoops.
The video made it official: GNR had become part of the bloated rock establishment that they'd once sneered at.

Midlife crisis?

Just as the shifting tides of musical tastes had helped bring GNR to prominence, the advent of "grunge" rock spurred by Nirvana's "Nevermind" album that same year, meant Guns N' Roses was being swept out to sea. Grunge looked inward and shunned the outward trappings of success. Nirvana and its brethren focused on angst, not anger, and existentialism, not excess.

Soon the Gunners became more known for their antics than their music. Axl's temper earned him the reputation of a petty tyrant, an album of punk covers made few ripples in the pop culture pond, and the original band members continued their exodus. By the late '90s Guns N' Roses was down to one man: Axl.

By then Axl had become the Howard Hughes of rock: a bizarre, aging, recluse. Rumors swirled of feuds with other musicians, including fights with former bandmates. News of an upcoming album titled "Chinese Democracy" surfaced from time to time, but as the years passed and little materialized, the album started to feel like a musical El Dorado, forever just over the next hill. It became something of a joke: the last thing someone like Axl Rose, serious to the point of bombast, needed.

In the past year Axl's shown up more often in the gossip columns than in the music press. Where once Axl took on figures such as Kurt Cobain in his disputes, a few months ago, according to reports, he fought with fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger at actress Rosario Dawson's birthday party. Gone also are the lean physique and spray of red hair, replaced by a middle-aged body and orange braids that look way out of place. In our imaginations, rock gods are forever young; in reality, they're only mortal, aging as we all do.

No one in Guns N' Roses pioneered the rock cliche of believing one's own hype. For a while, Guns N' Roses was even worth the breathless wonder, the sold-out arenas full of screaming fans, the pronouncements of genius. But 2006 is a long way from 1987. The world in many ways remains a jungle. But for Axl to regain his crown as rock king will take a longer, harder road than perhaps even he realizes.
* In the recent photos I've seen of Axl Rose, he looks like a caricature. A desperation seems to have replaced the driving anger, a huffing effort in place of his earlier hunger. He looks like what he is: an aging rock star still singing the songs of his youth. Nothing's frightening about Axl anymore, except perhaps for the lessons of vanity and time that I see in him now.

Axl's continuing antics

By Luciana Lopez; The Oregonian

Axl's grown older, but has he grown up?

If the news from other stops on the Chinese Democracy Tour are any sign, probably not.

At Guns N' Roses' Cleveland show Nov. 24, frontman Axl Rose reportedly derided opening act Eagles of Death Metal as the Pigeons of (Excrement) Metal --except he didn't use the word "excrement." GNR claimed to have fired the Eagles from the tour; the Eagles said they quit. GNR since has announced the addition of Helmet to the tour lineup.

Earlier in November, the Gunners canceled a show in Portland, Maine, because the fire marshal wouldn't let the guys drink onstage. The band had planned to set off pyrotechnics at the same time. A statement from GNR said the marshal "made it impossible for the band to perform their show to the usual high standards that their fans deserve," and a further statement, from Axl, blamed the "particularly draconian authorities."

That same month, the Ottawa Citizen newspaper reported that Axl lost his cool when he spotted a fan dressed in a wig and hat reminiscent of his former lead guitarist Slash. Axl left the stage and the fan was escorted out.

A string of newspapers also have reported late start times --often near midnight --for Guns N' Roses' sets.

We saw a Rose, but Guns go missing

By LUCIANA LOPEZ; The Oregonian

Eight people were onstage at the Guns N' Roses show at the Rose Garden on Monday night, but most of the time it felt like a one-man band: Axl Rose.

Not because he was so magnetic a performer that he immediately drew the eye. He wasn't. He performed well, but he lacked the charisma of both his younger years and of enduring greats of rock 'n' roll.

Not because his talent was so stunning that it bordered on the unbelievable. It didn't. He sang well, even pulling out the yowls that gave him such edge in the late '80s and early '90s, but it seemed to come with much greater exertion.

Axl Rose was the most watchable person at the Guns N' Roses show because, with a band otherwise including precisely zero original GNR members, Axl effectively is Guns N' Roses.

For a man whose most famous recent contribution to the musical landscape is a non-contribution --the long rumored but still unreleased "Chinese Democracy" album --Axl did pretty well. On the opener, "Welcome to the Jungle," for example, he apparently found some rage to channel, though it didn't have the same edge as in his younger days. Still, Axl sounded best on slower songs, such as "Patience," where he could breathe more easily.

Occasionally he sounded strained or even a little winded. The show was scattered with long solos from new band members, and it was hard to shake the feeling that those stretches were included at least in part to give Axl breaks.

However, for all of Axl's effort (and the effort showed), it was his band that did best Monday. To replace the original Gunners, whom Axl pretty much shoved out over the years, Rose assembled a team that's seen decades of work in the music industry, both as solo artists and as parts of well-regarded, even legendary, groups: Tommy Stinson of the Replacements, for example, and Robin Finck, who's worked with everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Cirque du Soleil.

Finck in particular basically defined the term "guitar god," blending inspired solos with knockout fingerwork that proved him the equal (at least) of former GNR superstar guitarist Slash.

The closest thing to an original Gunner besides Axl, Dizzy Reed on keyboards, also outshone Rose. Reed, who joined Guns N' Roses after the 1987 "Appetite for Destruction" album, played a bluesy, beautiful solo version of The Rolling Stones' "Angie" on a grand piano. Reed's playing was leagues better than Axl's own on the later song "November Rain."

For all the band's skill, it was hard to feel that this was, indeed, a Guns N' Roses show: The musicians were there because Axl put them together, not because some inherent chemistry drew them together. Nor did they have the ownership of the original Gunners, who created these songs.

This was clearly Axl's show --even when it should have been his band's.