2016.04.16 - Coachella Festival, Indio, CA, USA

How the Coachella Music Festival reunited Guns N' Roses

Paul Tollett's go-to way to improve the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival or give it a boost is to add an exciting band.

“I love anytime you can get, I don’t want to say a better (band), but a fresher one that hasn’t been around,” the Coachella fest founder said in his house on a hill overlooking his Eldorado Polo Club in Indio. “It kind of moves into the reuniting topic. I just want bands that haven’t played in a while. If you just played last month, it’s not as exciting for me.”

This year’s festival has one of the biggest “reuniting” things he’s ever pulled off. After more than two years of trying, Tollett booked a reunion of Guns N’ Roses with frontman Axl Rose performing with original members Slash on lead guitar and Duff McKagan on bass for the first time at a major event since July 17, 1993.

They will play the festival on Saturday, April 16 and again on April 23.

The band warmed up for the Coachella gig with an intimate show at Los Angeles' Troubadour club on April 1.

The festival, which has won the Pollstar award for Best Major Festival 10 of the past 11 years, also will include a reunion of LCD Soundsystem, which had announced their disbandment in 2011, and electronic artist Calvin Harris, who arguably drew Coachella’s biggest crowd in 2014 and who has received additional buzz recently as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend.

But the GNR reunion is one of those get-togethers few people could have imagined like The Eagles “Hell Freezes Over” Tour. In fact, after GNR announced their appearance at Coachella, they unveiled a “Not In This Life” tour.

Billboard has reported GNR has asked for as much as $3 million per show on

that tour with “the Coachella payday likely significantly higher.” One site reported that GNR was getting $14 million for their two Coachella appearances, but Goldenvoice Vice President Skip Paige scoffed at that rumor, saying “Do the math.”

With 170 bands booked and the total gross from last year’s festival eclipsing $84 million, excluding sponsorship deals, it’s not inconceivable to think GNR might get $5 million from Goldenvoice.

Tollett doesn't talk numbers, but he did discuss the challenge of negotiating with all of the GNR parties, including the current GNR incarnation and Rose’s partners on the 1987 GNR album, Appetite For Destruction, which is still the best-selling U.S. debut album of all time.

“I made a list of 10 people I needed to get on our side to make this happen and just worked through the list,” Tollett said in a rare look into his behind-the-scenes workings. “Some I’m really close to, some I’m not so close to and some I didn’t know, and then the band members. So I had to work through all of that.”

The original GNR lineup featured Rose, Slash and McKagan, plus rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin and drummer Steven Adler. Adler was fired after violating an agreement to refrain from recording while high on drugs, which even Slash, a recovering heroin addict, admitted in his eponymous autobiography was “kind of ridiculous and excessively harsh.” Adler sued the band for improper termination and won a settlement of $2.25 million plus 15 percent of the royalties for his GNR recordings.

Stradlin quit after a 1991 European tour, leaving Rose, Slash and McKagan as band partners and the others as band employees. But Rose owned a higher percentage of the band than his partners and apparently interpreted that to mean he had more creative control. He hired a keyboard player, Dizzy Reed, despite Slash’s desire to be solely guitar-driven. Reed is now being supplemented by Chris Pittman on keys and Melissa Reese on synthesizer.

When Rose and a new GNR manager insisted on a new ownership agreement in 1995, Slash wrote that the inequity of the deal, combined with Rose’s habit of showing up late for gigs and rehearsals, or not showing up at all, prompted him to quit the band. McKagan quit the next year, leaving Rose with full ownership of the band’s name.

Stradlin, Adler and McKagan have performed with Rose’s GNR since 2006, but Rose refused to be inducted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame with them and Slash in 2012. He said in a letter to the Hall, “There’s a seemingly endless amount of revisionism and fantasies out there for the sake of self-promotion and business opportunities masking the actual realities.”

Tollett, who produces Coachella with his company, Goldenvoice, and its umbrella corporation, AEG Live!, said he heard rumblings around 2013 that the original GNR might consider reuniting.

“It’s hard to say whose idea it was because I’ve been trying to get them for a long time,” he said. “A band’s got their own life. It’s got to be on their time schedule, not mine. And I’ve learned to really like that camp a lot. When I saw how many managers were involved and the potential soupy mess? But when I got in there, I saw it’s actually pretty well run. It’s been pretty mellow for me.”

Tollett shares a personal attorney with one of the GNR musicians and he’s worked with their booking agent for 25 years. So that, plus his professional relationship with them as a promoter, gave him an inside track to sign them for Coachella.

“We had a little leg up in that 30 years ago and, one month, we (Goldenvoice) promoted Johnny Thunders and Guns N’ Roses at Fender’s Ballroom (in Long Beach) and then we did them with Cheap Trick,” Tollett said. “They were our go-to band anytime we had anything rock related because we were doing mostly punk rock at the time. So, we’ve had a relationship all these years. But we wanted to make sure everyone in their camp believed in Coachella because there’s a lot of opportunity if a band is going to get back together.”

He went to see their preview show for less than 300 people last weekend at the Troubadour in Hollywood and any doubts he might have had about the band dissipated.

“It was phenomenal,” he said. “I forgot how great they were. It just seemed so right, maybe because we’ve seen them for so long. I remember the night they played ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ at Fender’s. I had actually seen them before that, opening for The Unforgiven at Stardust Ballroom. Everyone around us, it was like, ‘Wow, this is serious!’ Before they were signed, you could just see it. I saw it last (weekend). Slash plays guitar like a madman and Axl was hitting the button on the vocals. Together, they’re magic.”

Coachella: will Guns N' Roses unite the generations?

The emphasis placed on groups reuniting means Coachella will never be just kids rolling in neon sunglasses – but can an aging Axl Rose impress the late-stage millennials as well as moms and dads?

I’m about to make a very damning admission: I’ve never been to Coachella. Now, I’m not saying this is shameful because everyone should go to Coachella before they die or some other pretentious proclamation. I’m ashamed that I’ve never been because living in Los Angeles for a decade affords me such close proximity to Coachella’s Indio, California, location that I should have gone before I became so old that I was guaranteed to be miserable during the whole affair. I’ve zoomed past the age in which I can reasonably expect to appreciate the unique pleasures of the festival without needing my stomach pumped immediately afterwards.

I’m 31 years old, which is not the optimal time to be driving out to the desert to stand around in the sand all day while my back seizes up and I grind my feet into dust from walking all day. Festivals are a young person’s game, after all. The stamina required to schlep from stage to stage, swilling expensive booze, consuming various illicit substances and staying up all night to listen to ear-blasting music escapes those of advanced age. But the Coachella of never-ending raves and nubile flesh is giving way to another, far more lucrative experience: the nostalgia act.

Coachella 2014 featured Pet Shop Boys, Motorhead, Neutral Milk Hotel, Fatboy Slim, Bryan Ferry and Outkast amongst other performers who enjoyed their golden years some time before the invention of the iPhone ruined our attention spans. Last year’s festival went even further back, with sets from AC/DC and Steely Dan – artifacts of the Gerald Ford era. And previous years included appearances from baby boomer acts such as Paul McCartney and Sly Stone. But 2016 promises not one, but two highly anticipated, lucrative reunions from bands that represent very distinct generations: Guns N’ Roses and LCD Soundsystem. Both groups have performed packed warm-ups in small venues full of adoring fans, but it remains to be seen how well they will fare in the era of the candy-coated EDM laser show.

Axl Rose, lead singer of Guns N’ Roses – who headline Saturday night’s festivities – has already injured himself. Rose, 54 years old, fractured his fifth metatarsal in his left foot. I’m no doctor, but I’m certain the fifth metatarsal is a bone of some sort, probably necessary for not only hopping around and humping the mic stand, but also for simple tasks like walking to the bathroom to take a pee. Rose will wear a cast on his left foot during the two sets GNR will play at the festival on 16 and 23 April. This is not uncommon, as Pitchfork reported back in July of last year that Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters performed in a cast after fracturing his leg when he fell off a stage in Sweden. At that show, Grohl performed the entire night from a giant throne. That strikes me as a rather acceptable solution, since the man isn’t known for his acrobatic stagecraft. Grohl could be lying prostrate on the ground with gerbils crawling up and down his pant legs as long as he was mic’d up. Actually, that might make for a more engaging show. Imagine Grohl screaming into the ground while rodents gnawed at his undercarriage. Where do I buy tickets?

Grohl does not have the reputation of one Axl Rose – a barely restrained, histrionic reprobate whose name is infamously derived from an anagram of “oral sex”. Isn’t part of the appeal of seeing Guns N’ Roses witnessing Axl physically seducing the audience with all manner of overblown stagecraft? Axl Rose warbling his way through Live and Let Die or Welcome to the Jungle from a comfy barcalounger is akin to watching Mick Jagger sing Start Me Up from inside an iron lung or Miles Davis playing Freddie Freeloader while slowly sinking into a tub of mayonnaise. The Guardian’s own Bryan Armen Graham attended GNR’s warm-up show in Las Vegas and reported that Axl performed from the same throne that Grohl used after his injury. So, if you’ve ever wanted to see someone sing Paradise City while thumbing through a copy of Golf Digest and sipping an iced tea, you’re in luck.

And yet, this is what us tortured souls attending Coachella are about to witness this week. The emphasis placed on aging groups reuniting to cash a large paycheck means Coachella will never be just kids rolling in neon sunglasses and appropriated cultural garb lining up to see Rae Sremmurd or Sophie. It’s also late-stage millennials aging out of hipsterdom, plus a healthy sprinkling of moms and dads. Like, actual dads with mortgages and travel-size bottles of Rogaine in their overnight bags.

When Axl tweeted “This is what can happen when you do something you haven’t done in nearly over 23 years” in reference to his foot injury, he could have been preemptively speaking for all the middle-aged people primed to dive head-first into debauchery this weekend. If you are a father or mother out there planning to turn up at Coachella, remember that the college kid doing bumps next to you in the port-a-potty could be your kid. Or, God forbid, your grandkid. The period of recuperation following a night of recreational drug use gets longer as you get older. By 40, one cheeky rail at a concert might cost you an entire week of your life, and at your age, can you really spare a whole week?

Still, I understand why GNR fans would be in the mood to celebrate after enduring a decades-long hiatus that seemed as though it would never end. The devotees of the band were basically robbed of their idols’ prime years. When Guns N’ Roses broke up and Axl went into hiding in 1997, they had only produced five studio albums, and that is with a couple notable caveats. Their second “album”, Lies, only contained eight songs – four from a previously released EP and four recorded with only acoustic guitars. Their third and fourth albums are basically one double album – Use Your Illusion I and II. Their final album, The Spaghetti Incident?, is a bunch of crappy covers. This paucity of original material lends itself to the notion that Guns N’ Roses were a band that exploded onto the scene with violent intent and disappeared in similarly grandiose fashion.

LCD Soundsystem also disbanded after a relatively short amount of time in the public eye. Their three full-length studio albums were not massively popular in the way that GNR dominated radio and MTV in their time, but for a very particular sliver of the post-9/11 generation, their music mattered. Most of their New York City contemporaries – the Strokes, Interpol, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – put out disappointing records and lost much of their relevance. James Murphy, on the other hand, had the sense to walk away, to skip past the diminishing returns and broken promises of “returns to form” and fast-forward to the triumphant victory lap. Even if their next record is a 70-minute long collection of polka ballads, it won’t affect their canonical reputation as the rock band that “won” the first decade of the 21st century.

It doesn’t hurt that their myth exists independent of the lineup. This is not scientifically proven, but I would be confident in guessing that there’s a percentage of LCD fans who can sing along to North American Scum but couldn’t name anyone in the group or even pick James Murphy out of a lineup. If the whole lot of them wandered onto stage wearing goat masks and furry leggings, it’d be alright as long as they immediately started playing Losing My Edge.

But the personnel of Guns N’ Roses matters. The ill-fated Chinese Democracy album cycle in 2008 didn’t include Slash, Duff, Steven Adler or Izzy. Devotees debate what the true “classic” lineup actually is. Vague notions of purity abound when discussing Guns N’ Roses. Countless magazine covers, music videos and T-shirts bearing their faces made them recognizable. Outlandish stories of anti-social behavior made them living cartoon characters powered by whisky (and a few other substances). Bands in the Coachella era don’t really inspire the sort of devotion Guns N’ Roses enjoyed in their peak years. Solo acts do. Drake, Nicki, Kanye, Beyoncé, Taylor, Ri-Ri, and the rest of them command legions of fans, but the musicians banging and strumming behind them don’t really matter – if there are even musicians on stage to begin with. Sunday headliner Calvin Harris is a DJ, which means his stage presence consists of standing behind a console pressing buttons like he’s Mr Sulu from Star Trek. He might as well be sitting on a throne like Axl Rose.

Despite my current state of nervous trepidation, I’ll probably survive the weekend with little to no actual trauma, save for the crushing freeway traffic in and out of the Coachella Valley. There will be festivalgoers younger than me, but there will also be festivalgoers older than me. I’m in the squishy, invisible center. I’m the middle child of music festival culture – too young for Guns N’ Roses, but too old for Calvin Harris. I’m just now starting to develop a taste for nostalgia as anesthetizing narcotic. I might cease to be relevant to pop culture as my hair turns gray and falls out, but Coachella will endure because it can always count on new generations of people eager to reclaim their vitality and bands equally as eager to cash a fat check. The only way to get through these festivals when you’re past a certain age is to do like Saturday’s headliners and blindly grasp for whatever remaining shreds of youth you have left. You might break your foot or throw up your spleen from consuming too much drink, but at least for three days, you can comfortably forget how this whole life thing actually resolves itself.

Coachella set times: Guns N' Roses will flirt with curfew

Guns N’ Roses is expected to take the main stage of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival at 10:30 p.m. Saturday, promoter Goldenvoice has announced, giving the notoriously tardy Los Angeles band two-and-a-half hours to finish before the City of Indio-imposed festival curfew.

That means the reunited band will have more than enough time to perform its full show, or just enough time to get on stage late and still perform longer than most bands at Coachella.

Goldenvoice said last week the iconic rock band led by vocalist Axl Rose and original members Slash on lead guitar and Duff McKagen on bass was expected to play from 10:30 p.m. until 12:50 a.m. They made their first appearance together in 23 years earlier this month at a show scheduled to start after 11 p.m. at the Troubadour nightclub in Hollywood. They actually started after midnight.

Newly released set times also show the re-united LCD Soundsystem closing Friday’s show at 11:10 p.m. and fellow headliner Calvin Harris playing the Coachella Stage at 10:35 p.m. Sunday, when the Coachella curfew is midnight.

Goldenvoice also announced the addition of a Palm Desert band to the Coachella lineup. Brightener, which won the semifinals competition of the Tachevah Music Showcase on March 31 at Pappy and Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace, will perform at noon Saturday on the Outdoor Stage.

Band leader Will Sturgeon said he got the call while driving back from the Coachella site at the Empire Polo Club, where he was helping his friend, artist Phillip Smith, install his art structure for the festival. He said he was so excited, “My hands were shaking.

“Growing up in the desert, and attending the best festival in the world -- in my backyard -- for the past eight or so years, and being a songwriter... playing Coachella is the closest thing I have to a dream come true,” Sturgeon said. “We’re really excited and hoping we can just soak in the moment.”

Hello @Coachella. Soundcheck here in the desert. pic.twitter.com/wfpVPVVG1s

— Duff McKagan (@DuffMcKagan) April 14, 2016

Guns n'Roses Coachella reunion is the last roar of a rock dinosaur

When Guns N’ Roses first announced their reunion at Coachella this weekend, the big question for fans was would a group given to such rancorous disagreement actually survive the rehearsal period to see it through? The big question for everybody else was surely why should anybody care?

They are a group almost defined by their endemic unreliability and capacity to disappoint. After their first and admittedly monumental flash of success they have spent most of the past three decades under the leadership of an apparently reclusive, paranoid, control freak frontman sacking and recruiting members, announcing and cancelling shows and recording and scrapping music. They blew ten years and fourteen million dollars making an album (2008's Chinese Democracy) renowned as the most expensive flop in music history.

This is actually the reunion of a group who never really broke up, just spent decades dragging their own name through the mud. Over the past 30 years they have gone through 23 official members, and made so many disastrous appearances (and even more disastrous failures to appear) that one guitarist (named Buckethead because he played with a bucket on his head) quit after four fruitless years citing their “inability to complete an album or tour”.

In Axl Rose and Slash they have a frontman and guitarist who famously hate each other. “What's clear is that one of the two of us will die before a reunion,” Rose once said of Slash. “And however sad, ugly or unfortunate anyone views it, it is how it is.”



Whilst original drummer Steven Adler and rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin haven’t even been invited back because, presumably, they hate them even more. “I'm not so comfortable with doing anything having more than one of the alumni,” Rose insisted in 2009. “Maybe something with (bassist) Duff (McKagan) but that’s it.” What’s really extraordinary about that quote is this is a group who have had so many former members, the singer refers to them as alumni.

And yet tickets for their reunion at Coachella sold out in hours and this week’s warm up shows in Las Vegas have been greeted like a second coming. Because none of the bad history really matters to fans. Decades of frustration and disenchantment have effectively been wiped out by a (Guns N’) rose tinted glow of past glories. The old gang’s back together. Well, enough of them to make it look like the real thing. All live gigs are really about their audiences and what Guns N’ Roses audience want is to sing the songs that they loved when they were young, and relive the moment when music made them feel most alive.

The reunion boom of the past fifteen years has been driven by this explosion of ritualised nostalgia, with bands putting aside long harboured differences to get back on the gravy train from Fleetwood Mac to the Stone Roses. All break ups now can be seen as temporary, with only a few hold outs apparently too idealistically entrenched and personally disgruntled to countenance a return. The Jam and The Smiths, essentially. And maybe not even them. Because if a band as antagonistically dysfunctional as Guns N’ Roses can bury the hatchet in the name of peace, love and three million dollars a show, then surely anybody can.

In a way, Guns N’ Roses were always a nostalgic group. When they first erupted in 1987 with their big guitar solos and screaming vocals it was a throwback to the unreconstructed cock rock of the disreputable Seventies, with none of the post-New Wave earnestness that had crept into Eighties guitar music (albeit GNR did channel punk energy). They comported themselves with the kind of tight clothes, big hair, bad attitudes and unapologetic drug habits that harked back to a more innocently decadent era, and were much credited with saving rock and roll from synthesisers and seriousness. By the time Nirvana and grunge came along with something meatier and more purposeful,GNR already looked somewhat anachronistic. Virtuoso guitarist Slash (for some the band’s only redeeming feature) departed in 1993 because he could no longer tolerate his frontman’s erratic behaviour and GNR have continued effectively as an Axl Rose solo project.



But in their moment the band hit audiences extremely hard. They may have only released three albums anyone cares about (1987’s Appetite For Destruction and 1990s Use Your Illusion I and II) but 65 million sales shows how much this music mattered to people. And one thing we have learned over the ensuing decades is that the gig going public is loyal, with an apparently insatiable appetite for music that connects them to their own past. Not even the bands own dismal career trajectory can take that away. The Guns N’ Roses people are paying to see is an imaginary version of the band, frozen in their prime. This is the return of a brand, not a band.

Even if you were too young to have witnessed them first time around, as undoubtedly much of the audience at Coachella will be, Guns N’ Roses offer a gateway to a bygone age, with the near mythic allure that comes with survival and revival. Their greatest hits have had enough radio rotation to ensure they are soundtrack staples even for the generations that followed. For many, the attraction will be to witness the last roar of the rock dinosaur.

Johan wrote:What a bitter article. Sounds like the author never really liked the  band, not even back in the late eighties. There are quite some mistakes in the article as well. Slash left in 1996 for instance.

Johan wrote:Haha, thanks. I still need to defend my thesis next Wednesday. After that I should be dr.!

Guns N’ Roses with Immobile Axl Rose Still Shines at Coachella

Hours after the surprising announcement that Axl Rose was now fronting AC/DC, the reunited GN’R proved to be worth the wait

Have you ever watched a rock star sit and sing for two-and-a-half hours? Does the thought of it exhaust you? That's what the Coachella crowd experienced during Guns N' Roses' headlining set at the festival in Indio, Calif. on Saturday night (April 16).

And yet, they still somehow managed to be riveting. Just a few weeks back, the iconic hard rock band—now consisting of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan, minus Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler—played its first reunion show at Los Angeles' Troubadour, where Rose fractured a bone in his foot, rendering him unable to walk. To compensate, the 54-year-old borrowed the throne from Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl to sing from, never leaving his perch for a considerable amount of stage time.

On paper, it's a high-risk situation. As as lively collective with a lot to prove after an extended hiatus, Guns N' Roses faced astronomical odds. The crowd at Coachella's main stage wasn't teeming to the back as it was earlier in the day for Disclosure and Ice Cube. In fact, it mirrored the surprisingly low turnout for headliners LCD Soundsystem the night before, maybe reaching half-capacity—and served perhaps as a testament to the nostalgia booking that back-loaded the first two nights, with acts geared towards a more mature crowd.

But if anything, they showed how a night-ending performance should be done, even with limited resources. Rose remained seated for the entirety of the show, changing outfits throughout, somehow. They started just a few minutes late, much to the snide predictions based on past tardiness, and ripped into "It's So Easy," the first of a long line of hits.

Together, the group is unstoppable. Slash mercilessly shredded his guitar as he traded off solos with Rose; McKagan took the lead on "Attitude," relieving Rose of his vocal duties; Rose led their shattering cover of Wings' "Live and Let Die." The hits were plenty: "Sweet Child O' Mine," "Welcome to the Jungle" and ballad "This I Love," off 2008's Chinese Democracy, were in mint condition.

Oddly enough, in the few hours before the group took the Coachella stage, AC/DC announced that Rose would be joining them on tour as their lead vocalist for their upcoming tour, from May through June. Angus Young backed the claim by emerging to duet on "Whole Lotta Rosie” and “Riff Raff."

It doesn't really make sense. Together, Guns N' Roses is a white-hot force of nature; not even a foot injury slowed them down. To separate Rose from his home team, particularly when they're so clearly in sync (at least musically), seems like a grave misstep. The band is as fine as it's ever been, as evidenced by the merit of one of their first shows back together after being apart for so long. Not even a bum foot could keep the their energy from waning, and clearly, they have a lot more to give.

Coachella 2016: Guns N' Roses Bring Out AC/DC's Angus Young to Preview Axl Rose's New Gig

Saturday night (April 16) at Coachella was supposed to be all about Guns N' Roses' classic lineup reunion, but thanks to a special appearance from another metal icon, the evening turned into a shockingly great preview of the next chapter of a much older hard rock band.

Just hours after AC/DC confirmed rumors that Axl Rose would serve as singer for the band's remaining tour dates after hearing issues forced vocalist Brian Johnson to take a step back from the band after 36 years, Rose hit the stage with his formerly estranged GnR compatriots Duff McKagan and Slash at Coachella. But even though there have only been a handful of GnR "classic lineup" reunion shows this year, the most jaw-dropping moment of the night wasn't centered around the trio back in action: It was a glimpse into Axl's next move.

Seated on his rock n' roll recovery throne (lent to him by Dave Grohl), Rose apologized to the crowd for not "running around" on stage as per usual. "I do feel bad about sitting here on my ass," Rose said. As a consolation prize, he offered to bring out a special guest to liven things up.

Many were undoubtedly expecting something along the lines of Sebastian Bach, who joined the band for a previous reunion gig. Instead, the crowd was pleasantly shocked to see AC/DC's Angus Young -- in full schoolboy uniform despite his 61 years -- take the stage with Guns N' Roses (surprise aside, the drummer's AC/DC t-shirt was a subtle harbinger things to come).

While Rose was forced to remain seated throughout, Young did more than his fair share to make up for Axl's immobility by doing the Chuck Berry duck walk all around the stage while the GnR singer wailed and nailed the band's "Whole Lotta Rosie" and "Riff Raff" (both originally Bon Scott vocals). Anyone concerned that Rose isn't up for the towering task of speeding down the Aussie band's never-ending highway to hell need only listen to what happened at Coachella to have their fears assuaged.

Aside from the unexpected AC/DC detour, the proper Guns N' Roses show -- a small miracle in itself -- was a resounding success. There were no outright misfires -- sure, they sounded slightly out of sync on "Mr. Brownstone," and putting "Chinese Democracy" third wasn't the wisest pacing choice -- but there's no dismissing the experience of seeing a musical duo rekindle their strange magic together after such a long time apart. Slash's fingers flew over his frets like Muhammad Ali dancing in the boxing ring, and Rose brought an especially focused vocal performance to the stage on Saturday.

Forced to remain seated for the marathon concert, Rose looked like a caged animal at times -- and it suited him perfectly. Feeding off the satisfaction of GnR drawing a gargantuan crowd (it was much larger than the one LCD Soundsystem's reunion pulled in Friday night), Rose's gaze was tinged with a sort of sinister hunger. His eyes roamed the stage like an ailing, ravenous dog just waiting for the moment it's well enough to pounce.

And that day will come. Once his foot is healed and he's touring with his teenage heroes as their vocalist later this year, it looks like Axl Rose -- who for years seemed content to trudge through old Guns N' Roses hits like a pleasant but passionless day job -- may have his appetite for rock domination restored.