2017.06.17 - London Stadion, London, England

GIG REVIEW: An Evening With GUNS N’ ROSES at Olympic Stadium, London

By Kahmel Farahani

After many years, several line-up changes and sky-high expectations, The Machine finally rolled back into London last night – Guns N’ Roses returned. I am very happy to report that it was worth the wait. Whether you want to call it a “reunion” or not, there really is no point dwelling on who wouldn’t sign up or get on board the Nightrain – whoever they are, they weren’t missed last night.

The entire band seemed to be genuinely happy and enjoying themselves during the concert, none more so than W. Axl Rose. The king of the jungle himself was in fine vocal form with smiles & grins all night. I have honestly never seen the man enjoy himself on stage so much, with interaction and fun.

The changes were not only visible, but audible too. Having followed Gn’R for many years, I’ve come to enjoy the subtlest changes. The previous few line-ups of Guns N’ Roses were stacked with some of the fiercest and most talented players in the rock world , particularly in the six-string department. It often felt like a rag-tag group of outlaws supporting and giving to their hard-core fans while simultaneously flipping off their detractors. The current line up feels like everybody’s favourite team running a victory lap in front of 70,000 adoring fans – that element of confrontation , which produced at times both incredible and challenging shows, is gone.

It has been replaced by a lean, well-balanced band that can handle “Appetite For Destruction” era classic like “My Michele” and “It’s So Easy” with hard punk energy while still leading the crowd through a beautiful “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”. The return of “Use Your Illusion” album tracks like “Double Talkin’ Jive”, “Yesterday” and the truly epic “Coma” was a joy to hear.

Even more exciting is that Slash has his fire back. Whether its the extra pressure that goes into the big shows or just having to keep up with the truly incredible Richard Fortus on guitar, Slash was playing with focus, energy and real speed. His blistering solo of “The Godfather” theme led into “Sweet Child of Mine” , thankfully slowed down to the correct speed and still enjoyable even for the millionth time.

The sublime guitar duel of Slash and Richard Fortus during “Wish You Were Here” is followed by the Piano intro of “Layla” leads us into “November Rain”. A healthy selection of songs from “Chinese Democracy” also make a welcome showing, from the title track and “This I Love” to hard rocking “Better” now its new industrial riffing intro. The one and only Mr Duff Mckagan steps up for the punk blast of “Attitude”, while “Civil War” is played with classic “Voodoo Child” outro.

Following a roaring “Nightrain” the band passes the 2.5 hour mark but they are still not done. The Encore begins with a tremendous tribute to the late Chris Cornell in the form of “Black Hole Sun” before leading and an almost acoustic “Patience”. This is followed by a truly joyous cover of “The Seeker” before GN’R break the 3 hour mark and take us down to the “Paradise City”. 70,000 happy, tired and sometimes rowdy fans file out of the stadium, content in the knowledge that they have just seen legends in action.

With its Golden Circle standing area and steep ticket prices, is the “Not in This Lifetime” tour a cash grab? Possibly.

Did the fans leave happy having got their moneys worth? Most certainly yes.

Are “Guns N’ Roses” still the greatest Hard Rock band in the world? Without a doubt.

Guns n’ Roses – ‘Not in this Lifetime’ Tour @ London Stadium

Review by John Hayhurst

A show that was never to be played in Axl Rose’s lifetime, happened in London tonight and he was on time, on cue and fully committed. London’s Olympic Stadium shook to the heavy rock sounds from Guns n’ Roses ‘Appetite for Destruction’ and a lot of covers, but at least Slash and Axl are on stage together once more.

It was Donington Monsters of Rock day in 1988 and a much hyped band from Los Angeles stunned the mainly male crowd there, sadly the crush that ensued during their set meant that 2 people lost their lives (yes folks those were the good ol’ days of heavy rock festivals). I can proudly say I was there and I survived the crush but realistically I was probably much further away than my memory allows me to recall. The thing I most remember about their performance was that it felt like the start of something new from America, it was gritty, dangerous and dirty, and their hair wasn’t all pumped up with spray, and they were not wearing any glitter make up like those many other metal genre bands of the day.

Fast forward now almost 30 years later and looking around the Stadium I’m seeing probably some of the same 50 thousand mainly males still watching them, they have a lot less hair now, and slightly more paunch, some have brought their partners and even their kids – but there is that same eagerness to see if the band we all loved have still got the energy and balls they showed back then.

We are also privately worrying if Axl will turn up, let’s face it, he has a track record of being an hour late the last time he came to play these shores, and he was bottled off stage for this by an annoyed Irish crowd. Those “Guns n Roses” shows were abysmal by most people’s standards, Rose’s voice was pretty much shot, and to get our GnR kicks we looked more towards Slash and Myles Kennedy as they were doing a better job. When asked in 2012 if the original line up would reform, Axl Rose’s reaction was “Not in this Lifetime” – however money talks and within a few years the ‘Not in this Lifetime’ tour was announced. Not quite the full original line up (Izzy Stradlin and Steven Adler missing), but if it means that we get to see Axl and Slash together on stage again, then we’ll take anyone else along the way as a bonus.

The first positive sign is that the band are bang on time and as the sound of The Equaliser is played, they emerge to blast straight into ‘It’s So Easy’, the first track of many from Appetite. Already Axl is in his usual garb of jeans, black shirt and checked overshirt tied around his waist, he’s wearing shades and screaming “It’s So Easy” wildly like he’s been gargling helium infused Jack Daniels. His trusty sidekick Slash is rapidly becoming a cartoon caricature of his former self. Seemingly hasn’t changed in 30 years apart from a few extra pounds of flesh here and there, and we can’t really tell anything about his face because it’s covered in that black shaggy mop and hat, but the sound from that shiny Les Paul guitar tells us everything we need to know.

These two are clearly classic rock icons, recognised the world over and have been for at least 2 generations now. That opening drum and riff of ‘Mr Brownstone’ has the hairs on the back of my neck rising, it’s been a while but certain tracks can still do that live, however, a song that some years ago was a bit daring – singing about heroin addiction – now feels like a mild mannered party karaoke classic, the closest most people here have been to an addiction of anything brown would either be Newcastle ale or sugar in coffee. Axl is still doing his trademark snake hips side shuffle though, but these days he’s dancing with his pinky purple mic stand rather than Mr Brownstone.

We bear through ‘Chinese Democracy’ before another classic arises from Slash’s finger work, Axl screams “You know where you are?” and ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ gets this crowd moving and bouncing. Slash jumps around like Tigger wondering where those 30 years have gone, although there’s nothing moving his hat as it looks like it’s fully welded to his scalp.

Shamefully the stadium sound is very sludgy and out of time with the visuals for those at the back, surely this should have been sorted beforehand? There is a distinct dip in reaction levels during ‘Better’ and ‘Estranged’, but the hardcore fans put that all to one side as its been twenty odd years since they saw these two on stage together.

Tonight’s set is peppered with the old tunes and interspersed with a lot of covers and probably my least favourite starts the proceedings – Wings ‘Live and Let Die’ has long been for me the most difficult to swallow cover that GnR have done, but I can’t deny that for younger generations they have almost claimed it as their own. The orchestral pieces taken care of by Slash and Richard Fortus as they duel quite successfully across the stage. Whilst this guitar work is like no other, the tinny sound coming from the mahoosive speakers is a little off putting. This is big stadium filling loud rock music and deserves to be heard properly, I’m not sure whether it’s the residential area we are close to or what, but I get the feeling something is definitely more than amiss with the sound quality this evening.

A blistering ‘Rocket Queen’ and ‘You Could Be Mine’ are followed by the part of the set where they go back to their influences and pick out a punk track to cover, last night was the Misfits, tonight it’s The Damned and ‘New Rose’ is given the Axl Rose shriek rather than the Dave Vanian growl.

Time to slow it down a little, for ‘Civil War’, Slash brings out a double necked guitar and Axl starts his whistling. The start of this song and lyrics are quite poignant for our current times, I’m not sure whether this is lost on the audience or not, but by the end Axl seems to be just over screaming every line.

During ‘Coma’ we get band introductions and then the mother of all guitar solo spots from Slash. Whilst I like a good solo run, and there’s no denying he is a guitar god, sometimes…just sometimes, it’s a little over played and could be cut by a couple of minutes, – there I’ve said it, I’ll run off and hide now!

The trade-off between Richard Fortus and Slash during the next piece (Love Theme from The Godfather) is fantastic and its then followed by probably one of the most famous opening guitar solos ever. ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ is surprisingly not saved for the encore, instead thrown in mid to late in the set, but as expected it is greeted like a long lost family member, all phones in the air and the grand “woooagh…woooagh…woooagh” sing-a-long commences.

Whilst there is almost 3 hours of non-stop entertainment here, from arguably the biggest heavy rock band on the planet right now, there is little interaction between band and audience, and interestingly not much at all between Axl and Slash. Both individually are putting in 100% and seemingly loving every minute, but between them tumbleweed is blowing in large quantities. It will be fascinating to see if the promised new material does actually appear after this tour!

More covers in the setlist with Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ and a simply stunning tribute to Chris Cornell with ‘Black Hole Sun’ the latter made for Axl Rose’s voice perfectly. At the point from Wish You Were here onwards it’s all a little slow and sad, ‘November Rain’ has all the power ballad and piano perfection, but when you add Dylan’s ‘Knocking on Heavens Door’ to the 4 tracks, I can’t help but think there should have been a rocker in there to break up the mood a bit. Still, ‘Nightrain’ provides the relief that we were all looking for and this closes the set proper.

Of course this expensive rock n roll panto requires a big encore, and they wouldn’t let us down by not playing ‘Paradise City’ would they? First we get another slowy ‘Don’t Cry’ and then a bizarre concoction of AC/DC’s ‘Whole Lotta Rosie’. This for me is when it becomes a bit too much of a joke, I’m only grateful they didn’t pull out Stairway to Heaven – instead perhaps a final trip to the bar. It reminded me of watching Ian Gillan sing with Black Sabbath at Reading Festival when they played ‘Smoke on the Water’. Let us not confuse the kids, otherwise it all just becomes a pub rock mishmash in a stadium.

Finally, ‘Paradise City’ with its clapping start and full on moshpit finale brings this all to a close, the ‘Not in this Lifetime’ tour will rumble on for a bit longer, and then hopefully we may get some new material to replace the covers. There were too many tonight and instead I would have traded them for missing tracks like ‘My Michelle’, ‘Patience’, and ‘Used to Love Her’. They have more than enough of their own great tunes rather than raiding the classic rock bank safe, and ‘safe’ was never a word used to describe GnR.

For those that have never experienced them live before, this is a great show (when they sort the sound out), it is everything you would expect to see and hear from a massive heavy rock band. It is music history or nostalgia neatly commercialised and sold back to you – Perfect for some of today’s casual ‘Rock T shirt from Primark’ wearing peeps. Personally, I’ll try to keep my 30-year-old memories intact, I like my heavy rock music a little angrier and more dangerous than this.

Guns n' Joneses
Axl Rose and Tom Jones stumble out of boozed-fuelled party at 6am after noise officials called to break up bash

The Guns N' Roses singer led the hell-raising in the early hours at celeb hotspot Chiltern Firehouse following a gig at London Stadium

By Stephen Moyes

A BOOZE-fuelled party with Guns N’ Roses rocker Axl Rose and veteran singer Tom Jones broke up at 6am after noise officials were called to shut it down.

The celeb bar hosting the bash officially closed at 3am but wildman Axl, Tom, 77, and other stars were still downing drinks hours later.

Two council noise officers arrived to try to call time at about 4.30am after complaints from neighbours.

But it was another hour and a half before the revellers, who also included Kate Moss’s ex-hubby Jamie Hince, finally stumbled out of the venue.

US megastar Axl, 55, led the hell-raising in the early hours of Sunday in a bar at the Chiltern Firehouse luxury hotel and restaurant in central London.

He and his band had belted out classics such as 1988 hits Paradise City and Sweet Child o’ Mine at a heaving London Stadium gig on Saturday night.

The booze then flowed as celebs at the party watched US boxing world champ Andre Ward’s victory in his televised clash with Russian Sergey Kovalev.

A source said: “The music was pumping.

“There was screaming, with boozy celebs cheering the fight from Las Vegas, which didn’t start until 4.20am UK time.

“Axl was rooting for the US fighter and wasn’t happy about noise complaints. It wasn’t very rock ’n roll.

“The bar manager tried to argue it was a private party.

“The Westminster council officials were made to wait outside by ­security.

“Management eventually turned the music off but the shouting continued.”

The Chiltern Firehouse did not respond to calls for comment.

Guns N' Roses London Stadium Shows Voted Live Event Of 2017

Guns N' Roses' sold out weekend of shows at London Stadium in June have been voted as the best live event in the UK in 2017, according to a fan-voted Ticketmaster poll.

The pair of shows on 16 & 17 June 2017 saw a reunited trio of Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan take to the stage together in the UK for the first time in 25 years.

Guns N' Roses' shows saw off competition from U2 at Twickenham in second, and 2017's Download Festival held at Donington Park, and were also ranked third globally.

The same Ticketmaster vote saw Foo Fighters' upcoming weekend of shows at London Stadium in June ranked the most anticipated tour of 2018.

Both Foo Fighters shows at London Stadium sold out within 90 minutes, and more acts are expected to be announced for next summer in the coming weeks.