2017.07.20 - Apollo Theater, New York, NY, USA

Soulmonster wrote:There is a lot of buzz around this show suggesting it will celebrate the 30th year celebration of the release of Appetite for Destruction by playing it in its entirety. It was released on July 21, 1987. If so, it will mean that some very rare songs will be played: Think About You (last played in 2006), fast version on You're Crazy (not sure when it was played the last), and Anything Goes (last played in 1988).

Patrick Ryan wrote:'Appetite for Destruction' at 30: Axl Rose shows he's still got it at anniversary show

NEW YORK — Three decades in, rock fans still have an insatiable hunger for Guns N' Roses.

That was amplified late Thursday night at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater, where the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers reunited to play an invitation-only Sirius XM radio show to celebrate their landmark 1987 debut Appetite for Destruction, which marks its 30th anniversary Friday.

Fueled by top-10 hits Sweet Child O' Mine, Paradise City and Welcome to the Jungle, the album spent four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, going on to sell an estimated 30 million copies worldwide and rank No. 62 on Rolling Stone's "greatest albums of all time" list.

Axl Rose — who reunited with Guns N' Roses last year after more than a decade of strife with lead guitarist Slash — thrived in the 1,500-seat venue, which is a welcome downsizing from the 60,000-capacity stadiums the band has been playing on their Not in This Lifetime tour this year. The intimate setting was an ideal place to watch the bandana-clad frontman's spark-plug antics, which included multiple costume changes when he wasn't snugging his bandmates or jumping in place, frequently bounding onto a raised platform center stage where he towered over the head-banging, beer-swilling crowd.

After a late start, the rollicking set ran for more than two and a half hours, with only the occasional lull in the audience during power ballads Estranged and Better. Electrifying covers of Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die and AC/DC's Whole Lotta Rosie earned loud whoops of recognition, as did Slash's noodling of The Godfather theme Speak Softly, Love during an extended guitar break leading into crowd favorite Sweet Child O' Mine. Rose's vocals — a gravelly grumble that often erupted into a primal scream — shined on the slowed-down This I Love, while Slash and bassist Duff McKagan each got their moments in the spotlight with piercing solos and an epic "duel" in the middle of Welcome to the Jungle.

Spotty acoustics aside, Guns N' Roses put on an animated show that catered to their longtime fans, with a special nod warranted for opening act The Kills, whose loose, fuzz-funk jams set the tone for the night.

Guns N’ Roses Rip It Up at the Apollo Theater As ‘Appetite for Destruction’ Turns 30

By Joe Lynch

When they debuted in 1987 with wild personas and threatening imagery — backed up by lyrics that touched on everything from hard drinking to heroin — no one expected Guns N’ Roses as a band to make it to the 21st century (hell, a lot of people didn’t expect the band members to make it to the ‘90s with a pulse).

Which made it all the more shocking that on the eve of Appetite for Destruction’s 30th anniversary, when Guns N’ Roses took the stage at the legendary Apollo Theater in Harlem on Thursday (July 20) night for a private concert for SiriusXM subscribers, not only did GNR viciously batter eardrums for three straight hours, but Axl Rose (a vocalist whose signature songs are more vocally demanding than 90 percent of rock fare) proved he can still nail that androgynous, hellhound screech — enough to make you believe Reagan is in office and Al Bundy is dominating TV screens, if only for a second.

Reunited with classic members Slash and Duff McKagan for a bit over a year now (still a minor miracle), Guns N’ Roses’ stage presence feels once again dangerous and untamed. Immediately following last night’s invite-only show in the intimate Apollo, audience members — clutching free GNR t-shirts and sporting irrepressible grins — left the theater around 1:30 a.m. stammering for words to express how great the show was. Invariably, show reviews from people ages 12 to 60 seemed to include one word: “Fuuuuuuuuuck.”

For Rose in 2017, there’s no ‘he sounds good for his age’ disclaimer necessary. At the Apollo, his unfettered shriek on their “Live and Let Die” cover floored the audience every time the band came around to the breakneck instrumental section, and his voice nimbly traversed the vocal peaks and valleys of “Night Train” with seemingly little effort. (The only indication of his 55 years was a conspicuous, makeshift black tent onstage that Rose retreated to throughout the show during the extended instrumental solos.)

Peppering references to classic rock history throughout the show via short interstitial jams on tracks from Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix, Slash’s presence resonated throughout the Apollo via his distinctive guitar tone; not once did he speak. Rose was similarly light on banter, but his eyes said everything as he shimmied, bounced and strutted around the stage. GNR has been playing massive crowds for the last year of its Not In This Lifetime Tour, but the Apollo (as with most NYC venues) is a tight space: The balcony boxes practically hang over the performers and rows of seats push right up against the stage, allowing singers the chance to stare directly into fans’ faces whether they’re looking left or right, up or down.

And Rose clearly fed off the crowd’s slack-jawed astonishment at his vocal prowess and the band’s tightly executed renditions of rock songs that haven’t dated one iota over the last 25-30 years. Even as he put on the affectation of a jungle cat on the prowl, you could see boyish glee glinting from his eyes as they surveyed the crowd during crowd-pleasers like “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” and “It’s So Easy.” Much like the pleasure you get from watching an SNL performer crack up while trying to stay in character, seeing Axl trying to suppress the joy radiating from his eyes while he played the part of a ferocious Sunset Strip panther was strangely reassuring. It’s nice to know that even after singing these songs for 30 years, they still mean as much to him as they do to the fans eating up every guitar lick and high-register wail.

The Not In This Lifetime Tour is about to kick off its second leg, and who knows how long this ‘reunion’ lineup will stay together. But one thing is for certain: Giving longtime devotees — and more importantly, fans born years after Appetite was unleashed — the opportunity to witness one of rock’s finest frontmen play alongside one of the genre’s most beloved lead guitarists is not something to take for granted. There aren’t that many iconic rock bands left these days, and most can’t deliver like GNR still can. And as the band’s impressive, poignant cover of Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” at the Apollo reminded the crowd, we seem to be losing more rock icons with every passing month. Depending on how long it endures, the upcoming Not In This Lifetime dates may not be once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but why take chances? GNR might not be destructive per se these days, but they’re still plenty hungry.

GNR’s Apollo performance aired on SiriusXM’s Guns N’ Roses Radio (airing through Aug. 16) and on Howard Stern’s Howard 101 channel. The concert will rebroadcast on SiriusXM’s Guns N’ Roses Radio on Friday, July 21 at 6 pm ET, 10 pm ET and Saturday, July 22 at 12 pm ET, 4 pm ET and 9 pm ET.

Last Night Guns N’ Roses Played An Epic Set At The Apollo, Today Appetite For Destruction Turns 30

By Ryan Leas

Appetite For Destruction turns 30 today. If you’re a fan of rock music, it doesn’t really matter when you were born — that’s bound to make you feel old, whether you were a teenager in 1987 or whether that album served as a hand-me-down gateway drug 10 or 15 years later. You could look at ‘80s hard rock and hair metal as the bastard child of classic rock, the delinquent and mutated end game, and now its best and most respected poster boys have a debut that’s a full three decades old. “Guns N’ Fuckin’ Roses” doesn’t have quite the same ring when it applies to guys in their 50s sporting a somewhat frightening array of hats. And yet, here we are.

Last night, the semi-reunited Guns N’ Roses played for subscribers of SiriusXM (a GN’R channel launched on the satellite radio service this month) at Harlem’s historic Apollo Theater. It was the kind of thing that thoroughly underlined their status in some echelon of the classic rock pantheon: a sprawling three hour set that made room for an instrumental cover of “Wish You Were Here” and a “Layla” tease before “November Rain,” an Allman Bros. intro to “Patience,” a “Voodoo Child” tag on “Civil War,” and full readings of the Who’s “The Seeker,” Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” and AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie.” (As of last year, Axl Rose moonlights as AC/DC’s new frontman.) The Kills — another performatively “rock ‘n’ roll” group in a very different context — opened, prompting conversations like, “Wait, who’s the opener?” “I don’t know some indie rock band…”

On some level, Guns N’ Roses’ status is very much solidified — a massively popular band with only a few albums and one of the most “it’s better to burn out than to fade away” stories in rock history at the same time as it’s a dragged out, zig-zagging epic fitting for any of their ‘70s stadium rock forebears. But seeing them in the context of Appetite’s 30th birthday highlights the inescapably lost quality of their identity now. They’re caught in some nexus between the bloated final act of classic rock in the late ‘70s up against the rise of punk, and then on the other side the rise of Alt Nation and a new era of now-classic rock, with a much different set of standards and proprieties that made Guns N’ Roses seem like dinosaurs when they were just about 30 years old.

Even when if you set aside how poorly some of this has aged — their casual misogyny, Axl being a complete asshole, the general image of a belligerently wasted and debaucherous young group now scanning completely illegibly — you have to buy into it if you’re going to enjoy Guns N’ Roses in 2017. I mean, this is a band with people named Axl Rose, Duff McKagan, Slash, and Dizzy Reed. Again, there are a lot of hats — and leather, and long solos, and “rock ‘n’ roll swagger.” There’s a quality to the whole thing that, essentially, feels like the sort of fever dream someone would concoct for either a very ham-fisted fiction about a stratospherically successful (and thus free to be very dumb) rock band, or a Spinal Tap-esque parody.

On the flipside, that’s precisely what always made them so cool. That’s precisely what made them one of the last real rock ‘n’ roll demigods that suburban kids around the country looked at and thought, “That’s the life.” Three decades on, their power might seem alien in our current musical landscape, but it is far from diminished.

Technicalities first: somehow blatantly defying a wildly self-destructive past, Axl sounds pretty great live these days, especially considering he’s now in his mid-50s and some of these songs require screams and actual range. And even though it isn’t the full classic lineup, it’s something else to see Axl flanked by Duff’s punk-leaning sneer and Slash as the still-vigorous guitarist, duckwalks and everything. There are still a few anonymous figures hanging out onstage, but it’s better than Axl’s very obvious attempt to replace Slash with his cartoonish doppelgänger Buckethead.

As for that three hour setlist, it afforded the group time to play just about everything you’d want to hear. (And a few things you could probably do without, but who would expect rigorous self-editing from the crew behind the dual Use Your Illusion release, let alone now that they stand as one of the last torchbearers for an ancient hard rock brand of excess.) The setlist was pretty much the same as at any given recent show, with no alteration for or acknowledgment of the fact that it was the eve of their first album’s 30th anniversary. Axl barely said anything, for that matter, aside from occasionally shouting out a band member or thanking the crowd.

The latter part worked in favor of the show, though: This was a no-nonsense, powerhouse set despite its rambling length deep into the night. They played the exact Chinese Democracy songs you’d want to hear — “Better” is a monster live — and selected a good mix of hits and deep cuts from the Use Your Illusion albums, with “You Could Be Mine” a particular burner live, “Estranged” the still-more-interesting cousin to “November Rain,” and the welcome surprise of “Coma.”

Then, of course, there was the Appetite material — the stuff where most of us first fell in love with them, the stuff that had a heightened impact given the timing. Thirty years later, “It’s So Easy” and “Mr. Brownstone” make for a perfect, decadent one-two punch of an opening. Thirty years later, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” is still the earnest salve to its more caustic siblings. Thirty years later, “Rocket Queen” remains one of their best songs, a blend of serpentine groove and genuine beauty. Thirty years later, “Welcome To The Jungle” is as foreboding and exhilarating and infectious as ever, deserving a spot amongst the greatest classic rock songs.

By the time they finally finished playing at 1:30 AM, the weight of those 30 years could be felt in other ways, too. There was something out of time about the whole thing, seeing one of the most monolithic stadium rock bands ever in a tiny-ish theater, all these years removed from their heyday, their relevance. Out of any of the revivals and retro trends from the past 10 or 15 years, there’s almost nothing major that you could point to and find actual sonic influence from Guns N’ Roses or their peers. Without being as vaunted as their ‘60s or ‘70s predecessors, Guns N’ Roses have found themselves in a similar place, exhuming the now increasingly distant past night to night.

But none of that really matters, because when you see them play these songs live, it has the effect it’s supposed to. It makes you feel like a wannabe rebellious teen all over again. It makes you fall back in love with their extreme depiction of rock ‘n’ roll hedonism from the final days of that brand of rock ‘n’ roll hedonism. It makes you remember that this was a band formed of lost kids who somehow conquered the world and for a time were the biggest thing anywhere and, song to song, it makes you remember exactly why.

30 Years After the Release of Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses Are Still an Unstoppable Live Band

By Craig Jenkins

To hear rock fans tell the story, Guns N’ Roses was a club to the head of hair metal, the knockout hit that served the whole of late-’80s hard rock up on a platter for the gutsy, punk-minded Seattle kids to stage a coup for control of the ship. Guns was scuzzier, grittier, and realer than its peers on the Strip: “Your daddy works in porno,” Axl Rose sings on “My Michelle,” “Now that mommy’s not around.” But in order to crown Guns N’ Roses the reality kings of West Coast hard rock you have to step over the grit of peers like Motley Crüe and Poison. If the tandem Crüe autobio The Dirt is to be believed, “Shout at the Devil” is tacitly about getting tangled up in a bad bout of drug-addled occult obsession. If that’s not every bit as dark as the stories of decay populating Guns’ landmark debut album Appetite for Destruction, well, what is?

Pure musicianship and sky-high ambition are what set Guns apart from the bands we remember less fondly from their era. Rock guys embellished the Guns tale, the same way the war songs of antiquity lifted real-life heroes up into the annals of myth. Axl Rose did access the glam and the gloom of the scene, but it’s the chops of the players that put them in the running for the greatest rock bands of all time. All of these assets were on display at the Apollo Theater last night, as the band’s Not in This Lifetime tour paused for a rare SiriusXM-sponsored show (which is streaming on SiriusXM’s Guns N’ Roses Radio all weekend) at the 1,500-capacity Harlem landmark on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of Appetite.

Guns N’ Roses is a majestic band whose merit grows when you get close enough to actually watch the gears turn. You’ve likely heard Axl’s multi-octave wail all over radios and stereos before, but to watch him sail up out of his natural baritone, to be physically confronted by the controlled calamity of the thing, is a wonder. The Apollo set — a tireless, three-hour barrage of hits, deep cuts, and covers — opens deceptively with the cuts that lean on the lower end of Rose’s register. Like Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky, he’s giving you time to count him out. When the trademark shriek comes out, it’s shockingly sharp. Rose is a 55-year-old rock lifer celebrating 30-year-old songs, but unlike aging singers in similar situations, who take the keys of the songs down a notch to account for shrinking upper registers pinched by the passage of time, Axl hustles and nails every note.

Not in This Lifetime is a slight return of the classic ’80s Guns N’ Roses lineup. It reunites Rose, Appetite-era guitarist Slash, and bassist Duff McKagan in a band rounded out by longtime keyboard player Dizzy Reed, 2000s-era rhythm guitarist Richard Fortus, drummer Frank Ferrer, and the newest acquisition, keyboardist–tech whiz Melissa Reese. The set list trained these skills on every era of the band’s existence, from Appetite through the GNR Lies and Spaghetti Incident projects, both Use Your Illusion albums and even the latter day Guns-in-name-only LP Chinese Democracy. Guns is a band ultimately defined by the talents of the three lifers up front, but the machine only runs because every piece works in perfect concert. The spotlight’s always on OGs, but Richard Fortus backs Slash dutifully and takes mean solos whenever there’s room to shine, and Reed, Ferrer, and Reese form the powerful backbone for all the shrieking and shredding.

About said shredding: Slash is a guitar god of intimidating versatility. He nails the memorable solos in Guns classics with aplomb. He blows a coda out by triple on the pure joy of speedy fretwork. He pours everything into a killer talkbox solo. He crushes the entire Godfather theme. He duets emotively with Fortus on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.” He plucks out the Allman Brothers’ “Melissa” on the way to GNR Lies’ “Patience.” He picks out noodly Jerry Garcia style leads on electric 12-string. He effects Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil’s wigged-out psychedelia on a cover of “Black Hole Sun.” (The night before the Appetite anniversary happened to be the late Chris Cornell’s birthday).

I spent a respectable chunk of the night purely gobsmacked by the virtuosity. I sent out two Snaps of Slash shredding alone in the spotlight. The set snaked out past the three-hour mark, and I felt more tired than the 50-year-olds onstage looked. Guns N’ Roses is — has always been — a project about excess and extremes. I only understood this conceptually, being about five years too young to get caught up in their maelstrom at the height of it. Throughout the third hour of the Apollo gig, the revolution of the band became clear to me. Guns was never just a bunch of crazy motherfuckers playing grimy California rock and roll. They blew hard rock wide open, melding it with the uncompromising bluntness of metal, the manic jitteriness of punk, and the broken directness of big, loud pop balladry. The three-hour, career-spanning Apollo set was a reminder of how rare and special that mixture is.

Soulmonster wrote:Apparently from after the Apollo show. Seems like he is having a good time

Watch Frustrated Axl Rose Deal With Paparazzi And Autograph Hounds In New York City

Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose is featured in the latest episode of the GTV Reality video web series, where Giovanni Arnold can be seen meeting celebrities for autographs and filming every encounter POV (point of view).

In the two-minute clip, Axl can be seen being cordial to fans after Guns N' Roses' intimate show in New York before attempting to get into the wrong car. He then apparently spots his ride but decides against getting into the vehicle when he realizes that are other people inside the car. Fans and paparazzi attempt to get more autographs from Rose and a frustrated Rose asks them to leave him alone.

Guns N' Roses performed at Harlem's world-famous Apollo Theater last Thursday night (July 20) for a special invitation-only concert for SiriusXM subscribers. The gig marked the first time that the band played at the iconic venue. The special event, taking place before the next leg of the band's North American "Not In This Lifetime" tour, aired live nationwide on SiriusXM's Guns N' Roses Radio. The concert also aired live on Howard Stern's Howard 101 channel.