2017.10.08 - Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, PA, USA

The Infamous Philly Antics of Guns N’ Roses

We just seem to bring out the worst in one of rock’s most notorious bands, which comes to Wells Fargo Center on October 8th.

By Victor Fiorillo

August 1988: The Axl Who? Incident
This Spectrum show was the band’s second stop in Philly on their “Appetite for Destruction” tour, the first being at the Trocadero in October 1987. (If you were at the latter, you’ve definitely unlocked some coolness tokens.) But this one almost didn’t happen. See, the parking attendants had no idea who Axl Rose was and didn’t want to let him drive onto the lot. A scuffle ensued, and he narrowly escaped arrest.

June 1991: The Major Assholes Incident
Axl declared to the sold-out Spectrum that it looked like “the biggest kegger” he had ever seen. Well, as the band pounded through “Welcome to the Jungle,” a fight broke out in front, and Axl stopped the show. “We’ve got a couple of major assholes down here,” he announced. “I wanna thank you for fucking up the song. Oh, you wanna flip me off? Come up here!” Fortunately, the main instigator was removed before things went nuclear.

December 2002: The Missing Axl Incident
By this stage of their career, GnR had developed a reputation for tardiness, sometimes showing up three hours late. So when they didn’t take the stage at the First Union Center on time, it was par for the course. But a full-blown riot ensued when, at 11 p.m., an announcer told the crowd there would be no show. Fans smashed mixing boards with chairs, tossed beers from the balcony, and went generally nuts.

Guns N’ Roses at Wells Fargo Center: Eight Quick Takeaways

Axl and friends brought their massively successful tour to Philly on Sunday.

By Victor Fiorillo

On Sunday night, Guns N’ Roses came to the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, kicking off the eighth leg of their Not In This Lifetime Tour, the name of the tour a reference to the unlikeliness of the formerly (?) feuding bandmates ever playing music together again. We headed down to South Philly to check it out. Here, eight quick takeaways.

Who’s Laughing Now?
When Guns N’ Roses announced that they were reuniting for this tour, people laughed, scoffed, and rolled their eyes. But scores of shows into the tour, it is Guns N’ Roses who is doing the laughing… all the way to the bank. The tour is the highest grossing tour worldwide for the last year and it’s among the top five highest-grossing tours of any band or performer in all of history. Yes, you read that right.

Thanks, Susan Holmes-McKagan
I wasn’t originally planning on going to the Wells Fargo Center show on Sunday night. But then I got a bizarre invite from supermodel and Playboy poser Susan Holmes-McKagan, the wife of Guns N’ Roses bass player Duff McKagan. The invite itself wasn’t bizarre. Just more: Why is the world is the wife of Duff McKagan inviting me to the show? Anyway, I called a sitter (thanks, Mom), and my wife and I and two friends headed to the concert. We arrived to find out that we had front row seats and access to a private lounge area that contained lots and lots of Cheetos and a fridge full of beer and vodka. But try as we might, we couldn’t seem to find our curvaceous benefactor. Thanks, Susan, wherever you were.

The New Guns N’ Roses is Punctual!
Whereas the old Guns N’ Roses was known to go on hours late — and who can forget the Philly show when they just didn’t bother to show up at all — the new Guns N’ Roses is downright on time, by comparison. They’ve been punctual for most of the shows on this tour, and it wasn’t long after the announced showtime of 7:30 p.m. that they actually took the stage on Sunday. If I were a betting man, I’d lay down some pretty decent money that there’s a clause in their contract that penalizes them for any egregious acts of tardiness.

Yes, Axl Doesn’t Look Like the Axl You Remember
If you haven’t seen Guns N’ Roses since their glory days, you’re probably going to notice that Axl Rose doesn’t look like the Axl Rose of that era. He’s gone from rock-and-roll god to 55-year-old former rock-and-roll god still clinging to his rock-and-roll god status. But here’s the thing: Even with all the years of rock-and-roll excess, and even with his bona fide middle aged status, the guy can still sing. Oh, early in the show, his voice was wobbly and just off at certain key moments, but by the time the band hit “Live and Let Die,” about one-third of the way through the show, his voice was all warmed up and continued to rage through the remaining 20-plus songs.

Why Can’t Live Sound Be Better?
One consistent complaint I’ve heard about last night’s Guns N’ Roses show is that the sound sucked, whether you were fourth row center or up in the 200 Level. This is almost always the case at a big show like this, so much so that we just kind of assume and accept the fact that the sound is going to be bad. But if you saw Roger Waters do “The Wall” at Citizens Bank Park or his recent shows at Wells Fargo Center, you know that it’s possible to have great sound no matter where you sit. Why can’t all shows be like this, especially when people are forking over hundreds of dollars for a night out?

Tailgaters Are Pigs
Yes, that is urine. The parking lots around Wells Fargo Center were particularly gruesome when we arrived at the show on Sunday. Don’t blame it all on Guns N’ Roses fans, though: The Eagles played at the Linc earlier that day.

They Played Lots of Covers
I kind of lost track, but I think Guns N’ Roses played like ten covers on Sunday, including Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” and Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun,” in addition to their more well known covers “Live and Let Die” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” But “Wichita Lineman”? Odd choice.

You Should Definitely Go See the Tour
If you’re any kind of Guns N’ Roses fan and you haven’t seen this tour yet, it may be your last chance to ever see this iconic repertoire of music performed live by the people who created it. They’re playing Madison Square Garden on October 11th and 15th, Newark’s Prudential Center on October 12th, and the Capital One Arena in Washington D.C. on October 19th. Get there if you can.

Meet the new Guns N' Roses: punctual, professional, and still defiant

Guns N' Roses returned to Philadelphia on Sunday, continuing a wildly successful reunion tour that has showcased the newfound professionalism of the formerly scandal-plagued band.

by Allison Steele

The element of astonishment surrounding the resurrection of Guns N' Roses should be wearing off by now, but for longtime fans, it remains undeniably thrilling to witness GNR's remarkable third act — one in which the band starts promptly and delivers muscular shows designed not to outrage or provoke, but with the goal of delighting their most devoted followers.

Eighteen months into their "Not in this Lifetime…" comeback tour, already one of the highest-grossing tours of 2017, and more than a year since Guns N' Roses first made a triumphant return to Philadelphia, the band circled back Sunday night for a second stop (the tour is named for an answer that frontman Axl Rose once gave to the question of whether the band might ever reunite). As before, the new GNR was on full display: taking the stage just before 8 p.m., the band performed almost continuously, with only momentary breaks, until nearly 11:30, dropping an impressively satisfying 30-song set list that included all the hits, deep album cuts, and a handful of covers.

Far from the scummy degenerates that once encouraged crowds to tear apart L.A. nightclubs, today's Guns are a well-oiled, professional machine. Rose, 55, once blamed largely for GNR's scandal-plagued tours in the 1990s and the band's subsequent dissolution, can no longer hit each note of the soaring, howling vocals of which he was once capable. But he greeted the audience graciously, and his performance only improved as the night went on. He was anchored by the iconic Slash, as reliably amazing as he was when he first appeared on MTV 30 years ago, and ever-cool bassist Duff McKagan, as always a grounding presence. Together with a handful of assisting musicians, including original keyboardist Dizzy Reed, the chemistry on stage projected confidence and maturity.

The show was similar to the band's 2016 appearance at Lincoln Financial Field, down to the unfortunate (and unnecessary) 1990s-style animation and graphic effects used on the video screens, and included all the hits from 1991's Use Your Illusion I and II albums, as well as blistering performances of eight out of the 12 tracks from debut album Appetite for Destruction, which turned 30 this year. Slash, who typically has the heaviest lifting due to his impressive, too-numerous-to-count solos, provided palate cleansers in between songs with his renditions of "Wish You Were Here" and the theme from The Godfather.

Sunday's concert also included "Patience," the only big fan favorite missing from 2016's show, and a defiant version of the provocative "Used to Love Her," which, though not the only GNR song to advocate violence against women, has aged significantly worse than many of the others. Deepest cuts from the Use Your Illusion era included "Double Talkin' Jive," "Yesterdays," and the 10-minute "Coma."

The band added covers: a low-key rendition of "Wichita Lineman," a reference to the recently deceased Glen Campbell, and a beautiful, poignant version of Soundgarden's 1994 hit "Black Hole Sun," presumably in honor of singer Chris Cornell, who committed suicide in May. James Brown's "I Feel Good," on the other hand, came off as oddly sinister in the hands of Rose, who still retains an uneasy, vaguely unpredictable quality despite his newfound professionalism.

Sure, hints of the old troubles remain. There was little warmth evident between Rose and his bandmates on stage, and the persistent inclusion of several songs from Rose's less-than-beloved 2008 album Chinese Democracy suggests not every power struggle has been put to rest. But by the time the pyrotechnic sparks fired and confetti burst over the crowd during "Paradise City," all was mostly forgotten. Welcome to the new jungle: We've got nostalgia and grown-ups.