2017.11.14 - BOK Center, Tulsa, OK, USA

Dave Grohl Joins Guns ‘N Roses for ‘Paradise City’ in Tulsa, Oklahoma

By Caitlin Kelley

Guns ‘N Roses closed their show at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Wednesday with a visit from an unexpected guest: Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl.

Grohl brought out his guitar and rocked out shredding alongside Slash and also too lead vocals at times, added an interesting dimension to Axl Rose’s soaring screeches.

Back in the day, Axl Rose and Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain were embroiled in a beef that culminated in a showdown at the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. But any beef between Rose and Grohl’s old band has was seemingly buried long ago. Last year, the Guns ‘N Roses singer even tweeted about his gratitude toward the Foo Fighters frontman for letting him borrow his throne on tour while he was injured.

Concert review: Guns N' Roses starts on time, finishes with a fury and a surprise guest at BOK Center

By Michael Smith

Guns N’ Roses delivered an epic showcase of hard-rock abandon and pumped up an animated crowd at Tulsa’s BOK Center on Tuesday night with a marathon of music.

After 31 songs and 3 hours, 32 minutes of audio destruction by the band’s raging rock show, one had to be impressed by the engineering of the downtown arena for its roof remaining in place.

For those who didn’t stay into the fourth hour: You missed an encore as energetic as the first hour of the show.

You missed songs increasingly being sung by the audience with growing volume.

You missed Dave Grohl — whose band Foo Fighters played the arena Wednesday night — joining for a wow-factor finale performance of the GN’R classic “Paradise City.”

Baby-boomer fans of Guns N’ Roses’ angry-young-man music of its “Appetite for Destruction” and “Use Your Illusion” albums heyday should have been delirious with the quality of the barrage and the band having started on time.

Younger fans who may have heard stories of bad-boy lead singer Axl Rose showing up late for tour dates in the past must realize that the angry young man has grown up and is now 55.

So he probably appreciates a good night’s rest as much as the rest of us middle-aged diehards who once upon a time tried to scream his “Welcome to the Jungle” vocals and long ago stopped trying to sway our hips like his in the band’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine” video.

His voice, however, does retain a bit of that venom.

But rather than spending it on the oh-so-many songs he wrote in response to slights both perceived and real in his relative youth, Rose invested his surprisingly robust tones on the band’s best works and some killer cover songs.

Such manners and punctuality have been the calling card for this “Not In This Lifetime” tour (considering this band’s similarly sour and lengthy breakup, it made me recall the Eagles’ “Hell Freezes Over” concert reunion).

And no opening act is needed when an 8 p.m. show goes nearly to midnight.

No other act would have wished to compete on this evening with the remarkable guitar artistry of Slash, who introduced an array of guitars and just as many dynamic performances far beyond his most well-known riffs.

Slash was by turns fiery and jumping off things for dramatic finishes on tunes, then subtle and showing off a technician’s chops on precision numbers and ballads.

Bassist Duff McKagan, wearing a “Not today Satan” T-shirt, was perfection in laying the groundwork for so much of the sound and, along with drummer Frank Ferrer, tried to crack the ground with a bass boom that vibrated everyone’s feet.

The entire band was without fail for that 212 minutes with no intermission.

Rose maintained his reputation as a hard-working showman with the songs, and while he did little talking between songs, he still proved charismatic.

He whipped the crowd into a frenzy early on with a trio of “Appetite for Destruction” songs that concluded with “Welcome to the Jungle,” and his voice was remarkably solid after this many songs — as well as years.

When he did sound hoarse, it came on songs demanding a lower register, but never on his iconic screeches, such as an amazing main-set finale of “Night Train.”

He showed joy with multiple cover songs, paying respect to performers who died in the past year, such as Glen Campbell (Rose performed “Wichita Lineman,” a beautiful change of pace with the song written by Oklahoma’s Jimmy Webb) and Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell (one of Rose’s favorite vocalists) with “Black Hole Sun.”

If Rose needed any assistance with the vocals, it came on strong late in the show with “November Rain” while he played piano, and it continued through “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Patience” and others.

And then there was Grohl, who moved from a suite as a fan to the stage as a participant ahead of his own show Wednesday night, continuing the BOK Center’s week of hard-rock nirvana.

Guns N’ Roses’ Dave Grohl Duet Leads Top Facebook Live Videos Chart
The rockers come in at No. 1 with a stream of its Nov. 15 rendition of "Paradise City" with the Foo Fighters frontman.

Guns N’ Roses tops Billboard’s Top Facebook Live Videos chart for November 2017, charting three videos in all on the latest ranking as the band continues its world tour.

The chart, whose latest edition recaps November activity, is a monthly look at the widest-reaching and most-reacted-to videos posted by musicians on Facebook Live, as tracked by media analytics company Shareablee. Rankings are determined by a formula that blends reactions, comments, shares and first-seven-days views.

As with many of Guns N’ Roses’ top-performing videos on the chart, the band’s No. 1 for November captures its Tulsa, Okla., performance of “Paradise City” with Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters. The clip, uploaded Nov. 15, was the most-reacted-to, most-shared and most-viewed video by a musical act in November, earning 100,000 reactions, 25,000 shares and 2.1 million views, according to Shareablee.

The band also ranks at Nos. 8 and 9 on the November ranking, the former a performance of “Patience” with Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top in Houston, Texas, and the latter a tour leg-closing rendition of “Paradise City” in Los Angeles on Nov. 30.

Rock bands occupy the top three spots of the chart, with Muse and Bon Jovi coming in at Nos. 2 and 3, respectively. Muse’s video, uploaded Nov. 14, was a nearly two-hour livestream of its concert in Yokohama, Japan, scoring 1 million views in its first seven days and 65,000 reactions. Meanwhile, Bon Jovi’s, which was posted Nov. 30 and also earned 1 million views along with 56,000 reactions, was a question-and-answer session with the band.

Though Guns N’ Roses’ Grohl duet was the top video of the month in three out of the four chart metrics, it wasn’t the most-commented-on clip. That distinction goes to Avril Lavigne, whose clip (No. 6) was also a question-and-answer session, earning 33,000 comments on its Nov. 2 posting.