Guns N' Roses 2012 Live -- See It If You Can (And Like Rock Music)

Cafe Society
1

I was in Chicago the other weekend and had a chance to see Guns n’ Roses on their current small-venue/club tour.

It was one of the best live music shows in any genre that I’ve ever seen.

Three hours of unrelenting, technically-excellent, solid performances from a tight, professional band.

If you saw the disastrous video from Rio last Summer of Axl Rose as Fat Axl (in God help us the yellow leather jumpsuit), with a voice struggling to hit the high notes – banish those thoughts. He’s lost 35 lbs. (still not going to go shirtless like the old days, nor would you want him to) and whatever he’s done to rehab his voice has worked wonders – he literally sounds like he did 25 years ago.

Even if you saw video from the Fall tour last year – that was much better, but his voice has improved even further and the band is tight as all get out.

The band – okay, there’s no Slash and no Izzy. But the “GNR cover band” sneer is just off-base. These guys are all really-talented professionals who do a great job of covering the old GNR plus the new stuff that some of them were involved with.

They played mostly from Appetite for Destruction, with a bit of Use Your Illusion and no more than say three from Chinese Democracy. (By the way, for those who dismiss CD – this song, at least, is a great one – - YouTube). A few good covers.

You want value for money? They played for three uninterrupted hours (Axl retreated for hat changes while some of the band members did mostly-solid solos).

But what, you ask, about Axl’s notorious late-show, no-show, tantrum-laced behavior? Nowhere to be seen. The venue and band (and this is consistent with reviews I’ve been reading elsewhere) don’t pretend the show will start early. The stated expectation is that the opener will finish around 11:00 and GNR will go on maybe 11:30 (which is fair enough with the need to changeover the stage), maybe a bit later. They lived right up to that, and don’t think they’ve been significantly late to any of the shows on this mini-tour. And – consistent with this – Rose seemed really upbeat, happy, cool with his bandmates, all of whom seemed to be having a good time. And his showmanship is still there (he’s slimmed down enough that he can do the jogging around and snake dance and jumping up on speakers as of old).

Best $100 I ever spent at a concert, I think, and several fellow attendees used similar superlatives (including more than one “best show I ever saw”).

Forget being a GNR fan. If you are a fan of rock who doesn’t actively hate GNR, and you happen to live in or near any of the handful of cities with upcoming dates, you need to seriously consider going.

Mon 02/27/12 Philadelphia, PA Electric Factory
Thu 03/01/12 Atlanta, GA The Tabernacle
Sat 03/03/12 Lake Buena Vista, FL House Of Blues
Mon 03/05/12 Miami Beach, FL Fillmore Miami Beach At Jackie Gleason Theater

Don’t believe me? The other reviews have been almost uniformly glowing:

http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-at-night/2012/02/guns-n-roses-concert-review-up-close-and-personal-tour-live-at-house-of-blues-chicago-sunday-21912-with-setlist/

2

Wow, that’s good news, thanks! I love bar bands, and GNR will always be a bar band to me, no matter how big a theatre they CAN play.

3

I went Thursday night in MD. I wasn’t a huge GNR fan back in the day, but I’ve come around over the years. I thought it was a great show. Axl’s voice didn’t quite hold out for the whole set, but he sounded great for a couple of hours. On the downside, I’m way too old to be getting home at 3:30 on a weekday.

4

Unfortunately, the Washington Post’s review was unrelentingly savage.

5

Meh, that dude just sounds bitter or something. There is something else going on in that review. Not sure what. He is right about one thing though. It does seem like the new guitar player was chosen based on his ability to look like Slash, just less afro-y.

Either way though $100 is a shitload of money to pay to see nu-GNR. That’s a top dollar concert there.

ETA: 3 hrs is a long ass show though. That’s a hell of a long set. Although, I don’t care how rocknroll you are, if your set is 3 hrs you better get to playing by 10pm IMHO.

6

Yeah, complaining that Slash wasn’t there as many had “dreamed” (no one who knew anything about the Axl/Slash history would have thought it was a grounds for criticism that Slash didn’t just jump up and join this mini-tour, that Axl didn’t just say “cool bro.).” And DJ Ashba smokes cigarettes on stage and wears funky clothes and has a tattoo – no rockstar other than Slash ever did that, what a loser imitator!

I think I know what it is that you rightly say is going on (and the fact that the NYT was the only other snarky negativeish review I found confirms this) – the urban cultural elites never really liked hard rock or metal. Punk – ooh, that’s edgy and arty. Glam? Maybe, also arty. But unironic rock out with your whatever out music as played by GNR, AC/DC, Slayer? Not so much. Too lowbrow. Too much liked by the wrong (red state, as much culturally as politically) people.

There’s been a longstanding gripe in the hard/metal rock world over the ridiculous Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On Groucho Marx’s theory I wouldn’t want to be a member, but, putting aside the fact that the whole thing’s a joke (Slash when interviewed was bemused and said, “Well, what makes it a hall of fame, I mean, who gets to decide?”), it’s legitimate to note the Jann Wenner and his like-minded self-appointed curators of “rock and roll” have a ridiculous history of excluding seminal bands like Deep Purple, Cheap Trick, Maiden, while inducting such rocking luminaries as Laura Nyro, the Beastie Boys, and Grandmaster Flash (all of whom may be many things, but not rock as most of us think of it).

VH1 Classic’s That Metal Show (episodes available on their website) did a great segment listing the many super-successful and influential hard rock bands who are snubbed not just for the silly HOF but also generally not quite the right thing for the self-appointed elites of rock criticism.

Oh, and that Post guy? Dollars to doughnuts he was P.O.d because he was missing a Fugazi show. Now there’s a rock band!

7

Yeah, I don’t think I’d have gone on a school night.

The other thing that one of those articles may have mentioned is that most people do (even in the special case of GNR trying to give fair warning of an 11:00 start target) have a mindset formed by shows that start closer to 9:00 – which usually for most people I know means (depending on if you care about the opening act – we did not) getting a bite to eat, probably greasy pub food, around 7:30, having a few drinks after, heading over to the venue, having a few more drinks till the show starts. And they calibrate (more or less) accordingly.

Here, the fact that everyone seemed to have started the pregaming at 7:30 just as usual meant pretty much an extra two hours of pre-show libations, coupled with a three hour show in which libations also flowed. It was a pretty buzzed crowd by the end, but fortunately everyone seemed to be happy enough that it did not get ugly.

On this note, it also helped greatly that Axl was in such a good mood. There are reams of footage, both from the old days and even from Rock in Rio last Summer, on YouTube where Axl is throwing tantrums, threatening to leave the stage, over some problem with the setup, over fan catcalling, over idiots throwing stuff on stage (during the Use Your Illusion tour it devolved to a real love hate relationship between Axl and the crowds). None of that here. Also, a friend pointed out that for all that people laud the 1990s GNR and obsess over Slash, it is quite possible to find 1990s footage in which the band is far less musically tight than what we saw. Not unrelated to the fact that Axl often had a bottle of Jack onstage, Slash was shooting heroin between his toes before the show, and they all hated each other. The current lineup seems to contain no one who’s visibly drugged or sloppy, and they like each other to judge from the interaction. It makes a difference.

8

FTR that dumbass should note that whatever contraption DJ Ashba had on his head (to accompany his leather vest, multiple tattoos, and eyeshadow) was neither a “top-hat” nor inconsistent or contrived as compared to the other elements of his, uh, personal style.

9

Multiple tattoos doesn’t quite convey how inky he is. He appears to have full body tats. Not that that reflects one way or the other on his musical ability. Based on the pictures I see on Google I’d say he does look a good bit “Slashier” than Slash.

10

Right, and has been rocking looks like these since long before he was tapped for GNR.

11

I read his Wikipedia page and he has been around for a while and played with some big names in hard rock. Also, he’s been with GnR since 2009. I guess, based just on this thread, I thought this was an Axel backing band put together just to provide an “old GnR” vibe for this tour.
Hope it goes well for them.

12

Yeah, the haters love to play on the “Axl and his cover band” fallacy. The non-haters point out that some of the members of the current lineup have been in the band longer than some of the original members, and have recorded original music with Axl on Chinese Democracy. You are right that Ashba has a long and no-joke history and big-name collaborations in hard rock. One of the other guitarists, Ron Thal a/k/a Bumblefoot has been part of the lineup for six years and was a minor celebrity among the guitar-shredder magazines when he first came out. Tommy Stinson was in the Replacements, which last time I heard was not a joke band. Richard Fortus and Frank Ferrer were/are in a reunited Psychedelic Furs and have been in GNR since 2002 and 2006 respectively.

The thing people miss with the “cover band” stupidity is (apart from the factual inaccuracy), Axl is that increasingly rare thing, a hardcore rock frontman. Frontmen lead the band and attract talented collaborators. Axl, clearly a charismatic and highly talented composer, vocalist, and frontman (all his demons aside) finds/found himself in a position to play with his pick of highly talented band members/configurations. To a rock guy, saying “I was in GNR,” even if just for one album or tour, has to be pretty freaking tempting. Just as Slash’s guitar chops meant that, in Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, and Slash and friends, he could do some no-joke collaborations with other rock royalty.