I am a longtime diehard Guns N' Roses fan. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, they are my all-time favorite artist. Bar none. It's not even close. And I'm not saying that they are the best band ever or anything like that. I'd like to think that I am both more intellectually and artistically sophisticated than that to even provoke a fight over such an argument. Now granted, they are not really Guns N' Roses these days as much as they are Axl & Friends but they are still one hell of a band and they proved such last night in closing out this year's annual Rock In Rio concert event. Ironically, Axl Rose himself was the one who sounded somewhat vocally diminished; no doubt from many years of regular smoking and perhaps just the pitfalls of pushing 50. (He will be 50 on February 6th. And yes, I can't believe it either.)
What is fascinating to me is both the few remaining similarities between the classic lineup and the current one as well as the otherwise overwhelmingly obvious differences. It is still Axl's show and he is still the main attraction and despite his declining vocal range, which in its heyday ranked as one of the greatest ever without question, he still has a charismatic and towering stage presence. What is glaringly distinct about Rose in 2011 than say Rose in 1991 is the the differential nature of him in regards to the rest of the band surrounding him, comfortably delegating the attention to his bandmates while he would slip out for a quick minor wardrobe change of hats or jacket.
The classic lineup is more established, better known, and much more embraced by both both current and old school fans of the band. It is after all hard to dispute the legacy of Slash, Duff McKagan, Izzy Stradlin, and Steven Adler as well as post-Lies drummer Matt Sorum. Where Rose has made wise choices is assembling a much more ensemble like band of personalities. He doesn't have the exciting personalities of the classic lineup, and while you can reasonably assign more cynical motivation behind that given his notable almost two decades long feud with Slash and dissolving of the classic lineup, what seems to get lost to the more critical masses of fans and media alike is the incredible talent of the current group of musicians accompanying Rose. Love it or hate it, and love Axl or hate him, one can also reasonably argue that it is largely unfair to hold the current lineup hostage to the ghosts of yesterday's glory.
Having said that, this is the conundrum that Rose has created for himself. Having not elected to follow the path of bands like Creed and Rage Against The Machine before him, or perhaps more accurately put, to beat them to the punch, he opted not to retire the moniker of Guns N' Roses and thus preserving the legacy of the band as well as keeping the option of reuniting the classic lineup open, instead of soldiering on with a more enticing option to the public of carrying on under different names such as Alter Bridge and Audioslave, respectively. Of course, there is one obvious difference. Unlike the other two bands, the lead singer did not change in Guns N' Roses. It was the group of guys behind him. On the other hand, each of those guys behind him was a star in his own right, if even more behind the scenes like Izzy Stradlin for example. The only college graduate of the band was also one of the driving creative forces for it. He was the Keith Richards to Axl's Mick Jagger for the heavily The Rolling Stones influenced band.
Most G'N'R fans agree that the core classic lineup consists of at least Axl, Slash, Duff, and Izzy and that Steven and Matt are both acceptable answers to the question of who the drummer should be. It was an incredibly risky, albeit calculated decision to carry on under the Guns N' Roses banner and had Slash not by his own admission regrettably decided to not retain half of the rights to the name, it wouldn't have been solely up to Axl to do so. However, Slash punted, as he's publicly conceded himself and so here we are; here of course being the same exact place that we have been with the band since 1995 when Slash left and was soon followed out the door by Duff and Matt.
It is probably a very fair and accurate criticism of Rose to suggest that pure ego propelled him to carry on with the name. At the same time, while it is easy to beat him up over it let us also not forget that he hardly would have been the first bandleader, much less one of a band considered to be at the top of the music world in at least some point in its history, to have made such a brave move. And there are plenty of detractors out there that he has created as part of that conundrum I alluded to earlier that will never accept the newer lineup and its recorded material no matter how strong or weak the actual music is and I would argue that is equally shortsighted.
Still, there are no victims here. At this point Axl Rose deserves all the credit and success he gets as well as all of its detractions. It is not particularly pleasing to him to be pointed out all the perceived shortcomings of the current lineup in direct contrast with the classic lineup but this leads me back to my initial point of what I saw in last night's YouTube telecasted performance. For while Axl has since made up with Matt Sorum as well as played several shows as G'N'R with former mainstay Stradlin, as well as having brought back Duff for some shows on top of that, the one line he seems to be unmovable on is Slash himself. And in all fairness to Rose, it appears to be quite mutual. And has Rose made nice with his former mates in order to rile Slash and show that he's the agreeable one to everyone else from the old days? Is it genuine? Has he finally mellowed at least a little bit? Truth be told, it's surely some kind of combination. And he'd still have to explain why Slash has been on good terms with all of the above and for a lot longer.
And yet I couldn't help but reconcile the two lineups throughout the entirety of the Rock In Rio show last night. The musicianship of the current eight person lineup was undeniably electric. Often forgotten holdover keyboardist Dizzy Reed has moved up on the depth chart and holds more influence as a bandmate than he did back in the day. Former The Replacements kid prodigy bassist Tommy Stinson is a standout artist in his own right and projects a more calming presence in accordance with Rose as well as a more non-threatening physical appearance to more conservative middle America than his other tattooed covered and crazily dressed mates surely presented last night.
Frank Ferrer pounded the drums more than capably and regularly sets the tone throughout the show by pounding on the drums so that fans can recite the classic chanting of the band's name between songs. Chris Pittman's accompanying percussion is a surprising element but equally pleasing touch to the band's current sound.
And finally, Axl now employs three very gifted guitarists, all capable of taking the lead as well as strumming very competent rhythm tracks and the versatility of the young DJ Ashba, an ironic hybrid of Slash and Izzy Stradlin both appearance and performance wise, leads the trio of guitar slingers. Trading off impressive solos, albeit as the band's secondary lead guitarist, was Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal, who demonstrated a rather under the radar mastery of the guitar scales of his double necked instrument with equally impressive confidence.
One thing that has not changed over the years is Axl's pension for getting onstage at least two hours late. Finally, sometime after 1:00 am EST, the band came on and opened with the title track from the overly criticized current lineup powered Chinese Democracy album. It's hard not to read at least somewhat into the decision to start with a track, much less the title track, of the album with entirely different musicians, as if to remind us all that this is indeed a much different and more current era of Guns N' Roses.
Still, it's also equally hard not to read too much into as well. Most of the material, and not just as a matter of simple math, was still classic G'N'R material. Following "Chinese Democracy" the band went into the classic anthem "Welcome To The Jungle" and then proceeded onto "It's So Easy", "Mr. Brownstone", before going into the power ballad "Sorry", a stunningly overlooked track from the band's most recent studio effort.
After "Sorry" they broke into the theme music from James Bond before directly transitioning into its long covered Paul McCartney-led Wings Bond song "Live and Let Die" from the same-titled seventh Bond movie as well as from "Use Your Illusion Vol. 1". Continuing the energy likeness, the band next performed a rousing rendition of "Rocket Queen" before going into the piano oriented Chinese Democracy ballad "This I Love" before an instrumental jam led by DJ Ashba bookmarked the unofficial halfway mark of the band's set list.
For someone who literally seemed out of breath during the first half of the performance, Axl Rose and the band certainly found its second wind at this point. Rose himself did find some of his missing vocal range around starting with "Sweet Child O' Mine". Further evidence of Axl reinvigorating himself at this point of the concert came verbally. Declaring to his bandmates before the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of highly enthusiastic fans in attendance after playing it that they had now played the song about three or four times (I believe it was quickly reduced to twice) in the past two weeks, after "like 18 years" of not playing it live, "Estranged" became one of the high marks of the band's appearance.
Again with the full disclosure, but "Estranged" is a song that has more figuratively touched a chord with me as a person and artist myself. The song, and the timing of its release and the impact of it both in the moment, short-term and long-term aftermath, has always employed much deeper meaning to me and to hear that declaration of not having played it in so long, brought a very ironically induced semblance to the song and the evening's rendition of it to the forefront. A song called "Estranged" had itself been been essentially estranged to the band that wrote and plays it itself in the midst of its long and often complicated and messy history, both publicly and internally.
Once the obviously cathartic declaration by Rose was made about the dusting off of perhaps the band's greatest song, or certainly perhaps it's most emotionally hard hitting composition due to its power ballad nature and lyrically introspective texture, they continued into another power number "Better" before an interestingly done interlude version of The Who's "Baba O' Riley" graced Dizzy Reed's ivories with just a little bit of drum help towards the end from Frank Ferrer. Afterwards Axl jokingly deadpanned to Reed, "Isn't that the theme song to 'CSI'?"
Perhaps one of my favorite newer songs from the band, "Street of Dreams" (previously titled "The Blues" prior to the release of Chinese Democracy) led into a post Axl stated "intentional amnesia" gathering of the band, as stated by Axl, version of the now classic "You Could Be Mine" which is remembered as much for its association with Terminator 2 as its unofficial soundtrack anthem. A very short interlude of what sounded like a very quick "Madagascar" jam led into a strangely done "November Rain" number where Axl didn't even sing the last repeated bridge at the very end.
Equally interesting was the band's decision to dive into The Pink Panther theme song, including an inclusion of the main "Estranged" riff by Ron Thal before diving into an overly drawn out version of the band's long live staple cover of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" where the band, which seemed to more fittingly end the song at least once, if not twice, continued on despite the lost momentum of the song's playing before finally mercifully completing it. Recouping the lost energy with a gasoline guzzling version of "Nightrain" to round out the set portion of the concert, the boys walked off for a very quick pre-encore exist, which is quite amusing given the band's long history of taking forever just to get onstage in the first place.
I had long known which song would end it, and I had kind of wondered where "Patience" was on the list as well, so the band, which has gone to a more electric version in the second half of the song live for quite some time, did just that as they have also done with "Used To Love Her" which was disappointedly not on the list last night.
Finally, the band concluded with the song I had predicted would be the final encore song all evening long, "Paradise City", and the band then thanked the audience once more before officially retiring for the evening to Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York" being played over the sound system. Perhaps it was an odd nod to the band given the fierceness of the current lineup's critics over the past several years, and the toughness of the city that never sleeps fitting that mold, but like in Frank Sinatra's all-time classic, and all the legitimate critiques of the post-classic lineup G'N'R lineup, there is still a defiance within that song that is hard to not apply to the 2011 version of my all-time favorite band.
They might not be what they used to be in more ways than one, but in the past few years, and even just last night, they proved that they are still pretty damn good and as I had all the studio album sleeves out, reading the lyrics I already knew by heart anyways, I felt invigorated myself. I did this just like I did twenty years ago when I finally could listen to the highly anticipated "Use Your Illusions" albums, as a freshman at The Lawrenceville School where I grew up as a faculty brat. And while I was watching the band play I couldn't help but feel back in 1991, a 15 year-old high schooler being strangely comforted by the angst riddled rebellion that made sense of it all, it donned on me that band lineups might change but some things never do. I was already intent on marking, even celebrating the milestone of that time of my life and perhaps that more than anything else, is why I still cling to the - yes, "Illusion" of what Guns N' Roses is today as much as what it was in its glorious heyday a very appropriately nostalgic yesteryear ago.
The Unofficial (But Mostly Accurate) Set List:
Chinese Democracy
Welcome To The Jungle
It's So Easy
Mr. Brownstone
Sorry
James Bond Theme
Live And Let Die
Rocket Queen
This I Love
DJ Ashba-led Instrumental Piece
Sweet Child O' Mine
Estranged
Better
Baba O' Riley
Street of Dreams
You Could Be Mine
Quick "Madagascar" Jam (?)
November Rain
The Pink Panther Theme Song
Knockin' On Heaven's Door
Nightrain
Patience (Encore)
Paradise City (Encore)
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