Guns N’ Roses were once the most dangerous rock ’n’ roll band in the world: a group of excitable maniacs whose songs tore through the ozone layer of late Eighties pop and planted a ragged, bourbon-soaked flag in the dirt.
But on Saturday night, as Download Festival headliners, every trace of that visceral danger was absent. In its place, we witnessed a well-drilled, super-professional cabaret outfit who sashayed through the hits and smiled sweetly as they did it.
The opening song, Welcome to the Jungle, formerly a clarion call for delirium, was more like a polite “Good Evening”, before Axl Rose, lustrous of hair, pearly of tooth and dressed in the first of a series of sparkly shirts, gazed at the crowd and remarked how nice it is when “a few of your close friends drop by”. Mr Brownstone, written, let’s not forget, as a lament for encroaching heroin addiction, wafted out over our sun-kissed heads like an agreeable cloud, while Yesterdays found Rose wailing at the extreme end of his register, a place so close to physical pain you prayed he’d never return to it. At least their latest single, Nothin’, was memorable, in the sense it was laugh-out-loud bad – an awful, soggy mess of a song.
Slash seemed content to perform guitar solo after guitar solo – Guilherme Neto
As befits a cabaret band, the covers were a mixed bag. Live and Let Die and Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door were both tolerable, but Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was gruesome, and Duff’s cover of the Sex Pistols’ Black Leather was no more necessary or welcome than Axl’s ruination of Wichita Lineman. Slash, wearing his hat and a fresh Motörhead T-shirt, remained silent, seemingly content to grind out endless guitar solos, which, after an hour or so, became like audio soup – reasonably tasty at first, but you soon realise you’ve had all the flavours you’re ever going to experience.
After nearly three long hours, Sweet Child o’ Mine, November Rain and Paradise City finally proffered a warm blanket to a multi-generational crowd, albeit one already pouring out of the festival ahead of a chilly night in their tents. A decade into the Guns N’ Roses reunion, and with a reported $965 million’s worth of tickets sold, there’s no doubt that plenty of people want to see Axl, Slash and Duff together again. But when you’re presented with them in the flesh, you wonder what anyone’s getting out of it.
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