MAlfaRK to Omega: Guns N' Roses

On Saturday, June 17, 2017, my wife and I took in the Guns N' Roses reunion tour - "Not In This Lifetime" - at London's Olympic Stadium. So, what did we think? Here are some thoughts from that hot and sweaty summer's night.

Firstly, it must be said - what a remarkable guitarist Slash (a.k.a. Saul Hudson) is. I saw him playing solo a few years back and I'd forgotten how technically adept and effortlessly he plays. He is definitely one of the all-time great Rock 'n' Roll guitarists.

Secondly, Axl Rose (a.k.a. William Bruce Rose, Jr.) surprised us. We went in with low expectations, remembering his "Oh, oh, oh, oh sweet pie o' mine" days. Not only was his voice in pretty great shape, but Rose was noticeably slimmer. I guess the stint with AC/DC did him good, and gave his vocal cords the workout they needed. The cobwebs are gone, and there were only half a dozen or so times when his age showed and he lost the top end of his six octave vocal range. I'll forgive him for that. It was great to hear him do a cover version of AC/DC's "Whole Lotta Rosie" - it worked really well, and it's just a pity that my video camera ran out of battery before the end of the track.

Thirdly, it was great to see Duff McKagan (a.k.a. Michael Andrew McKagan) in the flesh. Freshly from the Hollywood Vampires, and founder of Velvet Revolver, I've wanted to see him in action for a long time. The highlight was his vocal for the cover version of The Damned's "New Rose". I thoroughly enjoyed the GnR tribute to the London group's 1977 punk anthem.

Fourthly, there were no big surprises in the set list, with the GnR classics being played, alongside covers of Nino Rota, The Damned, Wings, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan and AC/DC. The band also played an emotional rendition of Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun" as a tribute to Chris Cornell, who died in May. As they dished out nearly three hours of ferocious, preposterous and moving rock, Debra and I were transported back a quarter of a century, to a different time and place, where we lived under a state of emergency and authoritarian rule, and music was one of the few escapes from harsh reality. "Sweet Child O’ Mine," "Welcome to the Jungle," “You Could Be Mine" and "Paradise City" stoked up nihilistic memories of old friends back in South Africa, wild parties, late night braais, tequila, whiskey, wine, Old Brown Sherry, sex, drunken death games in speeding cars, mixed tapes and altered states of consciousness. Phew - there are reams of memories bound up in those tracks, and it was wonderful to hear them first hand. "Civil War" in particular brought back all too vividly a time in history when South Africa was burning, with the country balanced on a knife's edge.

I don't need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
Your power hungry sellin' soldiers
In a human grocery store
Ain't that fresh
I don't need your civil war

Yes - exactly - right song, right time, right place. Will never be forgotten.

Here's the full set list.

On the flip side, I now remember why I have not been to another stadium concert since seeing U2 at Strahov Stadium in Prague in 1997. The commute to the Olympic Stadium (on the hottest day of the year) was reasonable. Thameslink to St. Pancras and South Eastern trains to Stratford International. And then the walk from hell to "Bridge 3", the massive security operation and the climb to the top of the stadium...where no drinks were sold. No - I don't like stadium shows. The sound at the venue was also abysmal. As the band launched into its opening track - "It's So Easy" - smiles of anticipation turned into looks of disbelief. The acoustics towards the back of the stadium felt like radioactive sludge. It was like being in a badly lip-synced Milli Vanilli video, with the culprit being the phasing of the central and rear loudspeakers. This meant that the music and images on the big screens were barely in the same time zone.

Bloody hell - the show was not nearly loud enough either. With the reverberation around the athletics stadium, all the detail and nuances were lost by the time the sound reached us, and the volume had escaped to the sky. There was absolutely no ringing in my ears by the end of the show and, all in all, it was like listening to a Guns N' Roses album through a down pillow and a large bag of popcorn. Atrocious. At £105.75 for a crap seat, I really expected more, but I guess the band only got back together to milk the old cash cow, so maximizing profits is what it was all about.

This spilled over into the whole look and feel of the performance as well. This was a gig with production values at an all time low. There was really no "show", and it was certainly no Rammstein, AC/DC, Muse, Kiss, Marliyn Manson, Metallica or Alice Cooper. It was simply a handful of blokes and a chick standing on the stage, occasionally changing positions. And from the back you couldn't see them anyway. We made a good call when we brought along our binoculars. As half of the performance was in the summer sunshine, there was negligible investment in a "light show" and even the limited pyrotechnics seemed insignificant from where we were. There was certainly no grand spectacle to compensate for the crap sound - and for that size venue (and for that price) I'd expected more.

The concert lasted a full two and a half hours and leaving the stadium and getting back on our train home took almost as long. I don't know how many people were there - possibly 50,000 - but the stadium security people did not do a good job of getting people out and pointing them in the right direction. It was confusing, frustrating and uncomfortable, and tempers flared. There was also no place for the dehydrated crowd to buy water...only t-shirts and memorabilia to feed the profit machine. The cherry on the top was having to take the packed, slow Thameslink from St. Pancras back to Hertfordshire, followed by the walk home. Good grief - that train ride seemed endless!

Walking out of the arena at the end of the gig, my wife and I both made the same observation. We now remembered why we dropped GnR like a hot potato at the dawn of the grunge era. Chunks of the performance were dedicated to spotlighting Slash's guitar virtuosity. As I've said, a remarkable talent, but the long, protracted guitar solos were a leftover from the 70's at the time before punk came and blew away Prog Rock in one-minute-fifty-nine. Similarly, back in the early 90's bands had descended into big hair, spandex, pompous elitism, bloated compositions, self-indulgent displays of musical proficiency and overblown delusions of grandeur. The onstage onanism in front of a packed audience in London reminded us how grunge had wiped the slate clean and how it invigorated us and made music fresh again, all those years ago. We were happy to have seen GnR's virtuosos in action, but also glad that we'd moved on from all of that pretentiousness a long time ago. And to quote The Guardian: “…what seemed overtly masculine in youth seems theatrically feminine in middle age: the camp mannerisms of a rocker grinding around the stage, the falsetto vocals, Slash’s fantastic black cloud of hair. The huge emotional neediness of everything. The passion. The love.” Yup – all a bit much; we’ve definitely grown up.

So, did we enjoy the show? I was certainly excellent to see much of GnR's original line-up (through binoculars), and to hear all those classics from the band's glory days. But the overall experience was disappointing, primarily due to the venue and just the size of the audience. Will I do another stadium concert? No. Will I return to the Olympic Stadium in London? Nope - not in this lifetime!