The Guns n' Roses Tour Has Finally Started: Let's Watch Videos!
Saturday, June 25, 2016 at 07:05AM I feel like we've been talking about it forever,but it's finally here: the Guns n' Roses, "Not In This Lifetime" tour is officially underway. The tour started in Detroit Thursday night. The setlist is exactly the same (song-wise) as the show I saw in Las Vegas back in April, which honestly surprises me a little bit. It looks like they've added "Out Ta Get Me" which I don't recall from my Vegas show.
I still haven't purchased tickets for the Cincinnati stop that is coming up in just a few days. Trying to be frugal, but I know I'm going to get sucked in.
Here's the set:
01. It's So Easy
02. Mr. Brownstone
03. Chinese Democracy
04. Welcome To The Jungle
05. Double Talkin' Jive
06. Estranged
07. Live And Let Die
08. Rocket Queen
09. You Could Be Mine
10. Raw Power (cover)
11. This I Love
12. Civil War
13. Coma
14. Speak Softly Love ("The Godfather")
15. Sweet Child O' Mine
16. Better
17. Out Ta Get Me
18. Wish You Were Here
19. November Rain
20. Knockin' On Heaven's Door (cover)
21. Nightrain
22. Don't Cry
23. The Seeker (cover)
24. Paradise City
"Out Ta Get Me"
"November Rain" (listen to the crowd sing along!)
Reader Comments (11)
That said, I support this version of GnR (as if that mattered). And, even if I don't go to see them this time, I am happy that fans--new ones to boot--are happy to see them out on the road.
Thing is, Axl has been delivering this sort of show for years now. The addition of originals adds to the enticement. Which I get. It also adds to the cost. But that is the market for you.
The greatest gain is this: a solid rock act is keeping the dream alive. With which I can find no complaint. There are far greater and lesser bands wandering the road nowadays who are trading much more of their history for lucre than GnR.
I hope they play "Pretty Tied Up" and "Get in the Ring [Updated]" and "One in a Million." But they won't . . . at least not two of them. Still, nice to see that they can muster some feeling with metal fans. And, yes, GnR are metal through and through.
Another album? Well . . .
About the decision to play Chinese Democracy tunes with Duff n Slash. Is that cool? Priest probably never asked Halford to play Ripper era stuff live out of respect for the Metal God.
Duff n Slash to me are 40% of GnR, just as Halford is 25% of Priest IMO. Now in all honesty I've need heard a full song off CD; but I can say it's certainly more of an Axl album than a GnR album. Guess Axl is calling shots
I see it as a very gracious nod to the band that Slash has had no problem playing music the band made after he left. I can also see it as a sign that he is willing to let bygones be bygones. And I can, in addition, see this as him being on board because being on board means a major check at the end of the yellow brick road. None of which makes it bad, per se. It just makes it what it is.
Less so (being an issue) with Duff. He seems preternaturally inclined to be "chill" with everyone, while also displaying solid business acumen, since he was out of (and now in) GnR. If recent rumors are true, Adler will make an appearance (for a fee). If less recent rumors are true, Izzy wasn't interested in either: (a) playing for a fee; (b) playing for _the_ fee he was offered; or (c) playing at all because of his reclusive and wanderlust attitude to music and life. That said, he has wandered in and out of playing with them for years now. He seems to go where he wants. Thank god he is recording new music.
Love me some Priest, Kixchix. But, at this point, Halford is fully 50% (if not more) of what makes Priest Priest. With KK gone, and Tipton seemingly wandering through shows, no one is there to see Ian. True, Richie injected some more "oomph" into the band. But no one shows up for Scott (formerly of Racer X). Halford embodies Priest in a way that Priest learned the hard way. Even when he was just shuffling around, hunched over, before his surgery, people wanted to see him. Now they get to see him in much better, if still diminished, shape, singing better than he has in years (the surgery seems to have helped greatly). If only the Teleprompters weren't so damn obvious . . . or the blousing.
That said, I wonder: who owns the band? Unlike GnR, I am not so sure who is in charge. If I were to guess, it was Tipton (otherwise, why let him produce murky albums?). Final thought: it would be interesting to hear Halford sing "Cathedral Spires." That was an amazing Ripper-era song in an otherwise "ho hum" period for the band.
[GnR Sidebar: I resisted CD for a long time. But I really think it was slagged unfairly. It is a vanity project, sure. But there are some great things on that album, ones that surely distance themselves from AFD even as they occasionally play into the excesses of UYI.]
HIM and Kixchix, IMHO, divvying up the percentages, I think it's Axl and Slash occupying 80% of the territory in an even split with Duff allocated a mere 10% with Ferrer and Fortis evenly splitting the remaining 10% and that's how it should remain unless all parties are involved in recording new material for a possible new album.
HIM, as much as you may believe it to be, it's only Axl's band from a legal standpoint (Boy, Slash sure f*cked that up, if he shared rights to the name which I seem to recall him signing away?, speaking of faded memories (or, in this case, "fading memory").
One thing that's not faded is my memory of how half a*sed Axl's singing was during all those years sans Slash and, as accomplished as Buckethead, Bumblefoot and Ashba may be, they can't hold a candle to Slash, who not only outguns (pun intended) those clowns but also has that sort of intangible (or should this actually be considered "tangible"?) "it factor" -- his "feel" for the material, not only as a player, but from a personal standpoint as one of the original creators of the songs.
Duff only gets 10% because, well, c'mon, he's the f*cking bass player, for chrissakes (Sorry, Sixx, Purnell or that a*sclown, Harris, who wrote the bulk of their respective bands' material). Fortis and Ferrer get 5% each as they are contributing something beyond the role of mere side players, though Ferrer probably deserves more since reality is, he may actually be a better drummer than Sorum and certainly, Adler, from a technical standpoint and we all know a drummer's vital importance when it comes to delivering the goods live.
But, I think you've got it right, HIM, with Judas Priest...
The band really IS 50% Halford in it's present state. He is just killing it live these days and you're right, Tipton is virtually checked out now, leaving all the heavy lifting to Faulkner, who, IMHO, blows K.K. away. In fact, I was SO impressed by him, I give him 30%, the other 20% to be shared evenly by Hill and Travis, applying a similar theorem I used for Gn'R above, though with slightly different results.
Allyson, I think you meant, "It's virtually the same set list", as your hunch is correct -- they did add "Out Ta Get Me" AND added a new cover, Iggy Pop's "Raw Power", in the "Punk slot" of the show previously inhabited by The Misfits in the Vegas show you attended and The Damned at Coachella (Sidenote: I really wish they'd had Captain Sensible and/or Dave Vanian from The Damned on stage with them when they covered "New Rose" at Coachella since The Damned also played the festival, even if Vanian did jealously slag them in The Damned documentary, "Don't You Wish We Were Dead").
HIM and Kixchix, IMHO, divvying up the percentages, I think it's Axl and Slash occupying 80% of the territory in an even split with Duff allocated a mere 10% with Ferrer and Fortis evenly splitting the remaining 10% and that's how it should remain unless all parties are involved in recording new material for a possible new album.
HIM, as much as you may believe it to be, it's only Axl's band from a legal standpoint (Boy, Slash sure f*cked that up, if he shared rights to the name which I seem to recall him signing away?, speaking of faded memories (or, in this case, "fading memory").
One thing that's not faded is my memory of how half a*sed Axl's singing was during all those years sans Slash and, as accomplished as Buckethead, Bumblefoot and Ashba may be, they can't hold a candle to Slash, who not only outguns (pun intended) those clowns but also has that sort of intangible (or should this actually be considered "tangible"?) "it factor" -- his "feel" for the material, not only as a player, but from a personal standpoint as one of the original creators of the songs.
Duff only gets 10% because, well, c'mon, he's the f*cking bass player, for chrissakes (Sorry, Sixx, Purnell or that a*sclown, Harris, who wrote the bulk of their respective bands' material). Fortis and Ferrer get 5% each as they are contributing something beyond the role of mere side players, though Ferrer probably deserves more since reality is, he may actually be a better drummer than Sorum and certainly, Adler, from a technical standpoint and we all know a drummer's vital importance when it comes to delivering the goods live.
But, I think you've got it right, HIM, with Judas Priest...
The band really IS 50% Halford in it's present state. He is just killing it live these days and you're right, Tipton is virtually checked out now, leaving all the heavy lifting to Faulkner, who, IMHO, blows K.K. away. In fact, I was SO impressed by him, I give him 30%, the other 20% to be shared evenly by Hill and Travis, applying a similar theorem I used for Gn'R above, though with slightly different results.
Or perhaps in reality, or at least Sharon Osbourne's reality. You make a contract guaranteeing the percentages and then never deliver and then lie, cheat and bad-mouth those that supported you. Me stil thinks that Axl is still working that formula. It's called suicide solution. Ah, the similarities..
And I think we are closer on the GnR front than it first appears. Yes, Axl owns the name. So the business end of things must be pretty interesting when you look at how this tour is being handled. But he also deserves some credit for keeping the band or brand alive in the years since the classic and then less-classic lineups imploded. It is also the case that, while he does sound a lot better nowadays, he wasn't exactly embarrassing himself for the past several years. Sure, he was heavier. But he was showing up, on time, and performing for nearly (or over, in some cases) two hours. This new Axl seems even better, sure. But the Axl of the St. Louis riots era has been gone for some time.
I also take your point that Slash, from a non-business perspective, brings a dose of "feel" that his replacements couldn't fully capture. I get that. But my question is this: why is he doing this tour? What motivates him? Not that any of us can know or that it matters really. The same with Duff, who handles backing vocals and some fronting vocals. He adds that elusive something that you notice as much when it is there as when it isn't.
And I think we also agree on the real tragedy: signing away ownership in this band was a tragic move at a time when Slash wasn't, I think, making a lot of good decisions. But the band persisted without him for a good many years. And now it still exists with three of the originals performing live. That seems to be what people want. And so be it.