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Live and Let Live (Guns n’ Fucking Roses, Hammerstein Ballroom)
(concert photo via Brooklyn Vegan)
“I’m having a really fucking good time. You have no idea how much – and what – that means.”
That was Axl Rose – yes, Axl Rose – addressing Friday night’s crowd at Hammerstein Ballroom between two new (well, officially unreleased) songs. At the very least, it probably means that he’s actually going to show up for Sunday’s, Monday’s, and Wednesday’s shows.
It’s tough, honestly, to judge a Guns n’ Roses performance – not just because this was my first. Rose has worked harder to redefine the boundaries of “good” and “bad” concertgoing than anyone since Alan Passaro. The aborted tours, the ridiculous late starts, that pathetic MTV VMA performance. The man got Canadians to riot, for goodness’ sake. If he just shows up, if people aren’t throwing chairs from the balcony – that’s a good show, right? But GnR’s live act is revered, when they actually bother to perform.
And whoever “they” are. The steady march to and from the beer line during tonight’s wait between acts – 70 minutes stretched between disposable openers Bullet for My Valentine and the headliner – featured a ton of Guns n’ Roses T’s. It’s a guaranteed badge of uncool to wear a band’s shirt to their concert (redundant, if nothing else)... but this wasn’t really that band. Rose is the only remaining member of the original line-up; the others on stage – seven, tonight – have come into play at various times during the band’s history – a third guitarist apparently added after these shows were scheduled.
Axl Rose is a Rock n’ Roll Hero to some. Not me. I’ve always liked GnR; they were the only group good enough to cross over into my little suburban Classic Rock World during high school. They fucking rocked, they wrote great songs. Appetite for Destruction, man, we wore that tape out. It was on in the limo as we drove around getting stoned before the prom; it was in the limo as we drove around getting stoned, afterwards. I was at Tower Records at midnight when the Use Your Illusions came out – but only because a friend really had to have them. The music got between my ears, plenty, but never found its way into my heart.
Just letting you know where I’m coming from. This wasn’t like last year’s Nine Inch Nails show. I’m only an appreciator, here, not a fanboy. This wasn’t a Show That Changed My Life. I thought there were some great parts, some rough patches. I thought it was, mostly... admirable.
*
It’s been a while since I’ve been at a show with pyrotechnics.
The stage set-up was two-tiered. With a flight of stairs at each end, the upper tier held the drummer and two keyboardists (Dizzy Reed and Chris Pitman; Pitman’s keys had those jointed stands NIN likes to use, and Reed also had a set of bongos). The other five – Rose, lead guitarist Robin Finck, 2nd guitarist Ron Thal (of Bumblefoot), a 3rd guitarist (Richard Fortis?) and bassist (and ex-‘Mat) Tommy Stinson – ran around the front. A platform – perhaps the size of the performance area at the Mercury Lounge – jutted out into the crowd at center stage.
Across the back wall, eight vertical banners with Chinese characters ran from ceiling to stage; in front of them were hung three video screens.
They started pumping fog long before the band came out. There were cannon booms. Big flames would occasionally shoot up, Almighty-Oz-style, on either side of the raised tier. There was a stage-wide shower of sparks at the end of “November Rain;” Stinson was dancing around right underneath until Finck grabbed him by the shirt collar and pulled him away. For the rest of the show, the venue smelled like evacuation.
*
Axl Rose – hey, that’s Axl Rose, down there – is wearing a leather shirt. Half-unbuttoned. That can’t be comfortable. He’s got jeans, a big silver cross hanging from his neck, and I think boots. The now-infamous cornrows have been pulled back into a pony tail.
We are eight minutes into the show, and he is already short of breath.
When the place went dark, the building went apeshit; it settled into shock as a brief bit of instrumental playback pumped in, into skepticism as “Welcome to the Jungle” began. We got to the part where Axl asks, “You know where you are?!” and, suddenly, everyone did.
But now we’re into “It’s So Easy,” and it don’t look it. It’s hard to hear Rose singing: The vocals are already low in this song, the mix is bad, there are so many instruments on stage, the whole venue is singing along. And at this exact moment Rose is panting, hanging on a microphone stand and there are flashbacks to that ugly VMA performance (and even the equally abysmal Rolling Stones Superbowl Halftime Malfunction). This thing can’t last more than an hour. Rose turned 44, this year, and he’s been running around since he took the stage. I’d be exhausted, too. Perhaps it’s time to, y’know, casually stroll with Mr. Brownstone, instead.
*
More than two hours later he was standing straighter than a good deal of the crowd.
“I’ve spent the last month in the great city – the country – the WORLD of New York,” he said, at one point. He came to “study.” “You motherfuckers tried to kill me... You step away from partying, but – it’s like riding a bike. But you never stop. It’s 24/7, here.” So that’s what Axl’s been doing. Pushing himself, pacing himself. Taking “New York bicycle riding lessons.” He’s older, but he’s wiser, too.
Things didn’t seem to be going well, vocally, early on, but he didn’t run away.
Well, actually, he did. Quite a bit. Whenever the focus shifted from the singer, he ducked offstage. I joked he had an oxygen tank, back there; during one lengthy guitar solo, a friend texted “Axl’s nap.” The singer initially came out wearing shades, an easy way to cover up what might be a whole company of Rose-substitutes tag-teaming vocal duties. There was quite a bit of down time during the show. The stage went completely dark between many songs, and though some of that was to cover crew activity – a piano was wheeled out, then off, twice – every pause felt like a scheduled Axl Rose Coffee Break.
So he ran away, but he always came back. He wasn’t going to give up. And things started to get good. It looked like he started to enjoy himself during “Better” – all the newer songs picked him up – but when he hit the high notes during “Sweet Child o’ Mine” it felt like the real deal. He couldn’t hold every note – maybe he’s never been able to, live, I can only compare to the CDs, but songs like “You Could Be Mine” wound up sounding almost staccato – and sometimes he’d hit the note and rapidly fall off it. But he did hit the notes, and he held the ones that counted most. When “special” guest Sebastian Bach came out (in a Pantera T) to trade lines on “My Michelle,” Rose sounded ten thousand times better than “Baz” (who was shrill, and winded halfway through that single song).
And it’s hard to begrudge those pauses as Rose, when onstage, almost never stopped moving. He was running around, jogging up the stairs (his first trip up, to watch Reed bongo during “Jungle,” left him noticeably winded), and doing all the patented Axl moves. The backwards right-knee kick. The slithery side-to-side weave. The whipping-around-of-the-mic-stand. He couldn’t have been more convincingly Axl Rose had he been bitchslapping supermodels. Maybe he’ll do that tomorrow night.
The most impressive vocal performance, I thought, was the night’s most reserved. I’ve always – back off, bitches – hated “November Rain.” Bloated and corny – a flute? – it’s this Macy’s Parade balloon of a song (until it hits the six-minute-fifty-second mark, when the clowns let go of the cables, or someone punctures the cartoon and it whooshes away, or...). But last night, without the 101 string schmaltz and the slow-mo falling-into-a-wedding-cakeness of the studio cut, the song really connected. It was personal, humble. Whatever happened to Axl Rose? “Everybody needs some time on their own. You know you need some time all alone.” It made sense.
*
No matter how much people want to think he is, Axl’s not Guns n’ Roses. He didn’t write all the songs. There’s just too much guitar backing this band for all the credit to go to frontman. Rose’s high-pitched squawk might be the band’s trademark, but it’s not really its voice.
He doesn’t want you to think that, either – or maybe he just doesn’t want to seem alone, out there – so he handed over good chunks of time to his bandmates. There were five instrumental solos – not one of them in the percussion section, thankfully – and unfortunately, all five felt like padding. Two, at least, led into the songs they preceded – Reed’s occasionally raggy piano solo rolled into “The Blues,” and the third guitar turn (I think, by the third guitarist) rattled into “Night Train.” Mostly they served as little showcase pieces for newer members, a chance to isolate individuals from the 8-person monster to see what they brought to the beast.
Finck, a former NIN guitarist who’s been playing with Axl for some time, looked more like a member of Jethro Tull than GnR. While Slash had this incredible way of
seamlessly integrating drrrt and polish, Finck comes off as direct and a bit sloppy, and that works perfectly against what’s become an overstaffed outfit. In a completely related aside, he’s also a whole lot of fun. He jumped into the crowd during “Out ta Get Me,” then full-out stage dived at the end of the encore. When security hauled him back up, he jumped in, again. While it’s not unusual for this to happen at shows, this one really needed it: Before that, it felt mostly like the band and crowd were sharing a bunch of great songs and not much else.
Bumblefoot, or Thal, or whatever he wants to call himself, was technical and tiresome. His solo was completely uninvolving, only memorable because the instrument he played was, literally, a “Bumble Foot” (see picture from Bumblefoot's site below). Like some failed Moreauvian splicing of a bee, a foot, and a guitar.
Mostly there were just too many people on stage, and too much sound for any of it to be effective. You want to feel like all those people are contributing something, but instead it seemed like the sound was filtered eight-different-ways. It could be the result of the Thirty-Year War Chinese Democracy’s become, all that endless studio noodling, or it could have been a really lousy mix, or simply opening-night oopsiness (Rose called the series of Hammerstein gigs “warm-up shows for our European tour,” a comment which drew boos), but I constantly found myself wishing I was hearing something rawer and louder.
The sixth man – or, in this case, the ninth – was also adding noise all night. The crowd was docile – there was a fight before the band went on, and there were crowd surfers, but I didn’t notice a mosh pit. What I noticed was a lot of chatter, especially during the new(er) songs. Some of it was awestruck I-can’t-believe-I’m-here burbleblather, some of it was Axl-sounds-good-Axl-sounds-bad thumbsmanship. There was plenty of singing, and that was great: The crowd, howling, helped its hero over some of his hurdles. And in the end, during “Paradise City’s” confetti-cannon shitstorm, Rose seemed to acknowledge their help by tossing them the mic.
*
Brooklyn Vegan has pics here and here.
*
The set (list below) was, unsurprisingly, full of Appetite; Bach even added a little of “You’re Crazy” during his entrance. Stuff from Illusion was limited to its singles (including the McCartney and Dylan covers, minus “Civil War”), which was a shame. I’d have rather heard one of the sprawling epics from those albums (“Coma,” “Estranged”) than any of the solos. For that matter, there’s really no reason to play both “Out ta Get Me” and “Night Train” as they’re very close to being the same song.
It was encouraging to hear so much new material – six songs – though strange they happened to be six of the seven that have widely leaked (the syrupy “Catcher in the Rye” was held back). “I see you singing along with the new songs,” Rose said. “You downloading motherfuckers.”
Speaking of which:
- Guns n’ Roses - That Was a Time (T.W.A.T.) (demo mp3)
- When Apes Rule the Earth has “Better”
- Lil’ Mike has “Chinese Democracy”
I’d link to a place where you could buy the CD but, well, you know.
The new material was generally the weakest stuff, though some of that might simply have been because it couldn’t reap the benefits of nostalgia. “I.R.S.” needs punch to work, and while the guitarists seemed to be beating the hell out of their instruments, it came out pressed and starched. So much overkill pumped throughout the strongest of these, “There Was a Time” that there was nowhere for the band to go during its climax. On the other hand, “Chinese Democracy,” (which has a very strong lyrical hook in “It don’t really matter”) ended abruptly, awkwardly.
“Madagascar” (during which Rose’s vocals were almost entirely inaudible) came adorned with video images of Martin Luther King. These mostly underlined the absence of the brash, bigoted “One in a Million” – and though it’s tempting to say that the younger, unrepentant Rose was a more interesting rocker, let’s not forget one of his new songs boils down to the acronyn “T.W.A.T.”
(I found the screens to be a distraction, though the images were well mixed. Preproduced packages were shown for several of the new songs and though it helped lend those some identity, it also added visual noise on top of the overloaded sound. Most of the time they carried video of the stage – something unnecessary in a 3700-person venue. Also could have done without a couple of the cornier cues: The sunglasses reappeared for “Knocking on Heaven’s Door,” in which Axl sang, “It’s getting dark, too dark to see;” on the other end of the spectrum, the part in “Patience” where he sings “the lights are shining bright,” was underlined, italicized, and emboldened with a big burst of bright, shining light.)
*
It’s unconscionable to make a paying audience – even a non-paying audience – wait for 70 minutes... but Rose has beaten his fanbase down. As the evening yawned on and beer sales escalated, people stared at each other with the sort of we-asked-for-it despair you see in shoppers’ eyes in the checkout line on Black Friday. Or every day at the DMV.
Through what could’ve been an entire second band’s act, a rather able disc jockey – we’ll call him DJ Testosterone – took a very narrow range of music and assembled a smart, sardonic set. The K-rock (well, when they played music) fodder was well-mixed, the playlist well-planned. He mocked us with anthems of faux-rebellion, had the crowd fruitlessly yelling along with Rage Against the Machine (“Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”), Metallica (“Master of Puppets”), and Twisted Sister (“We’re not gonna take it, NOOOO!”). After almost an hour of taking it, the tone became – depending on how you look at it – either more openly therapeutic or critical of the absent rock star. Green Day’s “Longview” (“I’ve got no motivation”) went into Hendrix’ “Manic Depression,” which melted into Nirvana’s “Lithium.”
*
Set List:
(Intro)
Welcome to the Jungle
It’s So Easy
Mr. Brownstone
Better?
Live and Let Die
(guitar solo 1 (Robin Finck))
Sweet Child O’ Mine
Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
Madagascar?
You Could Be Mine
(Dizzy Reed piano solo)
The Blues
Out ta Get Me
(guitar solo 2 (Bumblefoot))
November Rain
My Michelle (w/Sebastian Bach)
Chinese Democracy
There Was a Time
Patience
I.R.S.
(guitar solo 3)
Nightrain
Encore:
(guitar solo 4 (Finck))
Paradise City
*
(UPDATE: Here's Sunday's show.)
truth be told, i could give a shit about guns n roses. however--and this is
a big however--you write such incredible reviews that i read it anyway.
always worth my time.
im a die hard fan i believe this is not gnr anyway i thought your article
was well wrote and very very good thanks 4 taking the time i felt like i
was there
A little too Critical in my opinion.. then again some people will bash all
they like I cant stop you.