Concert review
Consider it a cautionary tale for all the beat-the-traffic types.
Guns N’ Roses were winding down a three-hour Saturday night marathon in Duff McKagan’s hometown. The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers had already unloaded almost all of their big hits, including a haymaker pre-encore run featuring high-drama ballads “November Rain” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” But the Seattle bassist had one more trick up his perpetually sleeveless shirt.
Axl Rose’s between-song banter had been nearly nonexistent during the workmanlike set, so when the GN’R frontman introduced a distinguished hometown guest so matter-of-factly, it took the Climate Pledge Arena crowd a second to realize what they were in for.
“From Pearl Jam, Mr. Mike McCready,” Rose stated as a slightly delayed jolt of energy rippled through the crowd.
Augmented with another Rock Hall inductee, Guns N’ Roses and a buoyant, down-to-jam McCready outright attacked the closing “Paradise City” from the moment its anthemic, wind-in-your-hair opening chorus sped off into a motoring riff at the blow of a whistle. McKagan, McCready and GN’R guitar god Slash huddled in a circle like three jackhammers on a jobsite, hellbent on chewing up some serious concrete.
It’s not every day, even in Seattle, you get the chance to watch two of rock’s elite guitar soloists like Slash and McCready go lick for lick. That’s exactly what they did during the song’s closing blitz, the two locking in as McCready unleashed a rapid-fire screamer before Slash answered right back.
They didn’t need any pyrotechnics to punctuate this finale for the books.
Guns N’ Roses might be a Los Angeles band, edgy hard rockers who existed somewhere in between the Sunset Strip’s fluffy ’80s hair metal scene and the Seattle grunge wave that supposedly killed it. But there was a whole lot of Seattle on stage as GN’R brought its globe-trotting We’re F’N’ Back! Tour to the Emerald City.
When the tour dates were announced, some hometown fans were bummed to see that Alice in Chains, which is opening some of the surrounding shows on this leg, would (understandably) skip the Seattle stop. But in their place, McKagan & Co. tapped another Seattle pillar in the ascendant Ayron Jones to kick things off.
“The day my [expletive] mom abandoned me,” Jones seethed, tearing into his biggest hit to date “Take Me Away,” “was the day I learned to lie.”
The rock radio chart topper introduced the singer/guitar shredder to the rest of the rock world in 2020 after Jones signed a big-league record deal with a Big Machine Records imprint helmed by McKagan’s pal John Varvatos, but it’s been a favorite among Seattle fans for years. On Saturday, the autobiographical tune soared as high as ever in what was assuredly the biggest hometown stage he’s graced since opening for the Guns at the Gorge Amphitheatre in 2017, the year after McKagan, Slash and Rose reunited for their first tour under the GN’R banner in more than 20 years.
Jones and his road-tested band, which features Seattle’s lord of the power stance Bob Lovelace on bass, were certainly up to the task, having played even bigger gigs opening for The Rolling Stones. The quintet powered through sound issues that defanged the first few numbers for an otherwise brawny 30 minutes, capped by an emotional outpouring and nail-gun drumwork of “Blood in the Water” off this year’s “Chronicles of the Kid” LP.
With all the Seattle-bred guitar power in the house, it was only fitting that later on Slash and the Guns — which also includes Seattle native Melissa Reese on keys and backing vocals — tacked a snippet of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” onto the end of “Civil War,” one of GN’R’s more emotionally stirring rockers. With computer-generated images of a Ukrainian flag waving over urban rubble behind them on the big screen (and devastating Gaza/Israel headlines fresh in our mind), Slash’s 12-string-tickling runs seasoned the timeless 30-year-old cut off “Use Your Illusion II.”
Over the course of GN’R’s latest multiyear tour, the set list has grown into a 30-song affair that truly is more of a marathon than a sprint.
Other than Axl Rose, Bob Dylan might be the only figure in rock ‘n’ roll history whose vocal condition is so heavily scrutinized. Nailing that piercing, nasally, near-falsetto trademark night after night couldn’t have been easy for even a 20-something Axl in his prime. Thirty years later, as his register has shifted, it’s probably not fair to expect the 61-year-old to sound like he did back in the day. Whatever the contemporary barometer, Saturday saw an uneven vocal performance from one of rock’s most inimitable frontmen.
While the stabilizing band was ferocious from the shotgun start of “It’s So Easy” to the McCready-bolstered finish, Rose’s vocals were inconsistent. One minute the famously volatile singer would be nailing cat-scratching highs, to the best of his current register’s abilities, at the end of a smash-n-grab “Pretty Tied Up.” Other times it felt like he was painfully reaching for something on the top shelf that just wasn’t there. He seemed physically uncomfortable with the chorus on an otherwise commanding “Slither,” covering Slash and McKagan’s post-GN’R band Velvet Revolver.
Nevertheless, the mic-stand-spinning frontman found enough in the tank for a number of big moments, including that walloping pre-encore run that began with an extended saloon-rocking instrumental led by Slash, the top-hatted technician. It spilled into a pristine “Sweet Child o’ Mine” that saw the packed arena join Rose on the hook — not that he needed the help on one of the most well-rounded, savoriest performances of the night.
Nestled between the subsequent “November Rain,” which had a more subdued Rose seated at a piano, and a majestic “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” a folky rendition of “Wichita Lineman” was a sleeper highlight — even if the Glen Campbell cover was the least recognizable song of the night for many in the ready-to-rock crowd.
McKagan, who formed the band’s formidable backbone with drummer Frank Ferrer, would have his turn in the hometown spotlight, too. Seattle bylaws stipulate that anytime The Stooges are covered at a venue larger than the Showbox, at least one member of Mudhoney must be invited to participate. With the grunge kings off on a tour of their own, a revved-up “T.V. Eye” was left in the more-than-capable hands of McKagan, the esteemed Seattle punk-turned-arena rocker handling lead vocals on a song that suits his voice like a denim jacket frayed in just the right places.
Glancing over at his wife, Susan Holmes McKagan, who sat on the side of the stage throughout GN’R’s set, McKagan led the slap-ya-in-the-mouth proto-punk rumbler with aplomb. It was a Seattle show-out fit for a rock rebel homecoming king.
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