Guns N' Roses will no longer give the concert of your life.
The American group gives a decent three-hour performance at the Olympic Stadium
BarcelonaOut of respect for the work of photojournalists, this report is published without photos of the Guns N' Roses concert because the band does not authorize the presence of professional photographers on this tour. It also does not credit editors, but since tickets for the show at the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys were not sold out, nothing prevented an ARA journalist from buying one, for 130 euros, to follow the concert from the dance floor.
The band appeared on stage at 8:54 p.m., 24 minutes late, and left at 11:52 p.m., which made it difficult for many spectators to catch the last metro, a classic feature of some concerts at the Anella Olímpic. The audience's attitude was very good, eager to see Guns N' Roses again seven years after their 1998 concert. the previous visit to Barcelona. In fact, what the American group offers is practically the same as back then: celebrating that singer Axl Rose, bassist Duff McKagan, guitarist Slash and keyboardist Dizzy Reed played together again in 2016. It is not the founding core, because Reed joined the group on the album Use your illusion (1991), but almost. The celebration has the extra solidity provided by guitarist Richard Fortus, keyboardist Melissa Reese and especially Isaac Carpenter, who made his debut this year as a drummer for Guns N' Roses. In fact, the rhythm section formed by McKagan and Carpenter (who had already played together years ago in the project Loaded) was the best of the night, impeccable and essential to maintaining the tension in the most relevant parts of the repertoire. McKagan, by the way, sang a magnificent version ofAttitude, from the Misfits.
The same can't be said of Axl Rose. The singer preserves that peculiar charisma and knows how to search for the photo with Slash, but in the same song he is able to tune to the point of catastrophe with his affected voice and at the same time effectively solve the high notes, as happened right at the beginning of the show with Welcome to the jungle, or in a version of Live and let die (Paul McCartney & Wings) which made her suffer more than she should have. In other songs, the combination of questionable sound quality, microphone dynamics, and wear and tear caused her voice to lose breath in the second part of the more challenging verses. But Rose suddenly regained her strength to deliver her best performance. Nightrain and Paradise City, the songs with which the performance ended. Regarding the sound system, the most difficult thing to assimilate was November rain. Rose, wearing a black sequined jacket, sang it on the piano, but the sound of the grand piano was muffled and finally buried among Slash's riffs. As for the mud-stained guitarist, he sublimated the role of guitar hero, as always, and as usual, he also had a few minutes to show off a solo with references to the roots of blues and rock 'n' roll. And he was very good in the guitar dialogues with Fortus, especially in pieces like Bad obsession.
Family Repertoire
The concert was a family tour, with stops at everything that made Guns N' Roses perhaps the last emblematic group of a way of understanding rock, especially with the album Appetite for destruction (1987). From that time, and later Use your illusion, there are the tattoos, Slash's hat, Axl Rose's evil gaze and, of course, the songs. That's why the audience's reaction was one of recognition when they played Mr. Browstone, Civil War, Double talkin' jive and Sweet child o' mine, or when they identified versions as Knockin' on Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan), the highlight of the first part of the show, despite the aesthetic disgrace of the staging: the image of a ladder to heaven flanked by supposedly classical statues without any arms. Someday we'll have to talk about stadium pop and rock stage designs, especially those that try to convey a 3D simulation.
The audience, which didn't quite fill the stadium, did manage to rise to the occasion. It's true that there were moments of disconnection that make you think that for now Guns N' Roses can no longer offer the concert of your life, but when the group needed it, there was always a standing ovation or a shout to make the group understand that, indeed, It's so easy, Civil War and Sweet child 'o mine are important.
