THE PATIENCE HAS PAID OFF
AFTER A LONG 25 YEAR WAIT, AMERICAN ROCK LEVIATHANS GUNS‘N ROSES ARE BACK TO PLAY AT ICONIC SLANE VENUE
TWENTY-FIVE years ago in the midst of their mammoth Use Your Illusion tour, Guns N’ Roses played what was the first Slane Castle show in five years. Performance-wise they were a welloiled machine at this point - but frontman Axl Rose’s notorious lateness prompted fears of a riot from castle owner Henry Mountcharles.
He said: “We discovered that Axl Rose wasn’t even on site. He was still in his hotel suite in Dublin. “Axl got into a chopper and I got him down here as fast as we could. Credit where credit is due, when they went on stage, they really turned it on.”
Fast-forward 25 years and it’s a different story - but one that has a feeling of coming full circle. After the band imploded in the mid-1990s, a Guns N’ Roses fronted by Rose but minus the other original members lead guitarist Slash, rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, bassist Duff Mckagan, and drummer Steven Adler - toured extensively including a gig in Ireland.
They also released the band’s sixth studio offering, Chinese Democracy in 2008.
While those versions of GN’R had varying levels of success, they’d never exceed the hits of the classic line-up whose 1987 album Appetite For Destruction sold in the region of 30 million worldwide.
In the last two decades, however, any sort of peace talks between feuding duo Axl and Slash seemed extremely unlikely. In 2009, Rose called Slash a “cancer”. In rare interviews the pair dismissed a band reunion. Just what happened then in those intervening years remains a mystery to fans.
What is known is that sometime in 2015 something prompted Rose to get in touch with his former bandmate for the first time since their acrimonious split. They found an equal footing, the wheels were set in motion and the rumours would keep coming.
Then, the announcement came. Classic members Slash and Duff Mckagan would rejoin Axl in Guns N’ Roses. The trio would be backed by long-term keyboardist Dizzy Reed, guitarist Richard Fortus, drummer
Frank Ferrer - and the band’s first female member, Melissa Reese on keyboards.
A surprise show at the Troubadour - a Los
Angeles club steeped in history from the band’s early days - would take place on April 1
2016, before two shows at Las Vegas’ T-mobile arena the following week. Shows at US festival Coachella and shows in Mexico announced that Axl and Slash really were back with a bang. A controversy-free tour has taken them across North and South America, Japan, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
The band has raked in millions, selling out huge shows in stadiums across the world. Approaching Slane Castle, the first show on the European tour and the first since a show in Dubai in March, the momentum shows no signs of slowing. A huge 80,000 tickets were sold-out in less than 24 hours.
The band have returned to rehearsals in the weeks before the show and Axl has even been spotted watching U2 on their Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour in LA.
In 1992, he performed a snippet of the Dublin rockers’ hit One - and maybe another nod can be expected this time around. What is certain though, is that they’ll be bringing a rock ‘n’ roll performance worthy of the the Co Meath venue.
There’ll be a huge stage, massive screens, burning pyro and fireworks and most importantly a host of around 25 of their best-known songs with a band determined to prove that they still have it.
Tomorrow night beneath the backdrop of Slane Castle, fans will be welcomed back into the Jungle.
And for many, seeing this historic band on that historic stage has been a long time coming.