Guitar man goes back to basics
Slash
Hydro, Glasgow
★★★
Iconic guitar man Slash was last seen in Glasgow saving the day at the Guns N Roses show in Bellahouston Park while his old buddy Axl Rose walked a tightrope between charming and cringeworthy. When he heads out under his own name, his wingman is Alter Bridge singer Myles Kennedy, an effortless rock vocalist but not much of a ringmaster.
“I can’t hear you,” he tells the crowd in cursory frontman fashion. The crowd could make the same criticism of him but when the classic rock clamour of his band The Conspirators was sufficiently pared back, Kennedy demonstrated his musical chops.
Slash solo is a back-to-basics affair with negligible stagecraft. Of course, the main man poured his energies into a succession of varied solos on a carousel of guitars and broke out the occasional hop, skip and duck walk, but there was an overall diffidence to the performance until bassist Todd Kerns stepped forward to helm a cover of Lenny Kravitz’s Always on the Run with the dumb, infectious enthusiasm of the committed rock rabble rouser. In general, the looser and more low-slung the tunes the better. The garagey Halo rolled as well as rocked, catchy jam Actions Speak Louder Than Words even swung a little and Kerns was great company once more on the irreverent punky thrash of Doctor Alibi.
There were softer highlights too, particularly Starlight which opened with a soulful melodic Slash solo and proceeded with Kennedy delivering his finest rhythm ’n’ blues vocal before, rather bizarrely, dedicating Fill My World to pets, encouraging the audience to hold up phone pics of their furry (or, in Slash’s case, scaly) friends.
Almost two hours in, the encore demonstrated the wild diversity of the show with Slash covering Elton John’s Rocket Man on pedal steel then laying waste with the arpeggio action of Anastasia.