
For the first twenty minutes of Guns N’ Roses’s rain-soaked headlining performance at Brazil’s Rock In Rio Festival earlier this month, frontman Axl Rose wore a big yellow raincoat, and from the coverage the band’s performance has gotten, you would be forgiven for thinking that this wardrobe choice was the most noteworthy thing about their set. Nevermind that the band played for a full two hours more once he stripped off the coat (even though the rain never let up). At the start of the performance, Axl promised, “I’m gonna try to focus on singing rather than running around like an idiot,” and while our gut reaction to that is “Why not do both?” we figure we’ll leave that to the professional—which is a word we chose intentionally here, since the once infamously unreliable singer put in the work, and then some, to close out the festival.
Perhaps the most significant detail was the band’s performance of “Estranged”—the first time that Axl Rose has sung the song live since 1993, when it was the last single off either Use Your Illusion album. This tour’s press material promised “all the classic hits,” but until we saw footage of “Estranged” we weren’t sure whether that was just hype. We try not to buy the narrative arcs that partially define musicians in popular culture, but it’s hard not to find that symbolic of a last step towards reconciliation with a complicated Guns N’ Roses career—just in time for the band’s first United States tour since 2006. The Rock In Rio Festival has always been kind to Guns N’ Roses—it’s where the band staged its first live return in 2001—so if we were the superstitious type, we’d say that the upcoming American tour looked rather promising. The live clips on YouTube of the other dates they’ve played in Argentina since seem to support this notion. The American tour kicks off at the end of this month (dates after the jump).









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