Guns ‘N’ Roses returned to their home turf of Los Angeles on their Not In This Lifetime tour. I’m just giving a brief update since I did full coverage on both of their MetLife shows in New York earlier: http://festivalsandgigs.com/never-say-not-lifetime. Having seen three shows on this tour, it’s almost amazing the attention to detail that the band, especially Axl, pays to making sure it’s the same performance. I’m not talking musically, there is a good bit of free styling interludes between songs that can be a real treat to die hard fans, but Axl literally wears the same outfit and changes clothes to the same shirt, hat, no hat, whatever at the same spot each night. I’m not knocking it; it’s kind of amazing. He has taken a lot of heat for his antics over the years, and you can see how deeply rooted his perfectionist tendencies are manifest on the stage.
For the most part they’ve been alternating between two set lists, which primarily just switch between Patience and Don’t Cry as the first encore. But the LA shows did get two more songs than they’ve been playing, a little bonus for the hometown crowd. On Thursday they added Yesterdays and Catcher in the Rye to the Patience set. I only caught the Thursday show, but on Friday they added My Michelle and Sorry to the Don’t Cry set list. Former band mate Steven Adler joined them on stage for a few tracks. There had to be something to make me regret not going.
Having seen three nights on the same tour all at huge stadiums I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on the art of stadium rock. It’s no easy task to project the intense intimacy of rock and roll hundreds of yards away. up into the higher atmosphere of the nosebleed seats. On this tour I saw GnR from the 6th row, the very back of the floor, and the front row of the upper deck, and I took something different from each perspective. When you’re close you are looking at the band, they are right there, you occasionally glance at the jumbo-tron but you keep focused on the flesh in front of you. As you move back you take more of the whole stage in, from the back of the floor you’re noticing the placement of the band, but looking at the monitors to see what they are doing. On the second night I noticed how cool some of the animations and graphics were that I didn’t really take in the first night. For the last show I was up in the risers and now I was taking in the whole show, the audience as well as the stage and the monitors. It may best be visualized in how I perceived the firework display. From the 6th row I heard and saw some fireworks. From the back of the floor I was like “Wow, I didn’t know there was this many fireworks,” and from the upper deck I was blown away by the magnitude of the display. And I know that it’s been the same fireworks every night. In short if you’re a big enough fan to get very close stadium tickets to a concert, you might want do yourself a favor and get some farther back seats and see another show on the tour. They are projecting a performance that’s designed to be seen from afar.
Los Angeles, US