Guns N'Roses returned to play their first UK show for four years at the legendary Hammersmith Apollo on Wednesday night. Fans had travelled from all over the world to be there.
There were scantily-clad girls, flaunting flesh and silicon. There were lads who were so drunk they could barely make it into the venue. The show, a warm-up for their appearance at this weekend's Download festival and a full UK tour next month, was the hottest ticket of the year.
Despite that, come 10.30pm and still no-show for the headline act, the venue resounded with a chorus of boos. But as soon as the lights dimmed and the first chords of 'Welcome To The Jungle' pounded out of the speakers like a strafe of machine gun fire, the whole place erupted. And Rose's customary tardiness suddenly seemed like canny showmanship.
Rather than the archetypal long-haired and tattooed rocker of old, Rose now wears his hair in tightly-pulled back woven braids and sports a goatee beard. He was styled like a metal mack daddy, decked out in an array of silk shirts (which he changed frequently) and expensive jewellery - a ring inset with a large jewel on his fingers and a diamond-encrusted crucifix around his neck.
Shorn of the rage and intensity of old, he spent much of the show beaming, exuding bonhomie as he whirled around the stage, performing his trademark dervish dance. When he howled and barked it was clear the power in his voice - one of the most startling in rock - remains undimmed despite the years.
The band he has re-constituted around him, an eight-piece, features two keyboardists and three guitarists. One, nicknamed Bumblefoot, plays a guitar shaped like a big striped foot. When the fretwork got particularly frantic, it sprouted wings. The show didn't trade on gimmicks though. The band gave the crowd what they came for, whipping through note-perfect renditions of all the G N'R classics one after the other, before slowing it down for a middle section that featured several new cuts from the long-awaited Chinese Democracy album (currently mooted for release later this year). 'That was from our last album,' Rose quipped after one called 'Better'. Until that record comes out, Rose and his band are trading on the past. But no one at Hammersmith gave a jot. They got two hours of sheer thrills and slick rock'n'roll entertainment.
