Slash – Festival Hall

It’s taken the best part of two decades but Slash is going the right way about saving the legacy of Guns N Roses. The bad blood, the constant delays in recording, the side projects and the general air of chaos that surrounded so much of the bands post-Illusion news has tended to obscure the fact that the main reason GnR  rose to the heights they did was that they were a great hard rock n’ roll band.

And inherent in any genuinely great hard rock band is a great hard rock guitarist.

Slash is a great hard rock guitarist.

Tonights show managed to draw together songs from four phases of Slash’s career – Guns n Roses, Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver and his recently released “solo” album in a show that was really a showcase for his playing and the power of a really good hard rock band in full flight.

The best thing about the show was that the stage was a wanker-free zone. Slash himself is a no-nonsense guitar player – he plays some really tasty lead rock guitar but he does it as a band member not as a band leader. He plays to the song and although for many in the audience he is a “guitar hero” he’s really just a great rock guitar player playing in a great rock band.

In some ways Myles Kennedy is the glue that holds this together. Both Guns N Roses and Velvet Revolver had really distinctive lead singers who drew a lot of attention. Slash’s solo album by definition had a big focus on the singers on each song whether they were Iggy Pop, Ozzy Osbourne, Andrew Stockdale, Ian Asbury or even Fergie. Kennedy then, has the role of filling the shoes of Axl Rose and Scott Weiland as well as making a bunch of songs from Snakepit and the solo album his own.

He does a brilliant job. Performing songs like Sweet Child, Paradise City and Civil War could easily have gone very wrong and ended up sounding like a GnR covers band but to his credit Kennedy gets it just right. He avoids mimicking Rose but equally doesn’t try too hard to change the phrasing and the intent of the songs to make them his own, and by so doing losing the crowd along the way.

And he manages to do all this without needing to try and attract too much attention by posing or coming across as too much of a rock star. He lets his singing speak for itself.

The rest of the band simply get the job done. Bobby Schneck (guitar), Tony Montana (bass) and Brent Fitz (drums) don’t steal centre stage from Kennedy or Slash, but in the tradition of great bands they are rock solid contributors.

The selections from the solo album are smart – they don’t try to replicate the more iconic singers on the album and by avoiding that, those songs become identified with this band.

There’s no pyrotechnics, no big sets and no ‘visual extravaganza’ – just a very good band playing great rock n’ fn’ roll. That’s a good way to spend a night out.

Setlist
Ghost
Mean Bone (Slash’s Snakepit)
Night Train (Guns ‘N’ Roses)
Sucker Train Blues (Velvet Revolver)
Back From Cali
Beggars And Hangers-On (Slash’s Snakepit)
Civil War (Guns ‘N’ Roses)
Rocket Queen (Guns ‘N’ Roses)
Fall To Pieces (Velvet Revolver)
Dirty Little Thing (Velvet Revolver)
Nothing To Say
Starlight
Watch This (instrumental)
Slash solo
The Godfather theme
Sweet Child O’ Mine (Guns ‘N’ Roses)
Slither (Velvet Revolver)

Encore
By The Sword
Paradise City (Guns ‘N’ Roses)

Time For A Quick Slash

Slash won a lot of people over last week when he played at the launch of MTV Classic at the Palace Theatre in Melbourne, where he was joined by Angry Anderson and Andrew Stockdale. It looks like he can now parlay that goodwill into a full tour of Australia in August.

His self titled solo album is a really good rock record with Slash contributing his trademark guitar to songs g=featuring a variety of lead vocalists including Ozzy Osbourne, Iggy Pop, Chris Cornell, Dave Grohl, Lemmy, Ian Astbury, Andrew Stockdale, Lemmy Kilmeister, Kid Rock and even Fergie (who sounds great on her track!)

Slash of course was the guitarist in  Guns N’ Roses, and has guested on a number of recordings by iconic artists like Michael Jackson, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, as well as forming the supergroup Velvet Revolver and his own previous band Snakepit.

He may well be responsible for the greatest rock riff of all time with “Sweet Child O’ Mine” consistently taking top honors in polls and pub arguments!

Time Magazine placed Slash second only to Jimi Hendrix amongst the greatest guitarists of all time. Time Magazine!

Slash’s self titled album has already got some great reviews including this one from Metal Resource : “Modern rock will not get much better than this, we have encountered a new standard, a new “classic” that is every bit as good as the best of the best from decades long”

His concert last week when he included a number of Guns N’ Roses songs has seen several reviewers revising their opinion of G n R as “Axl Rose’s band”. Slash has lead singer Myles Kennedy on board and by all reports he more than manages the lead vocals on the Gunners songs that Slash includes in the set.

The set list from the Palace show was

Nightrain (Guns n Roses)
Back From Cali (Slash solo album)
Beggars & Hangers-on (Slash’s Snakepit song)
Nice Boys (performed with Angry Anderson, a Rose Tattoo song)
Civil War (Guns n Roses)
Sucker Train Blues (Velvet Revolver)
Nothing To Say (Slash solo album)
Starlight (Slash solo album)
Sweet Child O Mine (Guns n Roses)
By The Sword (performed with Andrew Stockdale – Slash solo album)
Woman (with Andrew Stockdale – a Wolfmother song)
Slither Velvet Revolver)
Paradise City (Guns n Roses)

Tickets For Slash on sale Friday 7 May, 9am

WEDNESDAY 11 AUGUST
MELBOURNE, PALACE THEATRE – 18+
www.ticketek.com.au 132 849

THURSDAY 12 AUGUST
BRISBANE, THE TIVOLI – 18+
www.ticketek.com.au 132 849 and Rockinghorse Records.

MONDAY 16 AUGUST
SYDNEY, ENMORE THEATRE – Lic A/A
www.ticketek.com.au 132 849