When most people talk about Guns N’ Roses, they really just mean Axl Rose and Slash, because rhythm guitar and drums aren’t as cool as foot-in-bear-trap wailing and guitar solos. Some of Guns N’ Roses (Axl, Slash, and bassist Duff McKagan) kicked off their Not In This Lifetime reunion tour Friday night at Los Angeles’s Troubadour. Those three hadn’t performed together since 1993, when they concluded their Use Your Illusion tour; drummers Steven Adler, who performed on Appetite for Destruction, and Matt Sorum, who performed on Use Your Illusions I & II, have not performed with the band since 1990 and 1993, respectively. Neither drummer is participating in this current reunion, nor is rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin, who performed on all of the band’s studio albums until “The Spaghetti Incident?â€, for which all of his work was re-recorded. But those guitar solos! The Troubadour show included some Destruction staples, like “Welcome to the Jungle†and “Nightrain,†as well as a few Illusion tracks and two songs off Axl’s Chinese Democracy, which is a little weird. This pseudo-iteration of GnR will perform at Coachella 2016 and embark on a full tour, which will probably spur some crazy war stories, if history truly repeats itself. Tickets for the tour go on sale April 8, assuming Axl doesn’t cancel the tour or fire anyone.
