 Continental Airlines Arena
East Rutherford, NJ
November 5, 2006
Not counting a gravelly voice which grew increasingly undependable as the night sputtered on, the Axl Rose who showed up Sunday at the Meadowlands was perfect. He didn’t incite a riot, he didn’t diss celebrities or critics, and he only made people wait until just before midnight for his Guns N’ Roses version 3.0 to take the stage—and that delayed start, allegedly, was not even his fault, but rather that of a faulty keyboard.
In fact, until late in the evening, when he got a little irked at objects being thrown on the stage, some fans were indeed perplexed: Even in front of a thin, rather sterile crowd, this Axl was repeatedly applauding the crowd and mentioning how happy he was to be there!? At 40-something years old, Axl, at least on this night, was not only showing signs of class, but even—dare we say—grace.
More than that, he sang his guts out. And sadly, as the night grew old, and as he and this revamped retread of GNR played well past 1AM, that’s exactly what it started to sound like: his vocals chords unraveling.
But, of course, some of that is to be expected. A hoarse Axl is certainly something we’ve become accustomed to hearing. What we haven’t become familiar with, however, is a major arena—in metal-haven New Jersey, no less—react rather indifferently to Rose.
After sets from former Skid Row frontman Sebastian Bach and crunch-metalers Papa Roach, Rose and company hit the stage like a bullet, bashing and thrashing their way through three of Appetite for Destruction’s meanest songs: “Welcome to the Jungle,” “It’s so Easy” and “Mr. Brownstone.”
And what they saw was a Continental Airlines Arena that at 9,000 (including both fans and freeloaders) looked and felt empty and bloodless. If invigorated upon Rose’s arrival, the aging crowd rarely rose to its feet, with pockets of fans streaming out of the arena as the band neared a 2AM finish (on a school night!).
If stirred by Appetite classics like “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Rocket Queen” and the closer, “Paradise City,” the crowd couldn’t settle into a rhythm with the band, and neither could the show, which featured exhausting solos from three anonymous guitarists and equally faceless pianist Dizzy Reed, who is barely a real member of the old band.
Rather than genuine attempts to connect the audience with these new band members, each solo seemed more likely slotted into the set to give Rose a chance to regain his voice, change his shirt and catch his breath. And with each solo, the show lost more momentum. Each marked a newer, still deeper valley in the second half of the set, whose peaks came with songs like the grandiose ballad “November Rain.”
Indeed, so sleepy was the show’s second half that it took Bach’s return for an earnest, screeching, one-song duet on “My Michelle” to awaken the crowd. But if that energy carried over into the hit ballad “Patience,” Rose ruined the climax by leaving the assembled frontline of strumming musicians to dart back and forth across the stage for the song’s ending.
Oddly, a loose, groove-infused, electrified take on “Used to Love Her,” another acoustic number from GNR Lies, made for one of the best musical moments of the evening. In addition to keeping that famously volatile edge in check, Rose somewhat surprisingly did the same for the bulk of the stupidly delayed Chinese Democracy. The first, a hooky track apparently titled “Better” nodded to the Beatles and showed promise, while the others rang hollow.
If the show wasn’t a success, it wasn’t necessarily his fault: he sweated through shirt after shirt, busting out trademark move and trademark move, from the center stage slither to the foot-to-stage tomahawk chop, and delivering each song with seemingly every ounce of energy that he had.
And when it was over, a few minutes after 2AM, he beamed and waved goodbye to the crowd, only to gather the entire band and return for a formal bow. Yet, all his good intentions, good behavior and all the effort in the world (from both Rose and the band) couldn’t save the show and the bulk of its songs from feeling tired and lost in time.
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