IvanMC

Love these lads, their music is beyond amazing. But this reunion should've taken place long ago... something smells money-orientated here... unless they make a new -and indeed good- album. Anyway, I'm all for the idea of a dual-drummer set-up. It would be well-served to Adler. And I'd like Bumblefoot to stay. He's a sublime musician. But then, of course, nothing of this will ever happen, and I'll end up frittering away all my little money on a Guns N' Roses ticket.

Two Spirit

Money is the only reason they're doing it. There's no way Slash and Axl are magically on good terms again, not with the history they have together. The money this time around just happens to be good enough for them to put aside their differences for 25 shows. Their bank accounts will get padded nicely when it's all over, and they'll go back to hating each other again.

Chula Vista

For the entire tour it'll be separate flights, separate limos, separate hotels, separate dressing rooms, and they'll probably walk on and off stage from opposite ends.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

So, like a Motley Crue show? Sweet. And what world-class band shares a dressing room?

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DwnWthVwls

Queen, Manowar, etc...

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

Chula Vista

I have a documentary from a show they did in 1986. They shared a dressing room, or at least an area where they'd hang out and warm up together prior to going on stage. Those guys were really close.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Trollheart

If the money's right...
You do if one of them is dead.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Basil C. Thurston III

Bumblefoot began to have substance control issues while on the never-ending CD tour, and he has walked away from GNR to save his life. Don't think he'll be back, he sounded pretty resigned to that in an interview with Eddie Trunk earlier this year.
And of course it's about the money- every tour is about the money- this is the only way these guys make coin in the age of digital ripoffs. The band doesn't set the price of tickets, only the gig- the promoters are the ones who set ticket levels, so blame them, not Axl & Co. Rumor is they are asking for a million per show at the stadium level. So say they play the Cotton Bowl in Dallas, seating capacity 92,000 as is, add in another three thousand infield seats at minimum. So if you sold 95000 tickets at $10 a pop, that pays the band. Throw in all the costs to produce and promote the show, charge $30 a ticket, you still come out ahead. And I'm willing to bet they sell a corporate sponsorship to eat the costs of the production, like the Stones do..so keep that in mind when marveling at the ticket prices- it's not always the band behind the massive mark-up....I don't know if I would pay those prices. Perhaps if there was a pretty special double bill or opening act. But I saw GNR during their heyday, and they were nothing special live, IMO, pretty sloppy sounding back then....and Axl's voice has had 25 years to age, I saw the new GNR version 2 years ago and it was rough in spots to my ears...

Two Spirit

The problem is that they're charging way above a simple $50-$60 ticket, which would easily turn a profit a couple times over with that many seats. I know veteran acts charge out the ass all the time, but $250 and up is just inexcusable, especially for a band that only has one great album, a semi-decent double album, a covers album that nobody asked for, and a "comeback" record that took fifteen years to record.

Any other band would have faded in popularity with such little material and band infighting that these guys have, and yet people are still willing to throw hundreds of their hard-earned money at these guys who haven't recorded anything together in over twenty years. How they're still relevant in any sense is mind boggling.

Appetite was a damn fine record and seeing most of that lineup again would be pretty cool, but too much time has passed for me for it to be worth it, not to mention the ridiculous ticket prices.

Basil C. Thurston III

I understand what you're saying, but the days of a $50-60 ticket for a mega-band concert are long gone. It's 2016 now, for a stadium-show, I fully expect prices to be over $100 for crappy seats- for ANY artist. I mean, Janet Jackson was scheduled to play here (now cancelled) and she was charging $150 for nosebleeds at the rear of the arena.

You have to consider that a GNR reunion tour is a mega-event. They were the biggest band in the WORLD for a 5 year period- nobody came close to touching them, and a couple of generations call them "their" Led Zeppelin. That's big. It will be a massive money-maker, in merchandise alone much more than ticket sales, IMO. The hard core GNR fans will eat this up and hit multiple shows. The casual fans will go because it's the thing to do in town that night- and they don't know the catalog, they're going to hear 3-4 songs at best anyways. Rock fans will go because it won't ever happen again and some of them missed it the first go round.

I personally don't think they put out a bad album. I was hugely disappointed in Chinese Democracy because it was too much production- if they ever go back and strip it down, go more with a live sound, it'd be much easier to swallow. Everything else is very, very good, IMO. Go back and revisit the early stuff, you might find you hear things you missed before. I know I dismissed the live album the first time around but now it's one of my favs.