Guns N’ Roses Glastonbury 2023: a comically bad display
On the second night of this year’s Glastonbury Festival, Guns N’ Roses delivered a crowning performance when it comes to the most comical moments in the cultural celebration’s history. The camp “real rock ‘n’ roll” was akin to 100,000 people turning up to watch your dad’s friend’s band play at the local pub. Amid the notably sparse crowd, this bewildering display was a laugh a minute—the sort of laugh that comes from utter disbelief.
They began proceedings with ‘It’s So Easy’ and made enlivening it look like the hardest thing in the world, serving up scintillation with all the ease of Stevie Wonder racing in Le Mans. After a strange video introduction that looked like it had been curated by Joe Rogan and the graphic designer responsible for the Monster can, this turgid opening sent an instant shockwave of despair over the crowd, only tempered by how damn funny the whole thing was.
In truth, there had already been mass murmurings that the band might not be up to it anymore, and this strange sense of dampened expectancy was instantly satiated by a set opening that left people thinking that the whole thing might be a comedy routine. Their frontman, Axl Rose, tried his best to inject some energy into proceedings, but his camp display of sluggish jogging was merely pitied by the sweltering masses at Worthy Farm.
To shake up this dull shambles, the band then proceeded to hand things over to their lauded guitarist Slash. To wake things up, he delivered a string of inventive solos in the same way that Tippexing out the words of a novel as you read them is an inventive way to replace bookmarks. While the quality of his musicianship is unquestionable, the notable lack of enthusiasm on display hamstrung things to a chronic degree.
After four tracks, Guns N’ Roses were finally ready to deliver a big hit in the shape of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’. This perked things up momentarily, which was evidenced by the fact that the face of the man next to me turned from a transfixed scowl to more of a grimace. However, the band also found themselves strangely hoisted by their own petard in playing this celebrated track because it gave pause to the crowd to muse en masse: ‘OK, I’ve seen enough now’.
From thereon, there was a steady stream of people heading over to Lana Del Rey’s set on the Other Stage. Meanwhile, fellows in Guns N’ Roses T-shirts tried their best to headbang and ignore the damning exodus, but at one point, I even witnessed one of these cult fans yawn, a natural reaction that was a far cry from the real rock ‘n’ roll enchantment that the band were hoping to offer.
24 songs later, as Dave Grohl waited in the wings to come out and close things with the 25th track, ‘Paradise City’, he must have wondered what on earth he had agreed to, noting to his helicopter pilot, ‘Keep the engine running’. This brought things to a close with a whimper.
While there is cause for nostalgia at Glastonbury, this performance actually served as an indictment against ‘classic rock’. Maybe 30 years ago, Guns N’ Roses could’ve delivered on their promise to rock people’s socks off, but now they couldn’t even rock the socks off of Gandhi—and that is not ageist, merely the reality that if rock ‘n’ roll of their adrenalised brand is the 60m dash of music, then fellas in their 60s seemingly gone well beyond caring are never going to win it. In fact, they could still be dribbling over the line now, for all anyone knows, as they gear up to yell “are you ready to rock, Glastonbury?” for the thousandth time.
If there was bewildering criticism of Arctic Monkeys on Friday night for “not playing the hits”, then this stilted display served as the best riposte to that possible. Guns N’ Roses weren’t just flogging a dead horse, they were beating it to death in front of the punter’s eyes, and no amount of leather trousers could hide that.
