Guns N’ Roses entered the millennium shrouded in mystery.

After the collapse of the original GN’R line-up in the mid-90s, Axl Rose had systematically pieced the band back together with a new ensemble of musicians (only keyboardist Dizzy Reed remained), and was more determined than ever to prove his doubters wrong.

There were just a few small problems;

• Nobody had heard any new music.
• His new band hadn’t played any live shows.
• Axl hadn’t even been seen in public for six long years.

So what better way to test things out than a comeback show in front of 200,000 fans?

Welcome to the crazy world of GN’R, and welcome to Rock In Rio III.

The year is 2001, and Nu-Guns have signed up to headline the iconic Brazilian music festival a whole decade after the original line-up played the headline set at Rock In Rio II. To say anticipation is high would be the understatement of the year. Concert staff say about one-in-three fans is wearing a GN’R shirt, and the excitement is unprecedented.

There was also a palpable hint of worry, with many unsure if Rose would actually show up after so many years of radio silence, but this element of danger just seemed to add to the whole experience.

Of course, even before showtime arrived there had already been plenty of trademark GN’R drama.

You Know I Know Better

Rose and co. arrived in Brazil on January 12th, two days before their Sunday evening headline slot.

Although there were several other big-hitters from the music world at the show (Sting, Neil Young, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, Papa Roach, R.E.M., N’Sync, Britney Spears, and a newly reformed Iron Maiden) it was Axl who became the paparazzi’s primary target.

With a six-year absence from the public eye, and wild rumours that he’d grown fat and bald, the Rio press were out in force to capture the photo to end all photos.

However, they didn’t get what they bargained for.

Instead of trying to avoid the press, Rose decided to take the initiative and openly posed for photos with fans in the street. He appeared slim (albeit not wirey like his early 90s self), he looked healthy, and seemed eerily calm ahead of what must’ve felt like crushing pressure to deliver in front of a baying audience.

Was this a new Axl?

In some ways it was.

We’d read many stories about how he’d supposedly found inner peace throughout the latter part of the 90s, taken to daily meditation, and even frequented a psychic in Sedona. He spoke openly about his mental health issues and how he felt like he wasn’t in the right frame of mind before the Use Your Illusion tour, but here in Rio he seems very happy, and displays a level of comfort around his new bandmates that we’ve never seen before.

But in other ways it wasn’t.

Fast-forward to Sunday night, the band’s helicopter touches down in Rio at precisely 1AM (already an hour past GNR’s allotted start time). Some things never change, huh?

The crowd didn’t seem to mind the delay, though, because after sitting through below-par performances by Papa Roach and Oasis, this was the one they’d been waiting for.

Out Of The Cold, And Into The Jungle

The show begins with a silly cartoon about the crazy life of “Uncle Axl”.

There were many in the tension-filled crowd who still didn’t think the show was going to happen, so when this GNR-themed cartoon started playing it becomes a confirmation-of-sorts that “he” was really here.

A few moments later, the infamous staccato riff of Welcome To The Jungle cuts through the night sky like Michael Myers with an oversized breadknife, and the crowd reached a fever pitch of emotion.

And then it happens…

“Do you know where the fuck you are?”

Man it’s been too long.

Rose’s unmistakable howl bursts through the mic, somehow capturing half a decade of rage and frustration into one hellish note, instantly reminding us of the giant jigsaw piece which rock has been missing since 1994.

It’s a moment for the ages, sending the 200,000-strong crowd over the top.

You couldn’t have written it any better.

Get In The Ring, Motherfucker!

As the floodlights hit, the new band are exposed to the crowd for the very first time.

The line-up consists of Axl on vocals, Buckethead and Robin Finck sharing guitar duties, Tommy Stinson on bass, and Brain on drums. While certainly an eclectic mix of styles, no-one can deny the massive musical potential within this newly-formed “super group”.

It sounds like GN’R, but bigger, and Axl appears delighted to be back as he blasts through Welcome To The Jungle and It’s So Easy as if he’d never been away.

It’s also clear that he wasn’t exaggerating when he told Rolling Stone that his new recruits could “play the shit out of the old songs!”

Amazingly, it seems as though guitar virtuoso Buckethead is only operating at 50% power.

He stands to Axl’s right like the coolest sore thumb of all time, complete with serial killer outfit and a KFC bucket on his head, and shreds the holy fuck out of everything that comes his way.

Now, anyone familiar with his pre-GNR work will already know that the even the most complex riffs from the GN’R back-catalogue won’t pose this guy any trouble, nevertheless it’s still highly impressive to watch him so easily hit all of (and even throw additional licks on top of) Slash’s famous guitar parts.

As a collective, it must be said that Nu-GNR look weird as fuck.

This is mainly because each member of the band goes in a different direction with their fashion sense. Axl appears like you would expect him to, Tommy is the classic punk, Brain is happy in sportswear, and then there’s the goth-style Finck and the spectacle that is Buckethed.

Axl is said to have loved this “freak show” aspect of the new band, but most fans found it hard to digest.

Behaviour-wise, Axl seems happier than ever as he bounces off his new colleagues.

We see a brief flash of his old temper during It’s So Easy, when he spots a fan wearing a t-shirt which has “Slash is GNR” scrawled across it in magic marker and tells security to kick them out, but for the most part he’s in good spirits and is happy to talk to the crowd, only really becoming agitated when directing barbs towards his old colleagues.

Axl: “I know that many of you feel disappointed, that some of the people who you came to know and love could not be here today.

Regardless of what you’ve read, I can tell you that those same people worked very hard to try to stop me being here, too.

Believe me, I’m as disappointed as you are that we couldn’t all find a way to get along.”

Of course, none of this would matter if Rose couldn’t deliver a great performance.

You needn’t have worried.

Rose brought his A-Game, commanding the crowd with a level of stage presence no other band on the stacked bill could match. At times it was difficult to believe he hadn’t performed in over half a decade.

That’s not to say he was perfect, of course.

There are a few wobbly moments vocally, and it’s clear that his trademark rasp has lessened over the last few years. At the time people figured that this would just get better with more shows, but what we know now (20+ years later) is that these were actually early signs of the vocal chord damage which would go on to plague his later career.

At one point in the show, the enigmatic frontman sends a shockwave through the crowd by hitting them with the words they didn’t expect to hear:

Axl: “Here’s a couple of songs from the next album.”

What?!

The band blast through an absolutely vicious version of Chinese Democracy, which feels considerably heavier and less polished (in a good way) than the version which would eventually be released on the new album.

The next new song to appear is The Blues.

It’s a great ballad which features some excellent guitar work, and it also provides an amusing moment where Axl barks the phrase “Okay, never mind!” at the top of his voice towards an audio technician who inadvertently messed up the mix and couldn’t fix it. This moment also demonstrated how in synch Nu-Guns appear to be, because upon realizing that Robin Finck’s upcoming guitar solo will be un-hearable, they all instinctively decide to skip over it without missing a beat of the song.

Later in the evening we are treated to Madagascar, another new song, this time with a show stealing slow-burn guitar solo from Buckethead.

The concert reaches a crescendo with a rousing rendition of Paradise City, as Axl Rose stands tall on the monitors, his six year personal battle seemingly vindicated in what was a truly great show.

Funny How Everything Was Roses When We Held On To The Guns

The aftermath of Rock In Rio III was largely positive.

Because while nobody expected Axl to take the collapse of the old band lying down, few could have predicted he would emerge from the shadows with such supreme confidence.

Choosing a show of this magnitude for his new Guns’ first ever show seemed like a crazy choice, but the way in which they completed the task with brazen arrogance and relative ease left the rock media shook.

MTV’s Kurt Loder was one of those in attendance:

Loder: “About 10-minutes into their set, it became clear that the new Guns N’ Roses line-up is a rock n’ roll event, the sort that a lot of people (me included) have been waiting a long, long time for.

While the reigning rap-rock groups of the moment (Korn, Limp Bizkit, et al) manage to get by with pure sonic wallop, the new GN’R already play with a level of precision and passion that’s unlikely to be matched anytime soon, which is astounding considering they’ve only had one month of rehearsals.”

Steve Appleford of The Los Angeles Times was another:

Appleford: “For all the mystery and uncertainty surrounding him in recent years, it was like he’d never been away.

As the crowd began chanting “Welcome back! Welcome back!” it was a disarming moment even for the notoriously strong-willed Rose, who could only smile and say “Now you’re embarrassing me.”

Maybe so, but the most memorable aspect of his long-delayed return to the stage is that he never came close to embarrassing himself or the legacy of GN’R.”

Yesterday’s Got Nothin’ For Me

Ah, what might’ve been…

There was a distinct lack of mainstream hard rock music in the charts during the nu-metal era, and considering how happy everybody was to have Axl back, the door was wide open for him to enjoy the type of career resurgence which his heroes Alice Cooper and Aerosmith had both experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Unfortunately, the enigmatic frontman had no interest in filling that position.

He was hard at work trying to create the best album of all time, and by teaming up with such an eclectic mix of musicians from several different styles, it was clear he didn’t care about re-treading familiar territory or chasing commercial success.

Instead of feeling like a nostalgia act, Axl wanted to be cutting edge.

He pointed out that, in the same way the sprawling Use Your Illusion sounded very different to Appetite For Destruction, any material which Nu-GNR would go on to release would represent where his musical tastes are now, not then, and this would mean pushing the Guns N’ Roses sound further into new territory.

Even though most fans weren’t keen on this concept, it didn’t stop the band’s progress.

Ultimately what really killed them was the break.

You see, the intensity of this performance took a toll on Axl, so instead of setting off on the pre-planned world tour to capitalize on all of the positivity surrounding Rock In Rio III, they did the worst thing they could possibly do; simply disappeared again.

They stayed gone for two years.

By the time they returned to kick off their world tour in mid-2003, the initial excitement/curiosity had long since dissipated.

That being said, Rose’s reputation and the GN’R name ensured that Nu-Guns still enjoyed a level of success throughout the 2000s which was beyond the reach of most bands (albeit never recapturing their 90s fame), and we did get to witness plenty of Axl Rose-related shenanigans on subsequent tours, so I’ll end with this classic story from drummer Bryan “Brain” Mantia:

Brain: “It was just crazy in GN’R, and it probably sounds nuts for me to say this but I actually loved the chaos!

One time we were playing in, I think it was ’03 or ’04, and I remember there was a lot of tension backstage because it’s showtime in 30-minutes and there’s like no sign of Axl yet.

So people were pacing back and forth, knocking on the door asking what we were gonna do if he doesn’t come. I could see some of the guys looking worried, and I was trying to reassure them just to stay calm, because at the end of the day, what can we do?

Suddenly we get called into this big office, where the showrunner has Axl’s manager on speakerphone, saying he’s still in New York and hasn’t even boarded the helicopter yet (laughs)! His manager says he’s refusing to leave until the server in Starbucks gets his coffee right (laughs), and when he’s explaining all of this we can hear Axl in the background arguing about this cup of coffee as if it’s the most important thing in the world (laughs).

Oh man, I completely tuned out of what his manager was saying and started listening to THAT!

So the server’s telling him to move to the side, I guess there’s a queue building up due to him asking for it to be made again and again, and I shit you not, Axl fires back with something like, “Welcome to you worst nightmare, son, I’ve got thirty two fucking thousand people waiting on me and I ain’t moving until you get this cup of coffee right!” (laughs).

I literally had to clench my teeth together and put my hand over my mouth to stop from bursting out laughing!

I can see how it must have been stressful from a management point of view, but I loved all that rockstar diva stuff he would pull. He genuinely didn’t give a fuck. I’d often just sit there chuckling away to myself while all of this madness unfolded around me. It’s part and parcel of him, and I was there for it all day long.”