2022.12.03 - Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia

Guns N’ Roses bassist’s low key Melbourne trip

Guns N’ Roses bass player Duff McKagan’s wild days appear to be behind him as he wined and dined in Melbourne ahead of tonight’s show.

Fiona Byrne

Let’s just call it now: gone are the wild days of rock.

Guns N’ Roses bass player Duff McKagan has been a man of leisure since arriving in Melbourne late in the week. He dined at the Waterfront Restaurant at Southgate on Thursday with wrestler and singer Chris Jericho.


Duff McKagan from Guns N' Roses with PJ Farley, Chris Jericho and Jordan Feramisco at the Waterfront Restaurant at Southgate. Picture: Instagram

Jericho, a pro wrestling legend who is in town with his band Fozzy, was checking out Melbourne after dark on Friday, landing at the city’s celebrity nightspot Ms Collins. Jericho and his crew, including fellow wrestler Carlo Cannon, were hosted Ms Collins’s Tony Perna.

Meanwhile, also in Melbourne is Finnish F1 driver Valtteri Bottas. Bottas and his Australian partner, professional cyclist, Tiffany Cromwell didn’t waste anytime heading to coffee king, St Ali in South Melbourne. Bottas drives for the Alfa Romeo team.

Watch the moment Guns N’ Roses’ frontman loses cool over blinding spotlight at MCG show
Guns N’ Roses’ frontman Axl Rose sensationally stopped his Melbourne show to order a blinding spotlight be turned “the f---k off”.

Nui Te Koha

Paradise City is a subjective term.

However, based on the perfect planet alignment on Saturday night — beautiful weather, a world-renowned stadium, and reunited rock giants — Melbourne came mighty close to high octane heaven.

US supergroup Guns N’ Roses packed their hits and history into the MCG in a three hour concert that pulled out all the stops.
Their 30-song setlist showcased mainly the past, but brandished a firepower that proved Gunners is still relevant and very much present.

Guns N’ Roses, helmed by founding members, frontman Axl Rose, guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan, is the first stadium rock show to return to Melbourne since restrictions and lockdowns.

Five songs in, the MCG was jolted into the wilds with the first of many classics to rock the coliseum, Welcome To The Jungle.
Rose is in great shape and vocally, opted for a lower growl in the opening bracket.

His famous rock shriek broke through on Jungle, and gained ferocity throughout the show. “Do you know where you are?” Rose asked the crowd. “You’re in the jungle baby.”

Axl was having a ball, all smiles, running across the stage, and occasionally breaking the sprints with side-winding snake hips choreography.

However, his good mood was briefly spoiled by a production issue. Rose stopped the Terminator 2 anthem You Could Be Mine, mid-song, to call out a spotlight operator.

“Stop. Stop. Stop,” Axl yelled. “OK. This is to the spotlight that I’m pointing at. I don’t know what your deal is but I’ve asked you to shut that off 10 times now. I really want to do the show for the people and I don’t want to be blind. I don’t know what’s wrong with the light, we can’t seem to fix it … sorry, people. We’ll start over now. “You can use that one, it’s great,” he said, singling out a preferred beacon. “But that one sucks; turn it the f---k off.”

Meanwhile, the rock and roll time warp has been very kind to Slash. He looks, and shreds like he did, 30 years ago, top hat and all.

The setlist took heavily from the band’s debut album, Appetite For Destruction, released in 1987, alongside classics from the Use Your Illusion albums (Civil War, Coma, Don’t Cry).

For a stadium show, the production was lean but mean, powered mostly by giant video screens.

Indeed, the band’s head of production Will Keating said ahead of the concert: “We don’t do confetti. The bells and whistles are Axl, Slash, Duff and the MCG.”

That said, there have been enough personal fireworks between the trio to light up a whole tour. But that’s in the past.

As the show rounded into the home straight for the unstoppable encore trifecta of November Rain, Sweet Child O’ Mine and Paradise City, Axl, Slash and Duff were a cohesive force, focused on the business of rock and roll, an enviable legacy and partying like it was 1989.