Guns N Roses’ 2026 Tour Kickoff: 6 Best Moments

Not that you’d be surprised, but 40 years after his instantly-iconic and virtuosic guitar playing helped lift GNR into the stratosphere, Slash’s playing is still a main event of the band’s performances. He was impeccable throughout the night, whether through his almost-casual mastery of distortion while riffing through cuts or his effortless soloing, bringing his guitar vertical next to his face and just letting loose. Some of his solos are burned note-for-note into the brains of any major rock fan — the sustained runs of “November Rain” stood out in particular — but it was when he really let loose, like on the outro to “Civil War,” when he ripped into Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” or just took a moment to vamp on a blues progression in between songs, that jaws dropped in the theater.

“Welcome to the Jungle” set the tone, but GNR busted out some big guns early, with “Mr. Brownstone,” “It’s So Easy” and “Live And Let Die” in particular getting the crowd on their feet and into it. The way the band shifted the hammer blow of “Live And Let Die” to land on the one — instead of Wings’ original version, when McCartney’s vocal lands before the band kicks in — forever changed that song for many people, and it hit particularly well here.

GNR, as with many big rock and metal bands both before and after them, owe a debt to the trailblazing of Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne, and they paid tribute to the Prince of Darkness — who died last July — with a cover of “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” the title track to the group’s 1973 album. As the group hit the outro — which Slash has in the past called “the heaviest s–t I have ever heard in my life” — they flashed an image of Ozzy up on the screen behind them.

For all their well-earned reputation as hard-nosed rockers, GNR is known just as much as a power ballad band, taking advantage of Axl Rose’s at-times-operatic vocals. Rose sounded good in the room, and held his own after all this time on the big, slower tracks such as “Don’t Cry” and “Yesterdays,” and really turned it up for the group’s classic rendition of Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” which relied so much on Rose’s vocal interpretation and kept its ingenuity here. 

As the show was creeping towards the three-hour mark, they still had some of their biggest hits to come — and when the stage briefly cleared out and a piano was rolled onto the center, fans knew which one was coming. Rose sat down on the bench in a glittery jacket that would have made Elton John proud and delivered what is maybe the group’s crowning achievement, the 11-minute classic “November Rain,” in a note-perfect rendition — complete with Slash standing above the band on the staging setup to rip his now-iconic solo from the song — considered among the greatest of all time — note-for-note, with fans wailing along. It was the centerpiece of the whole show, and worth the wait.

Slash’s extended solo interlude in the final third melded directly into his instantly-recognizable opening riff for “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” which set the tone for a ripping finale. After the centerpiece that was “November Rain” — and after a detour into the Chinese Democracy cut “This I Love” — the final two songs, “Nightrain” and “Paradise City,” brought the show to a close with a hammer blow. Clocking in at almost exactly three hours, the band then came out for a final bow, Broadway style, before exiting the stage.