REVIEW: Guns ‘N Roses Still Shooting (U.S. Bank Stadium)

A promotional photo for Guns ‘N Roses.

About 50,000 fans can testify that Guns ‘N Roses are liars. After the band began a slow breakup in 2014, various members swore that they would not reunite onstage again. More than a year into their Not in This Lifetime… tour, the band is going strong – more than three hours’ strong. The lengthy concert at U.S. Bank Stadium finished with five encores.

The song list was peppered with Guns ‘N Roses classics, plus covers of “Live and Let Die”, “New Rose”, “Whole Lotta Rosie”, “The Seeker”, and “Black Hole Sun”. Guitar solos and instrumental-only covers visited The Godfather, “Rock and Roll”, “Layla”, and “Wish You Were Here”. It may be 30 years since “Welcome to the Jungle” dropped, but you wouldn’t know it from how good they sounded. The band has had some great replacements over the years, but having vocalist Axl Rose, guitarist Slash, and bassist Duff McKagan onstage together for the first time in decades is like fireworks going off in your brain. When you could actually hear it, the band rocked.

While the band was in full form, the venue was not: beer lines were long, the drinks painfully expensive, and the bathrooms lines not any better. In much of the stadium, the sound was muddy – as a concert venue, its primary virtue is only the obvious one: size. At least the music needed no drinking.

The opening band, The Deftones, gave a good start with songs like “Digital Bath”. Given the lines, a little more preshow would have hit the spot.

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Amy Donahue

Amy Donahue is a staff reviewer at the Twin Cities Arts Reader. She interned with the magazine during the summer of 2017, served as a guest contributor while studying abroad in Europe that fall, and has moved up to regular old reviewing. She served as interim Editor-in-Chief in 2023.

She admits to being at least 50% terrified of contemporary German opera.