Kicking off with “Welcome to the Jungle” and closing with “Paradise City,” Guns N’ Roses packed a lot into a three-hour show at the Hard Rock Live on Thursday night (April 30).
GLASTONBURY, ENGLAND – JUNE 24: Axl Rose and Slash of Guns N’ Roses perform as the band headline the Pyramid Stage at Day 4 of Glastonbury Festival 2023 on June 24, 2023 in Glastonbury, England.
Leon Neal/Getty Images
It didn’t take long for Guns N’ Roses to burst onto the scene: the band’s debut album in 1987, Appetite For Destruction, ultimately vaulted them to rock royalty and spent 261 weeks on the Billboard 200. So when the band hit the stage at Hard Rock Live in Hollywood, Florida for their first show of their 2026 tour on Thursday night (April 30), they opened the concert the way they know best: by ripping straight into “Welcome to the Jungle,” the first track off that first album and a continuous thesis statement for the band across its somewhat sporadic 40-year history.
Kicking off shortly after 8 p.m., the first iconic riffs of the song immediately got the 7,000-capacity crowd to its feet, and heralded what was to come: a nonstop, three-hour show that ran through some of their biggest hits — “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “Don’t Cry,” “November Rain” and the show-closer “Paradise City” — as well as a smattering of new songs released in the past three years, including “Atlas,” “Nothin’” and “Better.” The band has always had a knack for covering songs and making them their own, and they duly did that at the Hard Rock, running through their iconic versions of Wings’ “Live and Let Die,” Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” Black Sabbath’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” and Velvet Revolver’s “Slither.”
With the iconic group led by singer Axl Rose, bassist Duff McKagan and guitarist Slash back up on stage together in North America for the first time in a few years, here are six of the best moments from their opening night show.
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Slash Has It
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. -
Big Hits Landed Early
“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. -
An Ozzy Tribute
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. -
Ballads Retain Their Power
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. -
“November Rain” Rules
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. -
A Top Shelf Finale
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.
