Slash has ruled out Guns N’ Roses bringing their never-ending reunion tour to Las Vegas’ Sphere, saying the state-of-the-art venue isn’t “rock n’ roll friendly.”
Speaking with Sirius XM’s Trunk Nation, the guitarist was asked about GNR playing the Sphere. “I haven’t been [to the Sphere] yet, but just everything that I’ve seen, or most everything that I’ve seen of it, looks amazing,” Slash said (via Blabbermouth).
However, “I’m real trepidatious about playing there, because… It’s a great visual show. I think that in almost every case for a band, it becomes a visual show as opposed to seeing a rock n’ roll show. So there’s that.”
Slash added that he talked to Joe Walsh, whose band the Eagles currently resides in the Sphere, about playing the venue, and that the guitarist told him “it’s not really sort of rock ‘n’ roll friendly, the way that it’s set up. So it’s just one of those things where it seems like a really cool thing, and conceptually there’s probably a lot of cool things that you could do, but I don’t think it would be the right environment for a proper rock n’ roll show.”
Earlier this year, Metallica talked openly about potentially performing at the Sphere. “I’d be interested to see that too,” Slash said. “I could see them doing it… You have to prepare your mind to put on not just a band performance, but 50 percent of what you’re doing is going to be the projection, or whatever you call that — the outer wall, what you’re putting on as content.”
Despite his trepidation, Slash didn’t completely rule out Guns N’ Roses occupying the Sphere at some point. “[The visuals] is something that’s gonna be the main focus of your show and the main focus of what everybody’s gonna be looking at,” Slash told Trunk Nation. “And so you have to sort of getting to that mindset, and I think that’s hard for us to go that far into it. But we’ll see. Maybe down the road.”
Earlier this month, the Sphere announced that the reunited No Doubt will be the next act to spend their weekends at the Las Vegas venue, with the band booked for 12 gigs in May 2026.
