It’s easy to write off Guns N’ Roses, the opening-night headliner for Welcome to Rockville’s biggest venue, the Apex Stage.
The L.A.-constructed band’s crest was nearly 40 years ago. Its most recent proper album, “Chinese Democracy,” came out in 2008, just after Barack Obama became president. And headlines about Guns N’ Roses have covered riots, racist and homophobic lyrics, tour cancellations, an ever-changing band lineup, and drugs and alcohol problems.
But they’ve persisted, touring and releasing new music here and there, including a 7-inch vinyl, with songs “Nothin’,” and “Atlas,” at the end of 2025. And their 2026 tour starts with a South Florida appearance May 5, followed by Rockville, then a slew of dates in Europe and North America, with special guests on particular dates including Public Enemy, the Black Crows and Ice Cube.
Martin Popoff, the Toronto-based author of “Guns N’ Roses at 40,” considers Guns N’ Roses easily a top 100 rock band of all time, and said a show he attended several years ago demonstrated how Axl Rose, Slash, Duff McKagen, and the rest of the band put on a professional show.
“It was really, really good,” Popoff told The News-Journal. “They did an excellent job.”
Even as the band knows there’s “a lot of eyes on them,” and “daggers out for them,” he said they love playing music, so they’ve endured.
Guns N’ Roses a bridge between hair metal and grunge
In the years after Guns N’ Roses released “Appetite for Destruction” (1987), they were arguably the biggest hard rock band in the land, making both hits and artistic choices that defied the formulas of the day, Popoff said.
“Appetite” would sell more than 30 million copies, putting it among the top 30 albums in terms of sales all time, with three singles eventually reaching the Top 10. “Welcome to the Jungle” made it to No. 7 on Billboard, “Paradise City” climbed to 5 and “Sweet Child O’ Mine was No. 1 for two weeks in September 1988.
“They started what I call a new genre called dirty hair metal,” Popoff said. “They went away from the straight makeup.”
Unlike hair metal bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison, Guns N’ Roses became more “experimental,” Popoff said.
“It’s up to the listener to decide whether you want, you know, whether you understand them as the punk-rocking Guns N’ Roses or the more bluesy Guns N’ Roses or a more metal-based Guns N’ Roses,” Popoff said.
But by the time Guns N’ Roses released their two nearly double-length albums “Use Your Illusion I” and “Use Your Illusion II,” both on the same day in September 1991, Pearl Jam’s “Ten” had been released, while Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Soundgarden’s “Badmotorfinger” were about to come out and completely change rock culture.
“I think what happens at that point is you get two super-long (Guns N’ Roses) albums on the same day, so it’s something like 150 minutes of music. And already grunge has taken a lot of the bloom off of anything to do with hair metal,” Popoff said.
Guns N’ Roses struggles surface in 1990s
One by one, original band members — except for Rose — went away.
In 1990, drummer Steven Adler was fired amid struggles with heroin. One year later, guitarist Izzy Stradlin, — who had started a band with Rose as high school students in Lafayette, Indiana — went his own way.
Slash — the top-hatted guitar player — quit in 1996, and moved on to other bands and projects. McKagan, the bassist, left the band in 1997. Both he and Slash rejoined the band for a 2016 reunion show at the Coachella festival in California.
There was a lot of bad press for Guns N’ Roses in the 1990s.
“I think Guns N’ Roses is getting a bit of a backlash because people are jealous how famous they are,” Popoff said. “There’s a lot of bad blood, you know. We’re we’re starting to see the infighting and the drugs and all those things that caused (the downfall).”
But Popoff said Guns N’ Roses continues to be a classic band through its live shows and the occasional song releases, even if they haven’t amounted to full albums in more than a decade.
“I compliment Axl because he’s a true artist,” he said. “He’s a perfectionist.”
The music is ready when it’s ready. And it breaks rules, which Popoff considers “punk rock” in its ethos, if not falling into that genre.
‘Mystique’ of Axl Rose, who lets music do his talking
Eddie Trunk, the Sirius XM heavy metal host, said on the Appetite for Distortion podcast he hasn’t gotten to know Rose as well as other members, as Rose hasn’t done many interviews in recent years. The band’s publicist did not respond to a request from The News-Journal for an interview.
“These walls go up, and it’s very hard to penetrate the walls,” Trunk said, adding that it adds to a mystique around the band, which doesn’t need the interviews to sell tickets. Also, he speculated that perhaps the strategy has worked for Rose, whose touring has been successful in recent years.
During one 1987 interview — conducted just months before Guns N’ Roses got huge — Rose talked about his desire to not sell out and to maintain artistic integrity.
“I believe in myself and I believe in my songs and I think we will get there someday,” he said in the interview with Steve Harris, and posted on The Tapes Archive.
“It’s like this: The album ‘Queen II‘ wasn’t a very successful album for Queen in the States, but I think it is the best recorded album in the history of rock and roll; I think it is up there with ‘The Wall,’ (by Pink Floyd). … So it comes down to an art thing. I am just very, very serious about doing something I believe in, at least at the moment.”
Who’s handling Axl’s axes on the Guns N’ Roses 2026 tour?
The band’s success — and lack of cohesion post 1990 — has led to many unexpected collaborations.
Slash, for instance, formed a band with McKagan and former Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland, and has performed with Michael Jackson, Lenny Kravitz, Motörhead, Ozzy Osbourne, and Fergie.
Rose has worked with Carrie Underwood, Don Henley and Bruce Springsteen, and filled in as AC/DC’s lead vocalist in 2016. Perhaps most memorable was Rose performing “Bohemian Rhapsody” with Elton John and surviving Queen bandmates of Freddie Mercury at a 1992 tribute at Wembley Stadium in London.
“They’re all big music people. I love how actual throughout the years, as unapproachable as (Rose) has been, over the years, he will collaborate with just anybody, doesn’t care if they’re famous or not,” Popoff said. “So I think there’s a lot of positive about that band that people kind of forget about.”
The current lineup features Rose on vocals and keyboards, Slash on lead guitar, McDuff on bass, Dizzy Reed on keys, Richard Fortus on rhythm guitar, Isaac Carpenter on drums. Melissa Reese, the first female member who plays keyboards, will not be with the band on the 2026 tour due to personal reasons, the band said in a statement.
Will Guns N’ Roses show up late for Rockville?
GN’R was previously scheduled to play at Welcome to Rockville on May 21, 2022, but that show was canceled when thunderstorms and hail halted the proceedings. Obviously not the band’s fault.
But between that and the reputation the band developed in the 1990s, when Rose was known to show up sometimes hours late to concerts, some fans are still approaching with caution. “Hopefully ain’t gotta wait 2 hrs. for them to come out on the stage,” one posted on the Welcome to Rockville social-media page.
WTR’s webmaster responded with a bit of humor.
“Our Speedway is known for legendarily fast pit crews.”
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Guns N’ Roses headlines 1st night of Daytona Welcome to Rockville
Reporting by Mark Harper, Daytona Beach News-Journal / The Daytona Beach News-Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
