Review: Guns N' Roses at LG Arena, Birmingham

There's a joke doing the rounds on the internet. A guy is holding a placard which reads: "What do we want? Time travel. When do we want it? It's immaterial."

Time, or at least time keeping, is something which has appeared to be immaterial to Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose for years. The singer is famed for coming on stage ridiculously late, sometimes a couple of hours after the support band have packed their guitar cases and left the building.

But on Saturday night the joke was on the great many fans still milling around the bars and merchandise stands as Axl & Co took to the stage unannounced a mere 40 minutes after Thin Lizzy has finished a thrilling performance.

That Guns N' Roses' performance started around 10.20pm and lasted almost three hours still meant a late night but the mostly full arena stayed mostly full until the very end, only a few fans slipping away as midnight gave way to 1am.

Largely that was probably due to the fact that it was the weekend but also because whether or not you accept this as the true Guns N Roses or just the 'Axl Rose Band', they know how to put on a show full of posture and bombast. And with the classic Appetite For Destruction album to draw from – Axl is the only remaining member of that line-up - it's hard to go wrong.

In many respects a virtual re-run of their October 2010 concert at the same venue, the first half of the show was tauter, an early run of Welcome To The Jungle, It's So Easy and Mr Brownstone getting fists pumping the air.

Things became flabbier in the second half, with far too many solos and cover versions, although Wings' Live And Let Die rocks out magnificently and November Rain and Street Of Dreams impressed.

Sweet Child O' Mine, of course, had the crowd in raptures but as the clock hit 12.35am and the band launched into Night Train you wondered if Rose might really be having a joke with us.

That seemed to be confirmed three songs later when Patience finally gave way to the traditional finale of Paradise City in a cloud of red confetti.

As the lights came up at 1.15am there was a final 'nudge nudge, wink wink' from Rose as he sent a message to the fans over the PA, via one Frank Sinatra . . . "I did it my way."

By Ian Harvey