Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Hala Tivoli, Ljubljana
Concert date: February 8, 2013
Attendance: 4,500
Ticket price: €39
At the end of last November the news dropped: Slash is coming to Slovenia! A legendary guitarist, in some people’s eyes one of the greatest rock guitarists ever, in others’ just a good player who’s hard to put on the same level as the true greats. Opinions will always clash, but one thing is clear: this is a notorious star who, with his curly mane, top hat pulled down over it, sunglasses and of course a guitar in hand, introduced countless music fans to rock’n’roll, and who, together with Axl Rose, wrote one of the most controversial stories in hard rock history.
Slash followed up a successful tour last year, on which he sailed across Europe in the summer alongside Ozzy Osbourne, Geezer Butler and plenty of other stars, by releasing his second solo album »Apocalyptic Love«, which he’s been presenting intensively on stages around the world ever since. At the end of summer he was hosted by the land of kangaroos, he returned to the stages of his native American soil, and then the new year arrived, bringing with it a return to the Old Continent. After a handful of shows in Eastern Europe, he came back to the Slovenian capital after seven years, on none other than our biggest cultural holiday. Križanke, where Slash played in 2005 with Velvet Revolver, gave way this time to the smaller hall of Hala Tivoli.
The frozen crowd was warmed up by Slovenian rockers Tide, who, after Iron Maiden and Uriah Heep, landed the prestigious job of opening for a big international act for the third time. Picking Tide again stirred up quite a bit of hot blood in these parts, but their professionalism on every level easily defuses the understandable grumbling of regular gig-goers. Slovenia simply has only a handful of bands with a fully professional attitude, so those bands (like it or not) rotate through the prestigious events very quickly. But let’s focus on the set itself. In half an hour together, Tide delivered a well-chosen cross-section of their career, with the logical emphasis on their latest release »No. 4«. The quartet bets on a punchy, almost arrogant stage essence, uncompromising and solid, with duties spread evenly among all four members. Frontman Kevin Koradin was unfortunately too low in the mix and couldn’t be heard well from the crowd, but difficult acoustics are an old sore spot of Hala Tivoli. The band still sailed on along their chosen course without compromise and made it clear that they don’t hold the throne of the Slovenian alt rock scene for nothing!
By then the hall had filled up completely, setting a wonderful backdrop for Slash and company, who spent the next two hours pampering a sold-out audience, mostly younger-generation rock’n’roll fans, under a huge banner of the current album »Apocalyptic Love« hanging over the stage.
After the welcome-in track Halo, it was time for a wild ride on the night train, namely the song Nighttrain, during which all the brakes came off between the crowd and the band. Maybe someone thought this would be an evening of nostalgia for one of the once most successful bands, Guns N’ Roses, but Slash’s career didn’t die after leaving the notorious group, so over the years he’s built up plenty of material, which he presented successfully in Ljubljana, with the logical emphasis on both solo albums.
The discovery of the night was definitely Myles Kennedy! The guy has been active in music for more than two decades, but he only stepped onto the big stage a few years ago with the success of Alter Bridge, and he took another step forward when he joined Slash’s solo project and became his right-hand man. Last year at Graspop in Belgium, where I met Kennedy and the backing band, “the Conspirators,” for the first time, Kennedy didn’t quite manage to win over the festival crowd, but this time in Tivoli the picture was totally different! The crowd followed his stage performance and, with hands in the air more than once, conjured up a breathtaking show that the musicians on stage visibly enjoyed. Slash’s frontman isn’t all that charismatic, but he’s that much more commanding when it comes to his vocal duties. His vocal performance was built on remarkable adaptability, which you could notice especially in the G’N’R covers, where his tone moved a bit closer to Axl Rose while still keeping the necessary touch of his own expressive formula and temperament.
Slash spent most of the night on the right side of the stage. He was serene, with his face hidden behind shiny sunglasses that covered up any mood-driven grimaces. The highlights of the show were his solos, which luckily defied the acoustics of the Tivoli hall and rang out full, to the crowd’s delight! It was a very different story with the placement of the rhythm section, especially in the first part of the show, because the sound of the drums and bass didn’t find its optimal spot in the overall picture, so the speakers rattled annoyingly in places. In that respect, the intro to Civil War was a real small disaster. Though cool as a cucumber at first glance, Slash was alert the whole time, watching and dictating the flow of the show. He showed off the mastery of his riff rhetoric in the intro to No More Heroes, and in general kept drawing the spotlights to himself by flying his fingers up and down the guitar neck. In the bouncy Doctor Alibi, bassist Todd Kerns stepped up nicely as vocalist, and so, at least for a moment, stepped out of the shadow of the night’s top two names, Slash and Myles Kennedy.
Slash was as reserved as usual, so he addressed the full hall for the first time only near the end of the show, and with a handful of words of thanks he poured even more oil on the fire of the already heated atmosphere. Judging by the reaction, the evergreen G’N’R classics Sweet Child O’ Mine, Welcome to the Jungle and Paradise City, at the very end of the two-hour show, were (as expected) the most triumphant moments of the night. Even though Slash has spent a decade and a half trying to escape the shadow of his time with the notorious Guns, playing their classics is still what fills his wallet, so giving them a compromise third of the set list is completely understandable. With two solo albums released recently, the guitarist is clearly still creatively inspired, but unfortunately the target audience doesn’t recognize that. They simply ignore all his ex-G’N’R projects and feast only on the big Guns hits, so Slash is stuck in a kind of vicious circle of past mega-success that will never let him out of the claws of the Guns N’ Roses legacy, whether he likes it or not. The sold-out Tivoli show was proof of that.
Setlist
1. Halo
2. Nightrain
3. Ghost
4. Standing in the Sun
5. Back From Cali
6. Nothing to Say
7. Serial Killer
8. Civil War
9. Not for Me
10. Doctor Alibi
11. Watch This
12. Bad Rain
13. Rocket Queen
14. No More Heroes
15. Starlight
16. Anastasia
17. You’re a Lie
18. Sweet Child O’ Mine
19. Slither
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20. Welcome to the Jungle
21. Paradise City
Photo gallery
