Slash to Turn Beijing Into a Paradise City with Jan 20 Gig

Guns N’ Roses Guitarist Slash to Turn Beijing Into a Paradise City on Jan 20

Kyle Mullin | Nov 15, 2018 1:00 pm | Add a comment | 2413 reads

The capital’s music buffs will be able to satisfy their appetite for destruction on Jan 20, as renowned guitarist Slash takes to the Beijing Exhibition Center’s stage as part of his Living the Dream world tour.

One of the most famous players to ever take up the axe, Slash, of course, gained notoriety in the late '80s with his rugged-yet-fanciful solos in Guns N’ Roses. The hard rocking, and even harder partying Sunset Strip act had an aggressive enough style to all but render the fluffier hair metal genre obsolete. Slash’s elaborate solos on smash hits like “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (the latter of which came about when he tried, just for kicks, to mimic the riff played at circuses and carnivals around the country) were irresistible earworms at a time when audiences craved more craftsmanship and an edgier ethos after years of listening to generic, comparatively bubblegum acts like Poison and Bon Jovi.

As Slash and Guns frontman Axl Rose and Duff McKagan built their audience from a cult following to arena-sized crowds, their penchant for excess loomed all the larger. Before long Slash was known for taking up a bottle of Jack Daniels as much as a guitar, and his infighting with Rose, plus their overall thirst for chaos made for endless tabloid fodder. The most glorious example might be when a shirtless Slash became too drunk to notice that his cigarette had fallen from his lips and down behind his belt buckle mid-concert, prompting photographer Robert John to exclaim “Dude! You’re burning up!” Despite that, Slash finished the solo “in pain” (more of this masochistic debauchery is covered in the rock bio Watch You Bleed: The Saga of Guns N’ Roses).

You won’t be able to see such willful disregard during Slash’s Beijing gig, because the veteran rocker has long since cleaned up his act. However, the band that he has assembled for his post-Guns tours, singer Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators, are known for keeping pace with the kind of rugged playing that Slash is famous for. And while the Guns famously reunited in 2016, considering that a certain controversial LP title didn’t exactly go over well among Chinese authorities, this Slash gig will probably be the closest that Beijingers will get to hear Guns N' Roses live, as beloved guitarist rip into hits from their mega-selling albums like Appetite for Destruction and Use Your Illusion.

For a fun update on what Slash has been up to in recent years, check out the interview he did on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast earlier this year, and to get an idea of what you can expect at a Slash show in 2018, check out this concert review.

Slash will perform at the Beijing Exhibition Center on Jan 20. For more information about tickets, click here.