Gig review: L.A. Guns
THE near three-decade story of L.A. Guns reveals a band more Spinal Tap than Spinal Tap, such is the Californian hair metalists' bafflingly long and complex member history.
In the mid-1980s they merged with Axl Rose's Hollywood Rose to form Guns N'Roses, before breaking away again to experience fleeting success in their stadium-filling peers' slipstream; today – six lead vocalists and countless others later – two rival incarnations of the band exist. If you're a grizzled, tattooed, long-haired Los Angeles hard rocker of a certain vintage and you haven't been in LA Guns, you're doing something seriously wrong. Or right.
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Hide AdIt was the incarnation helmed by founder member Tracii Guns – who was Guns N'Roses original guitarist – and featuring son Jeremy on bass and Jizzy Pearl on lead vocals (in his second stint in the band) that assaulted the eardrums of a perhaps quarter-full Classic Grand.
Guns – too rock'n'roll to wear anything except bare flesh beneath his leather jacket – can still play a mean six-string. Otherwise, this was the sorry sight and sound of a band who ought to have many moons since learned when to quit: sludgy, sluggish and incapable of sustaining even the attention of their frontman, who at one point sloped off to leave the drummer to sing a pub rock cover of Hey Joe.
"Thank you Scotland for 20 years of keeping rock'n'roll alive," growled Pearl, as they wrapped-up 30 minutes early with the risible Sex Action. Switching-off rock'n'roll's life support might in this case just be the best for everybody.