LAS VEGAS You like my, my furniture? the singer W. Axl Rose asked the screaming crowd at the T-Mobile Arena here on Friday night. He was on a throne made from guitars and amps, lent by Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters, where he could keep his injured left foot immobile.
It was the first night of an arena and festival tour by the partly reunited Guns N Roses, which brings Mr. Rose together with two of the bands founding members Slash (Saul Hudson) on lead guitar and Duff McKagan on bass for the first time since the mid-1990s. Since then there have been insults, recriminations, lawsuits and a takeover of the Guns N Roses brand by Mr. Rose, who has toured and recorded with sidemen for two decades. The Not in This Lifetime Tour, as the band has called it, was a reunion significant enough to make Guns N Roses the Saturday night headliner at the Coachella festival on April 16 and 23.
During an April 1 preview show for 500 people at the Los Angeles club the Troubadour, which helped propel the band to fame in the 1980s, Mr. Rose fell off the stage and broke a bone in his foot thus the throne for a month of recuperation. Unexpected as it was, the injury only clinched the point of the reunion. It is different both fraught and familiar playing with peers who invented a band sound and sidemen trying to recreate it. Unable to strut and shimmy across the stage as the frontman he has been for so long, Mr. Rose had to rely on the songs themselves and share the spotlight, perhaps more than he expected.
He made every effort. Singing from the throne, he pumped out the beat with his right leg and gesticulated with both arms. Using crutches or a wheelchair, he also periodically headed backstage during instrumentals for costume changes that barely mattered: studded leather jackets and assorted hats, T-shirts, bandannas and sunglasses. He has set aside the unfortunate fashion choices, like cornrows and hockey jerseys, of his recent tours; he also omitted the onstage rants that once punctuated the bands more indulgent shows.
Meanwhile, in every riff and solo, Slash with no wardrobe changes confirmed how much he brought to the band at its peak. Mr. Roses latter-day lineups have featured guitarists who were technically accomplished but cold. Slash could match their speed as he proved in Chinese Democracy, a song recorded without him but his phrasing was songful even in his many flashy stretches, hinting at, among many others, Carlos Santana, Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix (whom he quoted a few times).
