Singer Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses, shown at a 2012 performance, reunited with guitarist Slash in 2016 for a tour that has been repeatedly extended.
The internet is riddled with jokes about old rockers who never die. One of the not-so-old-yet rockers who will be visiting South Africa in November is Axl Rose and his band of merry Guns N’ Roses.
I have been a fan of Rose for a good three decades. I was, after all, in my second year at university when Guns N’ Roses released their first album, Appetite for Destruction, way back in 1987.
See what I mean about not quite old yet!
It just so happens that I was invited along to a Guns N’ Roses tribute concert last week.
Here was a group of youngsters paying tribute to a group of rockers old enough to be their parents. And what a fantastic job they did of it.
It did lead to a grand debate – which is still ongoing and might never be completely settled – about which is their best song. But that’s another story altogether. Fact is, the concert was two-anda-half hours of musical magic, mixed with nostalgia and, I suppose, a bit of fear of growing up.
As I suspected, the crowd was not a bunch of Beliebers.
Mostly on the very wrong side of 50, we huffed and puffed our way through the concert, spending too much time on our backsides and not enough on our feet. And instead of sharing a cigarette, it was asthma pumps doing the rounds in the crowd.
That’s when I realised just how fit some of these old geezers must be.
At 56, Rose is not only on a World Tour with Guns N’ Roses which started in 2016, he also fronts for AC/DC. And at 63, Angus Young of AC/DC still behaves like the bad boy of the class during a concert which can last for three hours, not to mention Mick Jagger.
I am also hoping that the Spice Girls will get their act together again and come to South Africa. I would really love to see them in action.
By the time they do, we might need to rename them.
I was thinking about Granma Spice, Geriatric Spice, Zombie Spice, Dried Spice and Push-up Spice. And I mean that with the utmost admiration.
After all, old rockers never die, but for me, the old Spice Gals will never lose their flavour.
Danie Toerien.
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