Gig played on 30/07/06

On a Sunday night, the last tube from Wembley Park back into Central London departs at 10.45pm. Always a man to look out for his fans, Axl Rose doesn't deign to take the stage tonight until 10.30pm. Still, despite being exhausted from hours of boozing and booing and clapping slowly, the diehards are determined to make the best of it. They have, after all, paid £45 each for their tickets. Hence, Axl gets a hell of a welcome. But, with typical grace, he repays his fans' fervour with one of the laziest, most pompous and above all most boring shows in the history of live performance.

Admittedly, the first bit's okay. Rose might look a bit ridiculous these days - what with the ginger corn-rows and the prodigious weight gain - but that voice has borne the ravages of time, and the opening triumvirate of "Appetite For Destruction" tracks ("Welcome To The Jungle", "It's So Easy" and "Mr Brownstone") sound almost as vital as they did two decades ago, when Rose built the reputation he lives on to this day. "Live And Let Die", meanwhile, remains one of all-time great rock'n'roll cover versions; and even though guitarist Robin Finck's solo version of "God Save The Queen" is beamed in from Cringe Central, it does serve to heighten the brilliance of the song that follows it: "Sweet Child O' Mine", the opening bars of which provide tonight's high-water mark.

The tide turns when the new-look Gunners play their dreary cover of "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" (why is this still in the set?), creating a fug from which the gig will never re-emerge. See, after it finishes, Axl's minions take it in turns to try our patience with tedious displays of muso self-indulgence. Keyboardist Dizzy Reed plays a bedroom concerto that lasts about 100 years, as a preamble to a dreary "The Blues", the only track on tonight's set-list from the never-to-be-released "Chinese Democracy" (in 2002 they played four). Thereafter, matters slide into farce, with "You Could Be Mine" and "Out Ta Get Me" providing only fleeting respite amid caterwauling guitar solos; dyspraxia-inducing "jams"; a horrible Izzy Stradlin-sung blues number; and an endless, silly version of "November Rain". Axl introduces the band about four times. By the time he starts singing "Patience", you're ready to call the Oxford English Dictionary with a new definition of "irony".

As your reporter slips into a coma, Axl likewise decides he's had enough and - claiming illness - leaves a guesting Sebastian Bach (from Skid Row) to sing the encore of "Paradise City". After the show, night-bus overcrowding ensures that yours truly has to walk SIX MILES before flagging down a taxi. Others weren't so lucky.

They bottled him off in Newcastle, you know.

by Niall O'Keeffe