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Guitarist Slash (second from left) and Axl Rose (third from left) will share a stage for the first time in 23 years when the original Guns N’Roses line-up returns for two concerts at the Coachella festival in California.

Confirmed: Slash buries hatchet with Axl Rose for Guns N’ Roses reunion gig at Coachella festival

American hard rockers’ original line-up to take stage for first time in 23 years in California in April. Festival will also feature LCD Soundsystem, Calvin Harris, Ice Cube, Ellie Goulding, and Sufjan Stevens among others

Influential American hard rock band Guns N’ Roses will be re-forming for two performances at the Coachella music festival in April.

It will be the first time the original line-up of Guns N’ Roses – including singer Axl Rose and guitarist Slash – perform together since July 1993 in Buenos Aires. Coachella will take place over two weekends, April 15-17 and April 22-24, in Indio, California, and Guns N’ Roses are scheduled to perform on April 16 and April 23.

The Los Angeles-based hard rockers confirmed the dates on their website with a video of a giant concert reminiscent of the band’s heyday. Rose is heard – with a profanity added – singing one of the most famous lines from the band’s repertoire: “You know where you are? You’re in the jungle, baby.”

Guns N’ Roses have kept playing in name in recent years but without Slash, who has long said it was too difficult to work with Rose.

The singer, who rarely gives interviews, had been scheduled to speak today on the late-night US talk show of Jimmy Kimmel. But Rose’s name inexplicably disappeared on Monday from Kimmel’s list of guests on the show’s website.

Appetite for Destruction is the top-selling debut album by a US group.
With Rose’s sweeping vocal range and raw anger coupled with Slash’s intricate metal guitar, Guns N’ Roses became an instant sensation. Appetite for Destruction from 1987 remains the top-selling debut album by a group in the United States, where it has been certified as selling 18 million copies.

But Guns N’ Roses have released just one album in the past two decades – Chinese Democracy, which came out in 2008 after persistent delays and without Slash.

Also reforming for Coachella are LCD Soundsystem, a younger band from New York who were influential in developing the hard-edged electronica scene of the 2000s that brought a new alternative aura to dance music.

The band – best known perhaps for the track Daft Punk Is Playing at My House, a tongue-in-cheek homage to the prominent French electronic duo – had broken up in 2011 with a concert at Madison Square Garden that was heralded with a live album and documentary.

LCD Soundsystem reunited in their own idiosyncratic way on December 24 when they suddenly released a track titled Christmas Will Break Your Heart” with the band writing on Facebook that it was a “depressing Christmas song” that had been on the back burner for the past eight years.

LCD Soundsystem will headline Coachella on the festival’s two Fridays – April 15 and April 22 – with Guns N’ Roses performing on the Saturday nights.

Other acts confirmed for Coachella include Ice Cube, a member of pioneering gangsta rappers N.W.A. in the late 1980s who – until the release of a biopic last year on the group – may have been better known to young festival-goers as an actor.

LCD Soundsystem will also reunite at Coachella.
Other Coachella 2016 notables include the often camera-shy Australian experimental artist Sia, English singer Ellie Goulding, psychedelic folk rocker Sufjan Stevens and electronic act Major Lazer, best known for the massive 2015 hit Lean On.

Rising stars on the line-up include Halsey, a virtual unknown two years ago who is selling out arenas with introspective songs and the millennial generation anthem New Americana, and rare Coachella country attraction Chris Stapleton, who worked for years behind the scenes at Nashville before winning acclaim for his solo debut.

Coachella, launched in 1999, has emerged as one of the world’s most famous music events alongside Glastonbury in Britain amid a rapid rise of festivals in North America.

Agence France-Presse

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