Guns N’ Roses returned to the Rose Bowl on Saturday (9/5) nearly 34 years after their last appearance at the iconic Pasadena football stadium.
They brought along another Los Angeles rebel for the homecoming as Ice Cube opened the show, giving the capacity crowd a one-two punch of late-’80s LA hitmakers from different parts of town.
The pairing of gangsta rap and Sunset Strip arena rock does have precedent. The former N.W.A songwriter performed immediately before Guns on Coachella’s main stage during both weekends back in 2016, when Axl Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan' reunion run was just kicking in.
Cube doled out 45 minutes of classic West Coast hip-hop from his long solo career as well as hits from when he was in Compton's most dangerous group.
When the sun set, Guns took the enormous stage and delivered a three-hour deluge of hard rock precisely as the crowd hoped for and expected.
The Rose Bowl and its vast parks that surround it have sat in Pasadena’s Arroyo Seco since 1922 and can seat over 89,700 people, which it's been known to do.
It's best known for being the home of UCLA college football, as well as the New Years Day Rose Bowl game.
Guns previously co-headlined at the stadium with the picturesque backdrop of the San Gabriel Mountains in 1992 along with Metallica and Motörhead.
The stadium was even bigger back then, as crowds over 100,000 would somehow cram the joint. Saturday’s appearance saw the rockers get back to one of the biggest LA venues they've headlined.
Much of their career has been in enormous situations. Soon after their breakthrough debut Appetite for Destruction exploded, they found themselves at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum opening for four Rolling Stones shows in 1989.
They then returned as co-headliners with Metallica in 1992 to better success as the Stones gigs were, let's just say, rife with typical rock n roll bad boy shenanigans that did not translate to beautiful music.
Several months after they reunited at the Indio Polo Fields Guns sold out Dodger Stadium twice in August of 2016, selling over 84,000 tickets between the two nights.
Since then they've played relatively smaller venues when they returned to their hometown: Staples Center (11/24/17), the Forum (11/25/17 and 11/29/17), Hollywood Palladium (9/21/19), Banc of California Stadium (8/19/21), and the Hollywood Bowl (11/1/23 and 11/2/23).
Something they did for the first time in LA was perform two Black Sabbath tunes they've been treating their European fans with.
First they played one of Sabbath's deepest cuts, “Junior’s Eyes,” from Never Say Die! (1978), followed immediately by the title track of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973).
The band covered these tunes for the first time last summer at the historic and epic Back to the Beginning show, the farewell concert for Ozzy Osbourne and Sabbath at Villa Park in Birmingham, England.
These aren't songs they play every night, so to hear them both back-to-back, in LA was really special. And in a way it was a tribute to Ozzy who spent many years in LA.
Guns will continue to play huge stadiums in the US through the end of the month, then they head to India and Australia in November through December.
Get your tix on the Guns N Roses website.
Guns N' Roses World Tour 2026
9/12 Thunder Ridge Nature Arena, Ridgedale, MO
9/16 Alamodome, San Antonio, TX
9/19 Truist Park, Atlanta, GA
11/14 NICE Grounds, Bengaluru, India
11/17 Khanapara Veterinary Ground, Guwahati, India
11/21 Stadion Madya Gelora Bung Karno, Jakarta, Indonesia
11/25 National Stadium, Singapore
11/29 Adelaide 500, Adelaide, Australia
12/2 Queensland Country Bank Stadium, Townsville, Australia
12/5 Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane, Australia
12/8 McDonald Jones Stadium, Newcastle, Australia
12/11 Marvel Stadium, Melbourne, Australia
12/14 ENGIE Stadium, Sydney, Australia
12/17 Eden Park, Auckland, New Zealand
