The 2013 Australian Guns & Roses concert. I had absolutely no expectations when I went to the concert, despite thinking it might be woeful, with Axl being the only original band member, I was still keen to go.

When I was 17 my next door neighbour Michelle and I were miraculously given permission to travel without adult supervision to Sydney from Newcastle to go to their 1993 Eastern Creek concert. The infamous concert, where Axl was three hours late to stage after a huge fight with the band. Eventually he was choppered into the motorway arena and the gig got underway. 70,000 metal heads had been baking in the sun all day, no shade. Just dust and cement and booze. If he hadn’t of shown, there would have been a riot.

Michelle and I were utterly in love with Gunners in the late 80s. With the music charts brimming with Bros, Kylie and spandex lipgloss metal – Gunners were a breath of fresh air. The band were so raw and angry and wild. It was full of swear words and you could dance to it. What more could teenage girls want? Plus men liked them, it was a guaranteed conversation starter. Where’d you get your GNR shirt? All paths led to Gunners.

Everything rode on the back of GNR back then. Crushes, parties, heartache, fear and that soul crushing anger that only teenagers know. For me, Guns & Roses opened up a window to a universe that my parents and teachers would never know. Their music sent me to a place that authoritarian adults could never reach. It was all mine. I owned the music, it seeped into every cell and tissue and bone. It could take me out of the hell hole that I was in and drop me off some place better.

And mum HATED them.

See ya later world. Hello Paradise City. If you can imagine one big long dumper wave that never dumped. How I loved their first two albums. The energy in them was palpable. It still is. So it is with this nostalgic chest squeezy excitement that I jumped on the 2013 tickets.

The 2013 concert would never stand up to 1993 and nor did I expect it too. I’ve been around the block enough to know that you can’t top your teenage music loves. But the concert was a good time.

Axl had not aged quite as I had hoped, and he literally spent half of each song off stage in a black tent (oxygen?) whilst the guitarists noodled out extended bridges and extra riffs. The instrumentals between most songs were hard to wade through (I just wanted fast rock’n'roll). The instrumentals added extra opportunity for Axl to retreat to the tent for more air.

But the old hits warmed my heart, even though it was more of a covers band than not. I was chuffed by Axl’s dogged showmanship. He’s still the super ego. Putting on a huge show even if it half kills him. Gone are his mesmirising snake dances. But he’s still got fight. Pyrotechnics at every turn, ridiculously expensive visual displays, a massive ticker tape parade (see below) and the amusing encore “theatre bows” at the end. And yes, he’s still got the high notes.

At the very end, just before we left, Axl reached out into the crowd and lobbed his microphone into the air. It landed just near me, but after five  hours of standing in the same spot, I couldn’t be bothered getting into the ensuing scrum to fight for it. This simple act made me smile. Axl had done the same thing back in 93, only back then he cracked a guys head open when he lobbed it, and the punter had to be stretchered out by medics through the crowd.

Axl might have gotten older and heavier (like the rest of us) and is finally managing to turn up on time, but the super ego Axl lives on. For me at least, he’s still holding a bit of the unrelenting arrogance torch that we loved him for all the way back when. Which is a good thing because when I crank my gunners, and I’m at odds at the world, it’s the super ego that I’m looking for.

P.S An hour after posting this, I read here that an Australian man had had his front teeth damaged when Axl threw the microphone into the crowd during the Perth concert.