“Glastonbury, do you know where you are?” is one of those rhetorical questions only a rock star could ask.
According to Guns N’ Roses’ frontman Axl Rose, Worthy Farm was “in the jungle! And you’re all gonna die!” But the sun-baked revellers took it in good spirit, laughing and singing along to Welcome to the Jungle.
The veteran LA heavy rockers had a lot to prove, particularly after Lana Del Rey (simultaneously performing her own rather more chilled out set on Glastonbury’s Other Stage) dismissed them as “pale, male and stale”.
But the crowd turned out for their unreconstructed old school rock, and they certainly gave it their best, in a hard, loud, fierce set. It’s not going to go down in Glastonbury lore as one the great victories, however.
Guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan still look the part of grizzled rockers who only function at night, but Axl Rose just looks weird, like an aging small-town hairdresser who has been working out too hard at the gym.
The real problem, though, is his voice. He used to have a shrieking Banshee power but it has become kind of lumpy, with a toneless feminine falsetto and a honking low range, and he switches between these too modes with little apparent logic.
