Gilby Clarke and Guns 2 Roses, London, 2026

What a great night this was: a friendly informal atmosphere, killer songs, rockstar royalty, beautiful people, a child prodigy, the next best thing to Axl Rose, it had it all!!

The show was opened by Guns 2 Roses, longstanding GNR tribute band. Fronted by Gavin Felvus who pays attention to all the little details recalling Axl in his younger days, the main thing is he really sounds like Axl and can hit all the super high notes.

‘Slash’ has real long curly black hair and not only looks like, but sounds like Slash with some beautiful tiger stripe Les Pauls. ‘Gilby’ is also a double take. ‘Duff’ looks like Nuno, hey no one was complaining. The important thing was that they carried the passion of GNR and achieved a stadium sound in a tiny venue and played all the big tracks.

A sense of wonder was provided by Olly Pearson aged 12 who looks like a baby Axl but also plays fantastically well and has all the moves just like Slash.

A whole lotta stardust was provided by Lorraine Lewis who was over with her sweetheart Tony West from Blacklist Union for Valentine’s Day. She owned the stage for ‘Sweet Child Of Mine’ in supercute leopard strides and a bit of AC/DC in a striking Union Jack jacket that I think she borrowed from ‘Axl’.

 ‘Axl’ came back in a white leather jacket for Paradise City.

Great songs, good showmanship, a beautiful Rockstar blonde celebrity and a boy wonder, not bad so far!

Gilby Clarke is, of course, a true blue former member of GNR and unsurprisingly we get a couple of their songs tonight, ‘It’s So Easy’ and ‘Patience’.

They open with a nod to Clarke’s time in Slash’s Snakepit, Monkey Chow which Clarke wrote, but Clarke has also done some cracking solo stuff notably on his recent album ‘The Gospel Truth’ and it is the single from that album ‘Rock N Roll Is Getting’ Louder’ that gets the wildest reception from the crowd of all the songs tonight.

Clarke also brought his own beautiful blondes, EJ Curse (actor, Silent Rage, appeared in Doro’s solo video) and Troy Patrick Farrell (White Lion, Bulletboys, Bang Tango).

EJ Curse, not only provides the power house bass, but also throws more shapes that any other bassist I can recall, a photographer’s dream. He even takes the mike now and again, for example to remind everyone that Nikki Sixx played the bass on Clarke’s latest album. Being an actor, he is super confident on stage and knows how to put on a show. I always long for this kind of old school showmanship sadly missed since Grunge hit.

Gilby reminds us all of the Rockstars we have lost recently including Ozzy before ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’. Tonight’s version of ‘Patience; is a rockin version noticibly massively heavier than the album version due to the powerful back end from Farrell and Curse.

Gavin Felvus came on as ‘Axl’, but did ‘Dead Flowers’ the Stones song Clarke and Axl used to cover (which was nice enough, but did not display his trademark falsetto which was perhaps a shame).

Clarke was in a great mood after buying 300$ of tickets Clarke and winning a 1938 HD motorcycle in a raffle! They ended with ‘Motorcycle Cowboys’ from Kill For Thrills (Clarke’s first band which was doing really well – I bought the album in England – but that great promise was nipped in the bud early as Clarke recalls when he got that call for GNR, well who would have resisted.. and the rest is history, thank goodness for that! (But imagine if we crack parallel universes and time travel and could have both!).

This gig was a bit of a well kept secret, had it received usual PR I think it would have been much bigger, but it’s small intimate atmosphere made it perfect. The cherry on the cake was the opportunity to meet Gilby and his band afterwards, with Lorraine Lewis able to walk freely in the crowd which might have been impossible at a larger gig. Everything happens for a reason. I remember the old days of the Sunset Strip. Tonight was just a little taste of all of that, something we get too little of that in London Town these days. All this made tonight unmissable. Let’s do it all again!!

Dawn Osborne