Guns N' Roses - the wild guys who once redefined sex, drugs and rock 'n roll with loud, gritty shows and calamitous offstage behaviour - showed that after nearly 30 years, they've still got it.
While the years and the booze may have taken a toll, the band rocked Wellington's Westpac Stadium for nearly three hours on Thursday night.
In the past, lead singer Axl Rose was a shirtless, tanned star in bike shorts and lush long hair who caused riots when he wouldn't turn up to scheduled shows.
These days he's a bit more portly and pockmarked - but he wails just as loud, even if he did keep rain-drenched Wellington fans waiting for an hour.
"Twenty years on, the sight of the slightly balding and the rotund, clad in ill-fitting and faded original T-shirts and moshing with energy, was a reassuring plus ca change," Bob Mason wrote in his concert review for The Dominion Post.
"Guns N' Roses turned the dial up to eleven and jolted an exuberant crowd with a hard rock tour de force."
The tour's production manager Dale Skjerseth was also here with the band at their height of popularity in 1993. He told Newshub that like a fine wine, they're older and better.
At the end of the 1980s Guns N' Roses' raw songs came as a refreshing sound to guitar rock fans around the world, with slick Slash riffs like the opening of 'Sweet Child of Mine', and Axl Rose's angry white trash chic.
Their shows' catering riders would include requests for exotic fruits, lots of alcohol and cranberry juice, an assortment of pornography magazines and even guacamole.
Axl Rose used to have his own dressing room rider, with requests for Wonder bread and pricey Dom Perignon champagne.
By the mid '90s Guns N' Roses were deteriorating in a typical rock n roll way, with band-member feuds, drug abuse and 'creative differences'.
After a decades-long tumultuous hiatus, the band reunited with core members Slash and Axl Rose to headline Coachella in 2016, albeit without guitarist and strongest songwriter Izzy Stradlin.
Axl once said he would not get back on stage with Slash. Now, the 'Not in This Lifetime... Tour' is on and the legendary rockers are set for a highly-anticipated show in Auckland on Saturday.
Newshub.
