About a half hour after opening act Living Things left the stage, a roadie for Velvet Revolver came out and placed guitarist Slash's trademark top hat on an amplifier. The crowd applauded in approval of the symbol of Slash's days in Guns N' Roses. The anticipation level was high for the Vegas debut of the supergroup featuring former GNR members Slash, bassist Duff McKagan and drummer Matt Sorum, plus former Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland and additional guitarist Dave Kushner.
Another half hour later, the tide had turned. It had been almost an hour since Living Things left the stage, and VR was nowhere in sight. The sold-out crowd started with a smattering of boos that soon grew into an onslaught. They continued booing intermittently until the band finally look the stage nearly an hour late.
By the audience's reaction, you could tell all had been forgiven. Opening with "Sucker Train Blues," the first track from their debut Contraband, VR played with an energy and immediacy that doesn't come through on disc. Wearing aviator sunglasses and a police cap, the wire-thin Weiland looked more than a little like Axl Rose, even doing Rose's snake-like dance when the band ran through the Guns N' Roses tune "It's So Easy" later in the evening.
"Were you guys shouting for more booze out there?" Weiland joked after the first song, in stark contrast to his portrayal in the press lately as a prima donna. After the next song, he even apologized for the delay, saying he'd been suffering from laryngitis and needed extra prep time to put on the best show possible. In the early part of the set, that was exactly what the band did, burning through especially strong renditions of Contraband's "Headspace" and Stone Temple Pilots' "Crackerman."
By 45 minutes in, though, when the main set ended, McKagan and Sorum's backing vocals were clearly louder than Weiland's, and the band took a long time to return for the encore. Weiland made up for his waning vocal cords with plenty of enthusiasm, slithering across the stage and brandishing his handy megaphone to augment his voice. When the band was on, they were definitely on, and the crowd reacted well to the original tunes, even if they were more excited to hear the old GNR and STP ones. At full capacity, there's no doubt Velvet Revolver would put on a powerful, old-fashioned hard-rock show; in this instance it was enough that they did their best.