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Mr. Brownstone (left) is bringing its Guns N' Roses act to the Paradise. |
Last summer, Mr. Brownstone, the Guns N' Roses tribute band that has always taken pride in its lack of preparation, actually came up with a plan. They would break up, marking the grand farewell with a gig at the Paradise.
The show went well, remembers lead guitarist Gerard "Slash" Egan.
"A video montage, champagne onstage," he says. "To me, we went out in style."
Except that Mr. Brownstone returns to the Paradise tomorrow night. The reason depends on whom you talk to. Egan said the band received an offer it couldn't refuse. Other members say they never believed they were truly parting ways.
"Maybe we just wanted to play a reunion show, so we had to break up in order to do it," says Dave Godowsky, director of A&R at Rounder Records in Burlington, who plays rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin.
The Paradise show will be only the second this year for Mr. Brownstone, a deliciously sloppy tribute band that takes its name from a song off the seminal 1987 Guns debut, "Appetite for Destruction." Predictably, members of the group, who live in New York, Boston, and Providence, have not been practicing. That, Godowsky says, is the beauty of the band.
No rehearsals. No set list. No publicity. Yet whenever Mr. Brownstone plays, it sells out.
"Sometimes it feels like if we try to fail, we do better," Godowsky says.
This time around, it was Mike Warner, a booking assistant at Live Nation, who lured the band back to Boston. Warner is friendly with Drew "Duff McKagan" Thurlow, whose real life involves working with the Kronos Quartet and Wilco as an A&R guy at Nonesuch Records.
"Every time I talk to Drew I tell him I want them to play again," says Warner. "They're not just a tribute band. They try to embody the whole attitude of what the band was about. It's just a big party."
It is not clear whether the real Guns N' Roses knows about Mr. Brownstone, though the imitators say they met Gunner Richard Fortus after a show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York a few years ago. Fortus told them that he had called singer Axl Rose, who was at a hockey game, from the gig and held up his cellphone. (Fortus, in an e-mail, confirmed seeing the band: "I seem to remember lots o' wigs.") Egan says he once had Slash's phone number, but declined to leave a message after calling.
For a time, there were concerns that Rose's attempts to revive Guns, which hasn't released an album of original music since 1991, would somehow draw interest away from Mr. Brownstone. That hasn't happened. What's more, the tribute band remains stuck in time. They play members of the '80s and early '90s Guns, before Rose and Slash feuded.
Those were the glory days of hair metal, when Spandex and groupie-filled videos ruled MTV, and nobody screamed louder, or wiggled more onstage, than Rose.
Though they all appreciate the comedic charm of that look, there is a split in Mr. Brownstone between the real fans and those who are simply along for the wigs. Egan, a genuine Guns enthusiast, formed the group back in 2000 with Thurlow and a few other buddies from Connecticut College. They started with what was meant to be a one-time joke gig at the college's student center.
"We even went to the dining hall dressed as Guns N' Roses," says Egan.
The show was a smash and led the friends - who had simply billed themselves as Guns N' Roses - to come up with a proper name. Since then, they've played at the Knitting Factory, Bonnaroo, and a series of sold-out gigs at the Paradise. Due to time constraints, they've played no more than a dozen shows in any one year, and have often talked about quitting. For one thing, rehearsals became nearly impossible to schedule, with band members living in three cities. In addition, Egan plays guitar in Boss Tweed, Godowsky and Thurlow have day jobs and also play their own music, Chris Joyce, a.k.a. Dizzy Reed, works as a surgical tech, and Mac Furey, who plays drummer Steven Adler, is a schoolteacher.
Sean Greenhalgh, the band's Axl, is also busy. He plays drums for the successful indie rockers Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Still, he remains a dedicated imitator. Like most of his bandmates, he says he proudly embraces the Guns' spirit, even if he sometimes can't remember much after the show.
"Pretty much you have a few drinks and you put on the costume," he says. "That's all it really takes. The whole idea of being in a tribute band is pretty funny because you can whip into that character pretty easily. It's sort of like letting your ego go wild for an hour and a half."
The crowd also lets go, the band members say. At one show, Egan, or Slash, was actually bitten by a fan. And Thurlow says he suffered a chipped tooth when somebody threw a
Most of the band members surveyed said they still hoped to keep Mr. Brownstone rolling, even if they do only play a couple of shows a year.
When told that Egan had said that the Paradise gig would likely be the last appearance in Boston, Greenhalgh chuckles.
"We don't really talk to each other very much," he explains. "I don't necessarily see it as being our last show. I think Gerard's just into giving misinformation."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
