Guns N’ Roses makes isle debut with 3-hour concert

Honolulu Marathon weekend extended this year to Aloha Stadium (usually Great Aloha Run territory) with a pair of marathon rock concerts. On Saturday night Guns N’ Roses topped the Eagles’ performance of a night earlier with a three-hour, 24-minute show that sent its fervent fans home fulfilled.

Maybe the band was atoning for taking 30 years to make its Hawaii debut. GNR played a little longer set than they’ve been playing on the Not in This Lifetime Tour, which wrapped here after a globe-­spanning 20 months.

Singer Axl Rose spoke a little and led the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to the son of late Hawaii surfer Andy Irons — Axel, reportedly named after Rose, turned 8 Saturday, and the Andy Irons Foundation was a charitable partner of the event — but otherwise the show was all about the songs — specifically, the guitars.

Few bands give as much of the spotlight to their guitarist as they do to their singer. Then again, few bands have guitarists as skilled and incendiary as Slash, who rejoined Rose in GNR for this tour along with bassist Duff McKagan, reuniting three-fifths of the band’s heyday lineup. The three hadn’t played together in about two decades.

Slash shredded through “It’s So Easy” and “Mr. Brownstone” from the band’s landmark 1987 debut, “Appetite for Destruction.”

Two songs later, just four songs into the show, the band gave a clue as to how the evening would go, unleashing “Welcome to the Jungle,” one of their signature tunes, much earlier than expected. Most bands save such show- stoppers for late in the show, when crowd energy might be flagging, or even the encore, but GNR sprinkled their biggest songs throughout.

Even “Sweet Child o’ Mine” showed up not long after the midway point, perhaps taking away some of its juice and making it not quite the tour de force you might expect, though Rose’s lyrics and vocals were no less wistful, nostalgic and vulnerable and Slash’s solos every bit as lyrical as on the record, the qualities that have made the song a hard-rock classic.

With its multiple solos, “Sweet Child” might be the ultimate recorded showcase for Slash’s guitar prowess, but the set provided myriad opportunities to feature his talents, including an astounding transition between “Coma” and “Sweet Child” that put his full powers on display, taking his playing from a ramble to a screech, and a thrilling duet with rhythm guitarist Richard Fortus on Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here.”

Serving up “Jungle” so early did serve some purpose. The cameras feeding the three massive screens zoomed in on Slash’s nimble­-fingered fretwork, and Rose got to show that he can still shriek as well as young Axl did. He also got to flash his trademark “ser­pentine” dance. It’s not quite the same as it was 30 years ago, but how many of us move as well at 56 as we did at 26? It was nowhere near an embarrassment and gave the fans one of the things they needed to see.

As much focus as is given to Rose and Slash, it’s easy to ignore the rest of the band. McKagan and drummer Frank Ferrer provided a sturdy foundation throughout, and the seven-piece crew — rounded out by keyboardists Dizzy Reed and Melissa Reese — was impressively cohesive for a band that’s been together less than two years.