WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE: Appetite for Destruction dress up like Axl Rose and Pass for a place at The Omni in Toledo last Friday night.
Guns N' Roses tribute band, Appetite for Destruction, welcomed the Omni audience to their own Paradise City, fit with Slash's top hat and Axl Rose's signature kilt.
The audience crowded the center stage last Friday night as the band paid homage to one of their favorite bands.
"One of my friends that I grew up with, he thought it would be a good brain to get a Guns N' Roses tribute because I'd always been a singer and had long red hair," Chad Atkins, who portrays Axl Rose said. "And, I mean, we loved Guns 'N' Roses to death."
Atkins said when they began the band 10 years ago, he didn't want to be in a tribute band, however, his friend convinced him to think about it and he came to the end that it might be fun.
"We tried it out and the first two shows we put together just sold out and we were like 'I suppose this is a good idea' so we just went from there," Atkins said.
In the 10 years they have been together, the band has gained notoriety as one of the best Guns N' Roses cover bands.
"Of all the Guns N' Roses tribute bands in the nation, [Appetite for Death] is top dog," said Omni promoter Troy Michaels.
Along with the band's notoriety comes fan stories. Mike Ropelewski, who impersonates drummer Steven Adler, held up a figure of a tattooed fan and said, "That's not an Axl tattoo, that's a tattoo of [Atkins] on a dude's back.
The band plays the classic Guns N' Roses hits like "Welcome to the Jungle" and "Sweet Child O' Mine" and finishes the show with "Paradise City," but they have also played b-side tracks from the G'N'R "Lies" demo album and songs that the original band covered like Aerosmith's "Mama Kin" and Nazareth's "Hair of the Dog."
"It's funny because, through the years, our establishment was college gigs and younger kids," Ropelewski said. "Now that they're getting older, you can see less and less 'less popular' songs . we still get a great answer but we don't get the answer we did with the b-sides songs [that we used to]."
The band members are all originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, except for drummer Ropelewski who is from Pennsylvania and Axl, who moved to Atlanta, Georgia three years ago.
Up next at the Omni for the cover band series will be AC/DC cover band "Thunderstruck" Friday, April 8 at 8 p.m.
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