While it’s likely that Guns N’ Roses would have no problem selling tickets to a residency at Las Vegas’ futuristic venue the Sphere, guitarist Slash says he’s “trepidatious” about the band playing there because he doesn’t think it’s “the right environment for a proper rock ‘n’ roll show.”
During an appearance on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation, Slash was asked by host Eddie Trunk if GN’R would consider playing the interactive venue, to which the guitarist responded, “I haven’t been [to the Sphere] yet, but just everything that I’ve seen, or most everything that I’ve seen of it, looks amazing. I’m real trepidatious about playing there, because… It’s a great visual show. I think that in almost every case for a band, it becomes a visual show as opposed to seeing a rock and roll show. So there’s that.”
He added, “And also, from talking to Joe Walsh about it, ’cause obviously The Eagles have been doing a residency there since forever, is that it’s not really sort of rock ‘n’ roll friendly, the way that it’s set up. So it’s just one of those things where it seems like a really cool thing, and conceptually there’s probably a lot of cool things that you could do, but I don’t think it would be the right environment for a proper rock ‘n’ roll show.”
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When Trunk mentioned that Metallica have been in talks about playing the Sphere, Slash said, “I’d be interested to see that, too. And I heard about Metallica doing it. I could see them doing it because I can imagine them… Because you have to prepare your mind to put on not just a band performance, but 50 percent of what you’re doing is going to be the projection, or whatever you call that — the outer wall [laughs], what you’re putting on as content.”
In the end, Slash didn’t rule out GN’R ever playing the Sphere, noting, “[The projected visuals] is something that’s gonna be the main focus of your show and the main focus of what everybody’s gonna be looking at. And so you have to sort of getting to that mindset, and I think that’s hard for us to go that far into it. But we’ll see. Maybe down the road.”
Recently, it was announced that No Doubt would play a 12-show residency at the Sphere in May 2026. As Slash mentioned, the Eagles currently have dates scheduled at the Sphere through late February.