Guns N’ Roses adds Seattle date, a homecoming show for Duff McKagan

Guns N’ Roses are set to embark on their latest world domination tour, a globe-trotting, stadium-slaying trek beginning Thursday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. When the Los Angeles-formed rockers first announced their 2023 tour, Seattle, the hometown of bassist Duff McKagan, wasn’t on the itinerary. That’s about to change.

Good news came for local Guns fans on the eve of the tour’s opening night: The band added an Oct. 14 date at Climate Pledge Arena, with tickets going on sale at 10 a.m. June 9 through Ticketmaster.

The Climate Pledge stop will mark Duff and the boys’ first show in Seattle proper since packing CenturyLink Field on 2016’s Not in This Lifetime Tour, a run that reunited McKagan and Slash with mercurial frontman Axl Rose for the first time in 20-plus years. The tour came back around to Washington a year later with a summer show at the Gorge Amphitheatre.

While McKagan is undoubtedly the most famous local in the band, he’s not the only one. Keyboardist Melissa Reese is also a Seattleite who sang with the jazz ensemble at Roosevelt High School.

Guns N’ Roses have enlisted some big-time supporting acts along the tour, including country star Carrie Underwood and Seattle’s own Alice in Chains. The grunge lords are joining the Guns on the back end of the tour, including stops in Phoenix and Vancouver, B.C., before and after the Seattle show. Unfortunately, it appears unlikely that AIC — which opened for Guns N’ Roses at that 2016 show at the Clink (since renamed Lumen Field) — will join at Climate Pledge Arena, as a news release from Live Nation lists the Seattle opening act as “TBD.”

As the GnR machine gets fired up, McKagan’s been busy with his own music. This month, McKagan dropped “This Is The Song,” a three-track mostly acoustic EP in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month. The song “It Can’t Come Too Soon” features backing vocals from another Seattle standout, singer-songwriter Shaina Shepherd, who first teamed with McKagan a few years earlier for a SMASH benefit concert.

“‘THIS IS THE SONG’ was written in the middle of a panic attack,” McKagan said of the EP in a news release. “I couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see straight, and lately, I have thankfully found my acoustic guitar as a refuge. If I just hold on to that guitar, play chords, and hum melodies, I can start to climb my way out of that hole. For those of you who have never experienced something like this, count yourselves blessed. To those of you who recognize what I’m talking about: YOU ARE NOT ALONE!”