In the changing world of rock, Guns N’ Roses tries to find its way home

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"We're warmed up," the singer Axl Rose asserted Saturday at Rogers Centre. "How about you?"

Guns N' Roses, more or less reunited, had just roared through You Could be Mine, a menacing, anthrax-dusted rocker from 1991. "Don't ask me where I've been," Rose sang. "Just count your stars, I'm home again."

Fair enough.

For this tour, dubbed "Not in This Lifetime" because of the unlikelihood that the fractious and litigious Rose would ever invite back fellow original members Saul (Slash) Hudson and bassist Duff McKagan, Guns N' Roses revives memories of a bygone era, when guitar riffs were signatures and solos were popular strongman demonstrations.

The band's highpoint was its first album, the audacious Appetite for Destruction. Some of the fans of that testosterone-drenched LP were just getting their first tattoos when it came out in 1987, and a reported 50,000 of them swarmed the stadium on Saturday – an army in black and bandanas, flashing devil-sign salutations and showing their age.

It was a grown-ups night for sure. Fashions are short but memories are long, and, well, here we go again.

Though notoriously tardy – the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame act's last show in Toronto at the Air Canada Centre in 2010 began at 11:30 p.m. – the band showed up on time, kicking off the tour's lone Canadian stop under a closed roof with a noisy pair of Appetite for Destruction cuts: It's So Easy and Mr. Brownstone. The howled, screeched vocals of the 54-year-old Rose were buried under bass and drums early on. These things happen – it must have been difficult to hear Vera Lynn during the Blitz too.

Rose broke his foot during an April 1 preview show at the Los Angeles club the Troubadour, but he was in full sway and strut here. Gaudy and loose, he dangled a plaid shirt at his waist, affecting a kilt of sorts. Otherwise he wore jeans and T-shirts, with costume changes that allowed for the appearance of a leather jacket (with tan cowboy tassels) and an intriguing, broad-rimmed hat (possibly from an Amish drifter he would have shanked on the way here from Pennsylvania).

Speaking of headwear, the lead guitarist Slash (who left Guns N' Roses in 1996 and last toured with Rose in 1993) still wears his trademark black top hat. And he still knows his way around a Les Paul fretboard. The leathered lead guitarist slipped comfortably into the night's fourth song Welcome to the Jungle, a greeting that was frightening during the Reagan era but much more convivial now.

This was not the Guns N' Roses of old, not by half. (Beyond new returnees Slash and McKagan, the lineup is staffed by sidemen members picked up by Rose over the years.) Though the singer flashed Nicholson-styled sideways glances straight out of The Shining, he and his band don't scare anyone any longer.

"We got fun and games," Rose sang, but what they don't have is the thrill of the dangerous new. Once hedonistic rebels against the slick glam metal and shiny dance music of the eighties, Guns N' Roses tours now in a world where punk-influenced hard rock has been driven out of the mainstream and into the cellars.

In a recent interview with the Arizona Republic, Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler lamented the marginalization of guitar-driven rock.

"It kind of spun off like a supernova and now there isn't really much of it at all," he said, speaking of galvanizing, riff-heavy tunes of the past. "That kind of era is gone with rock."

And so when Slash played the spidery intro to Sweet Child o' Mine, he showed fluency in a dead language. A crowd, transported to a summer of the past, roared its approval. Rose sang about youthful memories; Slash's melodic solo would have brought the audience to the same type of "warm safe place."

This is the demographic's music, in their tongue, and the ones who bought the giant middle-finger foam hand at the merchandise stable stuck it a little higher in the air.

Throughout the show, Slash honoured his guitar heroes: A memorable Hendrix motif tacked onto the end of Civil War; an instrumental duet with second guitarist Richard Fortus on Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here;and a slide solo from the exit passage of Derek and the Dominos' Layla.

That Layla outro, with a beringed Rose on piano, was a prelude to a ballad, a wistful number about things not lasting forever. "It's hard to hold a candle," Rose sang, "in the cold November rain."

The successful, thundering concert (with no new material) ended to explosions, confetti and Paradise City, with its "take me home" refrain. Home to some is where the guitar riff is. It no longer exists.

Set list

It's So Easy

Mr. Brownstone

Chinese Democracy

Welcome to the Jungle

Double Talkin' Jive

Estranged

Live and Let Die

Rocket Queen

You Could Be Mine

You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory/Attitude

This I Love

Civil War

Coma

Speak Softly, Love (Love Theme from The Godfather)

Sweet Child O' Mine

Sorry

Better

Out Ta Get Me

Wish You Were Here (with Layla outro)

November Rain

Knockin' on Heaven's Door

Nightrain

Encore

Patience (with Angie)

The Seeker

Paradise City