The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle

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Skambankt frontman Terje Winterstø Røthing slaughters Slash, Ron Wood and Ozzy Osbourne over the show at Quart yesterday.


Skambankt frontman Terje Winterstø Røthing played at Quart yesterday. Later in the evening he complained about Slash.

The group which went by the name "Slash & Friends" arrived on the scene Tuesday evening at Quart. Slash shared the stage with Ron Wood, Ozzy Osbourne, Jason Bonham and Fergie. How well this worked, opinions varied during and after the concert. One of those who wasn't satisfied was guitarist and vocalist Terje Winterstø Røthing. He played with Skambankt earlier in the evening.

"This is the great rock 'n roll swindle. And you can quote me on that."

"Can you elaborate a little?"

"What can you really say beyond that? The biggest karaoke show ever."

Reviews after the concert were varied. Torgrim Øyre of Dagbladet described it this way: "Slash & Friends - one of the most unlikely gigs in Norwegian festival history." He gave it four stars, and described the group as a "high-profile cover-band." Harald Fossberg of the BBC was "not impressed," and called the scheme "Slash Karaoke." He gave it three stars, as did VG.


Audiences we spoke with after the concert were divided in their opinions. Arne Grimerud walked out before Ozzy went on stage.

"It was just sad. To see my old heroes up there doing karaoke wasn't anything special. It was a fun experiment, but nothing more," he said on his way out of Bendik Bay.



Sonia Nes had traveled from Denmark to get to the concert. "Fantastic! We'll never see this again. People from Guns N' Roses, The Rolling Stones, and Black Sabbath together on the same stage. It was great," she said.

Vidar A. Hansen who came with a large group of friends spoke with us immediately after the show.

"Slash is a genius, but Fergie on vocals for "Sweet Child O'Mine" was not so great. Ozzy, however - well, he is Ozzy, 'The Prince of Fucking Darkness!' It's amazing that he's able to sing at all, and he actually did quite well. This was the best show - it worked surprisingly well," he said.

Slash Karaoke

"Not impressed."

There isn't much to gripe about, but we ended up with a glorified karaoke in the amphitheatre for a somewhat goofy start to the festival.

When the Guns N' Roses guitarist slipped onto the scene we got a lot of hits - and half hits - from the last decade, performed with a kind of respect, but with little extra.

Ron Wood received points for attendance, but didn't perform as if he was completely present. When he and Slash were struggling to find the key of the backing vocals on old songs like "It's Only Rock 'n' Roll" you knew that this was going be a long and strange evening.



Slash surrounded himself with a group of halfway-decent performers, one of whom was John 5. The man has a long resume - David Lee Roth to Marilyn Manson - and he rubs his guitar neck with so much joy that it almost glows. But it ended like a version of Guitar Hero in "Advanced" mode.

Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas was a breath of fresh air in between all the guitar solos, and she showed that she can stack-up to Robert Plant ("Black Dog") and Axl Rose ("Sweet Child O' Mine"), but she should really drop all the pole-dancing - it was in excess even for an audience that included a fair amount of people who were young when Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" came out.



"Knockin' on Heaven's Door" was the only song dedicated to Michael Jackson, the rest of the concert was an obvious homage to so-called "Dad-Rock" - read: '70s and '80s guitar-driven hits.

And in such a setting Slash has proven himself again and again.

Almost at the very end we got the world's spookiest grandpa, Ozzy Osbourne, for a round of old Black Sabbath tunes. He was calm in the grandeur, as he sprayed the audience with water time and time again.



It was kind of sweet to see Ozzy radiating joy and jumping around (to the extent he can) on stage.

But unfortunately, even with a living legend this was quite dead.



PS: McQueen, who played second-to-last, came on with a guitarist who had only been with them for three days. It felt like a scene from last year's Quart.

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