Putting aside their differences about the proper spelling and usage of the word or letter “N”, ’80s and ’90s rock mainstays Guns N’ Roses and Alice In Chains are teaming up for a pair of sold-out Las Vegas gigs. Capitalizing on the key overlap between “people throwing their money away into slot machines” and “people who bought Appetite For Destruction three or more times over the years,” the shows—set for April 8 and 9 at Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena—will kick off GNR’s long-heralded (if Izzy Stradlin-free) reunion tour, before the band headlines at this year’s Coachella.
Alice In Chains, meanwhile, has been reunited for a while now, coming back together in 2006, a few years after the death of original lead vocalist Layne Staley. (William DuVall now handles the band’s vocalist duties, while founder and primary songwriter Jerry Cantrell is still on lead guitar.) The group has released two albums since joining back up, 2009’s Black Gives Way To Blue, and 2013’s The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here.
Although they came out of two very different musical worlds—with Guns N’ Roses incubating in the L.A. club scene of the mid-to-late ’80s, and Alice In Chains part of the rising wave of grunge in the early ’90s—both bands have at least one common connection binding them together: Roses bassist Duff McKagan, who’s played with both groups over the years. (Also, they’re both now in heavy rotation on “rock oldies” stations, as part of an ongoing conspiracy to make Generation X-ers feel horrifically old.)