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Guns N’ Roses kicked off their 2025 Because What You Want & What You Get Are Two Completely Different Things Tour Thursday evening at Songdo Moonlight Festival Park in Incheon, South Korea. The setlist will be similar to anyone who has seen Gn’R during the reunion era, but it was the first time they’d opened a show with “Welcome to the Jungle” since Slash and Duff McKagan re-joined the band in 2016.

More importantly, it was also their first appearance with new drummer Isaac Carpenter. He replaced longtime drummer Frank Ferrer...

Guns N’ Roses have announced the departure of Frank Ferrer, the legendary band’s longest-serving drummer at 19 years with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame act.

A press release describes the split as “amicable,” adding, “The band thanks Frank for his friendship, creativity, and sturdy presence over the past 19 years, and they wish him success in the next chapter of his musical journey.”

Ferrer joined Guns N’ Roses in June 2006 and had been playing shows with the band ever since, including over the past near-decade since the 2016 return of guitarist Slash and bassist Duff McKagan. He replaced Bryan “Brain” Mantia, following previous stints by Josh Freese, Matt Sorum, and classic Gn’R drummer Steven Adler.

Guns N’ Roses have not announced a replacement for Ferrer as of yet. Adler still tours with his own band, playing Guns N’ Roses songs, while Freese became a member of Foo Fighters following the passing of Taylor Hawkins.

Rolling Stone interview series Unknown Legends features long-form conversations between senior writer Andy Greene and veteran musicians who have toured and recorded alongside icons for years. All are renowned in the business, but some are less well known to the general public. Here, these artists tell their stories, giving an up-close look at life on music’s A list. This edition features drummer Bryan “Brain” Mantia.

Guns N’ Roses’ 2002 Chinese Democracy tour and Tom Waits’ 2004 Real Gone tour were such wildly different affairs that comparing them almost seems ludicrous. Gn...

In the parlance of Mike Wheeler and friends, Stranger Things Season 2 is the Empire Strikes Back to the first season’s Star Wars, in that it’s a highly anticipated follow-up where the stakes are higher for a band of unlikely heroes. But also because just as Luke Skywalker spent much of that sequel on his own journey, so does Eleven here — which is perhaps the otherwise engaging sophomore season’s only shortcoming.

RelatedStranger Things Season 3 Already in the Works — And Season 4, Too?

Releasing all nine episodes this Friday, Oct. 27, Season 2 of Netflix’s sleeper hit picks up in...

A few years ago, in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the death of influential film critic Pauline Kael, I wrote the following:

“I think (Kael) did a lot to expose the truth… that directors, writers and actors who often work awfully close to the surface may still have subterranean levels of achievement or purpose or commentary that they themselves may be least qualified to articulate. It’s what’s behind her disdain for Antonioni’s pontificating at the Cannes film festival; it’s what behind the high percentage of uselessness of proliferating DVD commentaries in which we get to hear every dull anecdote, redundant explication of plot development and any other inanity that strikes the director of the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com to blurt out breathlessly; and it is what’s behind a director like Eli Roth, who tailors the subtext of something like Hostel Part II almost as...

Wesley Mead Dec 20, 2016

Looking for some TV to fill you with festive cheer? Here are the next 20 episodes in our list of the top 100 Xmas TV episodes ever...

This article first appeared in December 2015. Read entries 100 - 81 on this list, here.

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Since the medium’s infancy, viewers have enjoyed sharing holidays with their favourite television characters. We grow invested in our friends on screen over the years; spending Christmas with them is a rite of passage, a chance for us to share tradition from our world with the fictional ones we see on screen. Some shows embrace the season wholeheartedly, characters in good spirits and enjoying the trappings of the season; others skew a little darker, bringing the more oppressive, burdensome side of the holidays to life. Either way, Christmas episodes tend to demonstrate the strengths of our favourite series,...