Kevin Bronson on April 17th, 2016

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Bronson’s Day 2: Guns N’ Roses, Silversun Pickups, the Damned, AlunaGeorge, Bat for Lashes, Rhye, Strangers You Know, Alvvays, DMA’s, Ex Hex, Phases, the Dead Ships

Will Guns N’ Roses ever do anything without an overarching cloud of drama? Probably not in this lifetime.

Just three hours before one of the most anticipated reunion sets in the history of the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, it was announced that Axl Rose would replace ailing singer Brian Johnson as frontman of AC/DC on their remaining tour dates. It provided yet another B-story for the GNR soap opera: How would they sound? How would Rose command the stage immobilized by a broken foot? How late would the notoriously tardy rockers take the Coachella main stage? Would anybody care?

At 10:38 Saturday night, the drama was over. Guns N’ Roses, with “classic lineup” members Rose, Slash and Duff McKagan augmented by a stellar cast of players, launched into two-plus hours of hits — theirs and others’ — highlighted by eye-popping visuals (and, of course, recurring versions of the GNR coporate logo), fireworks and a two-song cameo from AC/DC’s Angus Young.

It was pure heaven for the old guard but at best a mere curiosity for Coachella’s younger-each-year, EDM-crazy demographic. To them, Rose and the gang must have seemed like a diorama at the Natural History Museum, worth only a quick glance before moving on to the interactive displays. They are dinosaurs, albeit dinosaurs who can still roar, and Saturday played to steadily diminishing crowd that at its greatest was still smaller than the draw Friday for LCD Soundsystem (less than what Disclosure and Ice Cube drew earlier Saturday).

Guns N’ Roses held up their end of the deal as best they could, what with Rose, foot in a cast, confined to the “throne” loaned to him by Dave Grohl after the Foo Fighters frontman carried on touring after sustaining a broken leg. “Sorry I can’t run around for you tonight, which I feel bad about,” Rose said, “but I’d like to thank Dave Grohl for his prop.”

Slash did his best to keep the proceedings from dragging, typically searing with every riff and trotting east and west across Coachella’s massive main stage as he played. Rose’s vocals seemed tentative as first, but seven songs in (which included “It’s So Easy” and “Welcome to the Jungle”), his scream found its bite on the cover of “Live and Let Die.” As the set bogged down a bit entering its second hour, “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” reignited the flames, which raged a few minutes later when Young joined in for AC/DC’s “Whole Lotta Rosie” and “Riff Raff.” The latter started with Young and Slash side-by-side, facing Rose, and for a second it felt courtly.

“November Rain,” “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and “Nightrain” finished off the main set, with the three-song encore of “Patience,” the Who’s “The Seeker” and “Paradise City” witnessed by mass of weary diehards.

||| Also: For more highlights, see Andrew Veeder’s Day 2.

Gun N’ Roses’ nostalgia trip capped a warm, breezy day that was buzzing with surprises: an N.W.A reunion during Ice Cube’s set, Joe Walsh with the Arcs, Lorde and Sam Smith guesting with Disclosure and Kesha crashing Zedd’s set.

Chronologically, here’s why the legs are really, really tired:

12:40: L.A. locals the Dead Ships, fortified to a five-piece for their big Coachella turn, finish a gloriously ragged set for earlybirds with “Floorboard,” which along with “Canyon” and “The Big Quiet” show that they’ve outgrown the “garage rock” tag. Frontman Devlin McCluskey also announced the band has an album en route June 24.

12:53: Frontwoman Z Berg of PHASES pauses to re-lace her shiny-silver-with-green-stars-and-red-heels boots, and then the L.A. quartet launches into its single “I’m in Love With My Life,” its bouncy disco bass line putting a smile on fans’ faces and a spring in their steps. In the middle of it all, a man with a notebook wonders whether he will still be in love with his life eight hours from now.

1:10: Ex Hex bakes in the bright sun on the Outdoor Theatre stage, but what they’re cooking so much fun. The trio — Mary Timony, Laura Harris and Betsy Wright — ripped through the muscular, mostly concise power-pop volleys from their album “Rips,” and on “Beast” they busted loose with a string of good ol’ solos, first bassist Harris, then drummer Wright, then guitarist Timony. Nobody asked anybody to clap; almost everybody did.

2:15: DMA’s propulsive rock made everybody in the Gobi Tent miss Oasis … speaking of nostalgia. Anyway, the Aussie sextet know how to make guitars — one acoustic, two electric and a bass — sound like a wall, and it couldn’t have been more perfect that singer Tommy O’Dell wore a horizontal-striped shirt from the brand Nineteen Ninety Two.

2:55: Attention span. Wondering about that.

3:30: Cartoonish stage wear, a barrage of backing tracks, incessant mugging, songs full of hooks and drops — Strangers You Know have all it takes to win the hearts of massive numbers of young female fans (which they did in the Mojave Tent). Or have their own Saturday morning show.

3:44: Singer Molly Rankin, dressed in a yellow-orange jumpsuit, leads Alvvays through a set of their revved-up C86 jangle, and it’s sublime. It has a quality lacking in a lot of indie-pop lacks: nuance.

5:05: On his way back from a rest stop at the Do Lab (thank you, somebody named Jerry Folk), a man with a bellyful of burrito notices an overflow crowd at the Mojave Tent. It’s James Bay — i.e., “the guy with the hat,” as somebody says. He’s not only good but he has exceedingly polite fans, who allow a latecomer to wriggle in for set finales “Best Fake Smile” and “Hold Back the River.”

5:15: U.K. dream-poppers Lush canceled their set due to visa problems, but the Gobi Tent is hopping with young dancers. Turns out DJ duo Anime Edge & DANCE filled in, and admirably.

5:28: With Run the Jewels still blaring from the main stage, Rhye begin their set at the Outdoor Theatre with a spare, emotive R&B number featuring Mike Milosh’s heavenly falsetto and a band featuring a cello, violin, guitar, bass and keys. It’s a battle Rhye can’t win. “That other band sounds amazing,” Milosh says as Rhye starts its second song with plucked strings.

But Milosh and gang had the growing, sun-baked crowd in the palm of his hand by the third song, “The Fall,” and they really got their game on by the time they performed “Last Dance,” its epic swells carrying across the field.

6:10: What is it with bros who run full tilt straight at you and then stop suddenly, just to scare the crap out of you? Is this a thing? What’s the mandatory prison sentence?

6:15: Immediate surge of regret for getting to Bat for Lashes so late. What we hear from her new album “The Bride” (out July 1) is fantastic.

6:40: AlunaGeorge’s songs sound like they were written by an algorithm, but she performs the hell of them. She regales the Sahara Tent (where fans are not so polite) with outsized anthems and a stage show with dancers. She kicked off with “You Know You Like It,” and not long after the heavy-hitter “I’m in Control” she has shimmied her way out of her stylish robe.

7:15: A bite to eat with friends always makes for a great festival timeout, especially if it’s within earshot of Courtney Barnett.

8:20: The Damned are 40 years old, dammit. With the monstrous crowds over at the main stage for Disclosure and then Ice Cube, the veteran punk-rockers pound out a set of vintage stuff that belies the material’s (and the band’s) age. Bassist Captain Sensible dedicated one song to the Rolling Stone, who omitted the Damned from their 40 greatest punk rock albums of all time list.

9:25: Somebody had to play opposite Ice Cube, and one such slot fell to local stalwarts Silversun Pickups.  They remain one of the most gracious bands on the planet, with impish frontman Brian Aubert repeatedly thanking the crowd in the almost-full Mojave Tent for choosing them and engaging in light banter, like joshing bassist Nikki Monninger about her vocal duties in “Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance).” They finished with the still-pogo-worthy “Lazy Eye” as the crowd in the tent bounced and then started to turn over for Grimes.

10:36: As Guns N’ Roses “Looney Tunes” intro begins, a large man halfway back is shouting, “I’m the loudest motherf*cker at Coachella here to see the greatest rock band of all time do the show of a lifetime.” There’s scarcely a millennial in sight.