The former Guns N' Roses guitar-man let his fingers do the talking with old and new songs.

When you have been a popular guitar icon for as long as American hard rock guitarist Slash has, deciding the playlist for the gigs on your worldwide tour can be a dicey matter.

At his gig in Singapore last Monday night at Fort Canning Park, he had his new, self-titled solo album to plug. Yet he knew he could not alienate fans in the 7,000-strong crowd who were expecting to hear familiar tunes from his former bands Velvet Revolver and the much more popular Guns N' Roses.

He chose to take the diplomatic and most predictable route - one-third of the almost two-hour long set was dedicated to his solo songs, one-third to Velvet Revolver and the rest to Guns N' Roses' biggest hits. Sprinkled here and there were a couple of songs from his side project band, Slash's Snakepit, and his touring band's singer Myles Kennedy's other band, neo-grunge group Alter Bridge.

With his trademark leather top hat, curly mane and seemingly endless parade of Gibson Les Paul guitars, Slash looked remarkably pretty much the same as he had in the last 25 years.

If anything, the 45-year-old, who says he has quit all the vices of rock 'n' roll, looked healthier. Judging by his biceps, one could tell that he had been hitting the gym regularly. Sporting a sleeveless black T-shirt, mirror aviator shades and black leather pants, he was a live wire on stage, running around, hopping on one leg and executing 360degree spins.

But his fans probably could not have cared less if he were fat and sat in a chair all through the gig, for his guitar chops were what they came for and what they got in spades.

He showed fine form on the axe, riffing through familiar tunes such as Guns N' Roses' Sweet Child O' Mine, shredding the fretboard on some salty blues licks and even tackling an instrumental rock version of the theme song from The Godfather.

Surely the audience must have been tempted to whip out their own guitars to copy the moves - this reviewer had never been to a gig where so many lugged along their own instruments, many of which had been autographed by Slash himself at the pricey pre-show, meet-the-fans session which had cost close to $700 a person.

Showboating guitar skills were the order of the day, even with the opening acts - Australian rockers Twenty Two Hundred and American sci-fi rock quartet Coheed And Cambria. The latter's frontman Claudio Sanchez even coaxed riffs from his guitar using his mouth and played the instrument behind his head.

Apart from their worship of the guitar, the audience - a motley group of young, long-haired men in tight jeans and black shirts, and older men and women in sensible clothes - also obeyed an unspoken rule of classic rock concerts: When a rock ballad such as Starlight from Slash's solo album is played, you whip out your lighter - or mobile phone and digital camera.

Audience involvement was never more passionate than for the songs of Guns N' Roses, which launched Slash's guitar hero status and the ghost that loomed large over the whole gig.

The massive singalongs that accompanied tunes such as Civil War and rousing show closer Paradise City showed that the guitar guru still had not broken free from the shadow of the band that he had quit back in the mid-1990s.