Axl Rose Swears He Wasn’t Caught Napping

By Sterling | September 1, 2010 - 7:43 pm - Posted in News
http://www.wewillrockyoublog.com/2010/09/01/axl-rose-swears-he-wasnt-caught-napping/

The long, screwy saga of Axl Rose just continues to get stranger.

As has been reported elsewhere, Guns N’ Roses had a tough weekend. Billboard reported that the famously late and temperamental singer was fuming after being booed at the Reading Festival on Friday night. The band arrived an hour late, played to a hostile crowd and was cut short at the originally agreed upon noise curfew, prompting Rose to post via Twitter, “the fans deserve an apology from those responsible for the nonsense.”

On Sunday GNR was again late, this time half an hour late to the stage at the Leeds Festival. Rose claimed that the band was told it could play until midnight, but festival organizers denied that claim. The band was forced to end its set at 11:20 PM.

Tabloid The Daily Star claimed that at both concerts, the problem was that Axl was taking a nap backstage, and that he has issued strict orders to his crew not to wake him when he is sleeping. Still, the tabloid claimed, the singer was angry when he realized his nap had cost him. “Axl was furious. He refused to take responsibility and blamed his team so he sacked them,” a source supposedly told the paper. “Then he realised it was too late to fly in anyone else from America so he had to rehire them for Leeds.”

Whatever really happened, Rose is not ready to give it up. In a lengthy Twitter rant he said, “Our start times at the Reading and Leeds festivals factually had nothing to do with us as the previous bands (who were great by the way) came off stage when they did and we went on within our contracted and documented changeover time period.

“Whatever other nonsense anyone’s choosing to write would appear intentionally false.

“Having the fans or our show penalized for how the event was ran or simply the natural flow of events those evenings and for such minimal amount of overtime along with distortions and falsehoods by media, the promoter and or event organizers regarding the events seems a bit draconian and more than unfair to the fans.

“A simple question: If you are aware of our changeover time, the average length of our show and the general nature of how these types of festivals run all of which are no big secrets…why book us?”

Of course, Axl would have more credibility here if not for the fact that he has practically made a career out of being late, or not showing up at all, and then whining about how misunderstood he is. Poor baby.