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Guns N Roses warned not to be late
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 24 August 2010
So, Guns N Roses are still planning to head to the UK this week in order to begin the second European leg of their current world tour. But that doesn’t mean they will actually play the opening shows, their headline sets at the Reading and Leeds festivals. Having assured everyone that the shows are still on, festival boss Melvin Benn has now said he will still pull the plug on them if they’re late.
Last time GnR headlined the twin festivals, back in 2002, the band arrived on stage two hours late in Leeds. As with all festivals, Reading and Leeds have strict curfews set by the local councils, and breaking them can incur large fines (Glastonbury headliners are charged £1000 for every minute they play past the curfew). Eight years ago, Axl and co were allowed to play on. However, that will not be the case this year.
Benn told BBC Newsbeat: “If Guns N Roses decide to take to stage as late, as they did in Leeds some years ago, then the performance just won’t happen. I’ve had a very heavy warning from the local councils. There is a curfew – it’s a very strict curfew. We got away with it once. We won’t get away with it for a second time. Unfortunately, if the band chose not to take to the stage on time there’s really nothing I can do. I won’t be allowed to break the curfew. The truth is – it’s threatening the viability of the festival. It threatens the licence. It really is quite important”.
As previously reported, Axl Rose’s Twitter account was apparently hacked last week, and used to publish a fake announcement that all future dates had been cancelled.
In the first mention of the fake tweet direct from the band, bassist Tommy Stinson spoke of the confusion it caused in the GnR camp, telling Ohio radio station 98.5 WNCX: “It’s startling to me how stuff happens. It’s stressful. You kinda think, ‘OK, well, I’ve gotta get my life in order here because I’m leaving in five days’, and then you hear something like that coming down the pike. It’s Sunday night and you’re like, ‘How am I supposed to deal with that?’ Everyone’s just trying to figure out what’s happening with it and how it happened and then I get the call that everything’s fine, whatever – it’s just some crazy shit going on”.
How something for which resolution requires nothing more than the deletion of a tweet and a quick statement (or clarification tweet, perhaps) could have stirred up such confusion was a question pondered by CMU editor Andy Malt in last week’s CMU Weekly, which you can read here.
