Axl Rose Jokes Guns N’ Roses ‘Hates Me’
Axl Rose made a lighthearted reference to his Guns N’ Roses bandmates hating him while he spoke to the audience during the last show of their Not in This Lifetime world tour.
His comments came during a brief interval in Honolulu on Saturday night. He’d just led the audience through a rendition of “Happy Birthday” in honor of Axel Irons, son of late surfing icon Andy Irons, whose charity foundation benefited from the show's ticket sales. He then posed for a photo onstage with the eight-year-old birthday boy – who's named after him – and shared a hug before addressing the crowd.
You can watch the moment below.
“I want to thank you, I want to thank the fans all around the world for making the last couple of years fucking awesome,” Rose said. “I want to thank the band that I’m sure hates me,” he continued with a pause for a grin. “I want to thank Opie and our crew. I want to thank … all of our sound men, and all of our security, and all of our business and management teams.”
He added thanks "for the last couple of years, and we hope to keep this thing running, so we’ll see what happens next. We had to get through this first, and you helped us do that. We can’t do what’s next until we finish this, right, see? Now that all that’s done, we can get on with things, Richard” -- a reference to guitarist Richard Fortus, who took the band into a cover of the Who’s “The Seeker.”
Perhaps as a result of the overbearing speculation that surrounded the 2008 album Chinese Democracy, Rose has been cautious about committing to new music. “Right now our focus is on touring and the shows, but everyone seems to be getting along, so you never know,” he said earlier this year.
In August, guitarist Slash revealed the tour had originally consisted of just five shows, and it had been extended only because things had gone so well. “Everything just fell back into place,” he recalled. “So we said, 'Okay, we'll do this U.S. run that they're offering us,' and then everything just snowballed from there."