Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose has said he will no longer throw his microphone into the crowd at the end of the band’s concerts, after a woman claimed she was injured by the stunt at their recent show in Adelaide.
The band performed in the South Australian capital on Tuesday (November 29). Some time after the show, a woman named Rebecca Howe told Adelaide Advertiser that she was struck by the microphone; a photo accompanying the report showed swelling and thick bruises on both of her eyes, and cuts to the bridge of her nose.
“He took a bow and then he launched the microphone out to the crowd… and then bang, right on the bridge of my nose,” Howe said, noting that she was in an area of the crowd that “wasn’t even right at the front”. She went on to say that she began hyperventilating, stressed that her face had been “caved in”.
She continued: “What if it was a couple of inches to the right or left? I could have lost an eye… What if it hit me in the mouth and I broke my teeth? If my head was turned and it hit me in the temple, it could have killed me.”
In response, Rose took to social media with a statement, stressing that he didn’t mean to cause any incident with the stunt – one he’d regularly at the end of Guns N’ Roses shows for years. “Obviously we don’t want anyone getting hurt or to somehow in anyway hurt anyone at any of [our] shows anywhere,” he wrote.
“Having tossed the mic at the end of [our] show for over 30 years we always felt it was a known part of the very end of [our] performance that fans wanted and were aware of to have an opportunity to catch the mic. Regardless in the interest of public safety from now on we’ll refrain from tossing the mic or anything to the fans during or at [our] performances.”
Rose went on to hit out at some media outlets for the way Howe’s alleged injury had been reported, saying: “Unfortunately there [are] those that for their own reasons chose to frame their reporting regarding this subject in a more negative [and] irresponsible out of nowhere light which couldn’t [be] farther from reality. We hope the public and of course [our] fans get that sometimes happens [sic].”
— Axl Rose (@axlrose) December 2, 2022
Guns N’ Roses’ Australian tour will end in Melbourne tonight (December 3). Over the first few shows on the run – during which they’ve been paying tribute to AC/DC – Rose reportedly faced issues with fans bringing and flying drones during the set; earlier this week, he issued a statement asking concertgoers to “[play with their] toys somewhere else”.
On Thursday (December 1), it was announced that Guns N’ Roses will headline British Summer Time (BST) Hyde Park for first time in 2023. They’ll perform on Friday June 30, celebrating the London concert series’ 10th anniversary.
Last month, the band released a “super deluxe” box set edition of their two ‘Use Your Illusion’ albums, which included 63 tracks that had been previously unheard. One of those – a ‘2022 version’ of ‘November Rain’ featuring a 50-piece orchestra – was released as a single.
Meanwhile, Slash has continued teasing a follow-up to last year’s ‘Hard Skool’ EP, saying in January that Guns N’ Roses plan to release an “entire record’s worth” of new material, then in February that new music would arrive before the band went on tour in June (it did not), and then in October that their next release will be “epic”.
