AXL ROSE MIGHT BE LIP SYNCHING NOW

So Guns N’ Roses played in Australia last week, and managed to piss fans off for all the usual reasons: they were late, Slash isn’t in the band anymore, etc. I always find these complaints a little baffling, ’cause they’re not news. I mean… seriously? Axl Rose was late? Holy shit!!! And did you realize that the sun went down last night, and then came back up again this morning, too? Fucking amazing! We had no way of seeing that coming.

A more valid concern, though, is that the infamous front man may have been lip synching. This news report on the gig features video footage in which Rose’s vocals seem to be going even when he doesn’t have the mic anywhere near his mouth, which is, y’know, troubling.

A friend and I were just saying last week that for all of Axl’s nonsense, it can still be fun to go see him live, ’cause a) his voice sounds pretty good nine outta ten times, and b) he still runs around the stage as though he’d just snorted eighteen lines of cocaine while enjoying a cup full of coffee, Red Bull, and Jolt Cola. But if now he’s going the full Ashlee Simpson on us, then he literally has no redeeming qualities. If I all I want is to see an aging biker dude run around for several hours, I’ll just sponsor the Hogs & Heifers marathon team, y’know?

But I’m still holding out hope that there’s some rational explanation for the footage. Especially because in this fan-filmed video from the same show, during “Welcome to the Jungle” — one of the songs Rose is alleged to have lip synched — he actually sounds downright winded in places. I understand why he wouldn’t wanna lip sync to the studio recording of the song, lest he sound too perfect to be believable, but I don’t know why he’d wanna lip sync to a recording in which he sounded tired (during the first song of the night, no less). Could Rose be that interested in accuracy? Could he really have thought, “We can’t use a live recording where I actually sound okay, ’cause then people won’t know it’s me?” That would be a whole new level of insanity, wouldn’t it?

Weigh in with your thoughts below. Was Rose really lip synching, or are strange things afoot at the Circle K?

-AR

Thanks: Patrick Arriola