G.N.R. TO TOUR U.S.A.

Dates for a Guns N’ Roses tour of America have been slowly trickling out for the past couple of weeks, but even as the world’s last remaining Axl Apologist, I haven’t felt compelled to write about them, ’cause, well… the itinerary was clearly not at all complete, and I kept thinking that maybe there’d finally be some kind of proper tour announcement and we could put all the info in one post. Silly me.

Now Metal Insider says that the tour is a go, and I trust Metal Insider… but the tour schedule is still lacking in key information, like, oh, I dunno, venues and dates. And it’s worth noting that neither GN’R’s official website nor their official MySpace page has any mention of these gigs. Even  fan site Here Today… Gone to Hell! — which is as close to a regularly updated official site as this version of the band may ever get (administrator Jarmo Luukkonen has toured with the band and was even thanked in the liner notes for Chinese Democracy) — only lists a small handful of them. That strikes me as being highly suspicious, because Rose has cancelled entire tours before and claimed he knew nothing about them until he read about the concerts on the internet (hell, he’s cancelled shows even when he did admit to knowing about them), so until there’s a press release with a statement from the man himself, I don’t think anyone should get their hopes up that this is really happening.

But assuming that this tour IS really happening, well, I’d like to congratulate Rose on finally pulling together a U.S. trek, and not a moment too soon. It will only have been three years since the release of Chinese Democracy when this tour starts. Some bands put out entire new albums in that kind of timespan, but those dudes are suckers! Clearly this is the way to run a business.

And one last note: No, I have no idea which past or present members of the band would be on this outing. The last time I checked, at least 50% of the band had actually appeared on Chinese Democracy and two or three members had even gotten to write a few songs for that album, but if it ends up being Axl and the dude who was Hole’s guitar tech for a week in 1993, no one should be surprised.

Here are the alleged… well, you can’t call them dates… uh… stops for the tour, again courtesy of our friends at Metal Insider:

10/28 – Orlando, FL – Amway Center
10/29 – Miami, FL – AmericanAirlines Arena
10/31 – Greenville, SC – BI-LO Center
11/2 – Atlanta, GA – Philips Arena
[TBA] – Houston, TX – [TBA]
11/5 – Dallas, TX – Gexa Energy Pavilion
[TBA] – Omaha, NE – [TBA]
11/12 – Kansas City, MO – Sprint Center
11/13 – Minneapolis, MN – Target Center
11/15 – Rosemont, IL – Allstate Arena
[TBA] – East Rutherford, NJ – [TBA]
11/19 – Hartford, CT – Comcast Theatre
[TBA] – Wilkes-Barre, PA – [TBA]
[TBA] – Worcester, MA – [TBA]
[TBA] – Camden, NJ – [TBA]
[TBA] – Detroit, MI – [TBA]
[TBA] – Cincinnati, OH – [TBA]
[TBA] – Nashville, TN – [TBA]
[TBA] – Indianapolis, IN – [TBA]
[TBA] – Denver, CO – [TBA]

-AR