Guns N’ Roses manager Merck Mercuriadis has had a dig at the Stockholm police, claiming the incident in which Axl Rose was jailed for a day after allegedly biting a hotel security guard was “tantamount to being held for ransom”.
“We are very unhappy about Tuesday’s events in Stockholm,” Mercuriadis said. “To put this in context, we are in the middle of a tour – with sold out shows last night in Oslo, tomorrow in Copenhagen, and Saturday in Zurich rounding out this week alone – and continuing until the beginning of August.
“The Swedish authorities were very aware of this, yet continually threatened us over a 12 hour period with between 5 days and 3 weeks incarceration without bail if Axl did not ‘cooperate’. They were fully aware that there were millions of dollars at stake, not to mention the hopes of tens of thousands of fans who had paid for tickets to see Guns N’ Roses.”
As it stands, the Guns N’ Roses European tour will continue unaffected, though this fact hasn’t done anything to soothe the anger of Rose and his manager. He goes on to claim that a valuable bracelet went missing during the arrest, and that Rose was held down by five police officers while a doctor attempted to draw blood to administer a drug test three times. “This illustrates not only the level of incompetence, but malice involved,” the manager said.
