Guns N’ Roses ‘Setting Up Tour Plans’ for 2014
Recalcitrant hard rockers Guns N’ Roses have planned a string of dates in Mexico and South America, beginning in March, to kick off their 2014 tour. The group, who announced the news on their website, hinted that these won’t be the only dates they play this year by calling the trek just the beginning. Axl and Co. will begin the tour in Mexico City at the Hell y Heaven Metal Fest on March 16th; other artists playing that festival include Korn, Rob Zombie, Twisted Sister and 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Kiss. GN’R did not announce venues for any other dates yet.
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In related news, even though a little over five years have passed since the band released its sixth album, Chinese Democracy, a blogger who leaked the record prematurely has penned an 8,000-word missive on the experience. Kevin Cogill, who goes by “Skwerl,” shared his misadventure on Antiquiet yesterday. He claimed he got the leak from an unnamed source who took a CD off the desk of Interscope co-founder and chairman Jimmy Iovine, and he went into painstaking detail about the repercussions of leaking the album. Aside from having scrutiny put on his friend Billy Howerdel of the group A Perfect Circle (who did not give him the album), he recalled FBI agents with “at least six handguns pointed at me from at least six different angles” and how he negotiated a sentence of house arrest. He also described the nervousness he felt after it had all settled down. “Google invested in one of the companies I was involved with, and had to do a background check on me,” he said of the aftermath. “They thought it was awesome.”
Guns N’ Roses have not announced any new music since the 2008 release of Chinese Democracy, their first record of all new material since 1991, though Axl Rose has said he would like to put out a new LP in a shorter span of time than that. Guitarist Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal told Rolling Stone last year that once the group clear their schedule of concerts they would once again focus on creating music. “We just have little things on the back burner, just waiting for the right time for us to organize and make something new out of it,” he said. “Hopefully we can make more music – that’s what it’s about.” The band’s most recent gigs were a string of Canadian dates in July 2013, following June gigs at New York City’s Governor’s Ball and a surprise show in Brooklyn.
Here are the dates Guns N’ Roses have announced for 2014:
03/16 Mexico City, Mexico
03/20 Rio De Janeiro, Brazil
03/22 Belo Horizonte, Brazil
03/25 Brasilia, Brazil
03/28 Sao Paulo, Brazil
03/30 Curitiba, Brazil
04/1 Florianópolis, Brazil
04/3 Porto Alegre, Brazil
04/6 Buenos Aires, Argentina
04/9 Asuncion, Paraguay