Axl will receive the 
“RONNIE JAMES DIO LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT” AWARD at this year's Golden Gods

This year’s Ronnie James Dio Lifetime Achievement Award will go to hard-rock legend and Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose, with Rose taking his place in the REVOLVER GOLDEN GODS hall of fame alongside such previous honorees as Metallica, Rush, Mötley Crüe, Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead and Ozzy Osbourne. Guns N’ Roses are one of the most celebrated acts in music history with sales of more than 100 million albums worldwide and continue to tour annually, headlining sold-out stadium shows and festivals across the globe.

Greetings from Los Angeles. Here for a couple more days to host the Golden Gods Awards with Don & Jim tomorrow. Just came from rehearsal at Club Nokia. Should be a great night tomorrow with many stars from rock music as well as TV and movies in attendance. Looks like Nick Cage is giving Axl Rose his award tomorrow and Duff McKagan is going to play once again witb GnR. Duff is not fully in Guns, just filling in while Tommy Stinson performs with The Replacements. Should be cool to see Duff on stage with Guns once again though. They are going to play up to as many as eight songs tomorrow night I’m told. Zakk Wylde and Joan Jett are among the other performers scheduled. Tons of artists attending and giving or getting awards. Me, Don and Jim will host and also do some backstage interviews that will be seen during the TV telecast. Many have asked me how this can all be seen? It will be streamed live tomorrow as it happens on www.vh1classic.com starting at 8PM Pacific/11 ET (pre show 1 hour before). Then an edited version of the event will air on VH1C May 24th at 8PM ET. I’m sure many repeat airings after that on both VH1C and Palladia. I’ll keep you guys posted best I can via my Twitter as the night unfolds @EddieTrunk I’ve attended this show several times since it happened but this is my first time as a host for it and it should be a blast and hopefully a great celebration of hard rock and metal! More soon.

Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose and Joan Jett took home the biggest honors — and displayed some saintly patience — during tonight’s frequently chaotic Golden Gods Awards ceremony.

As an unedited home viewing experience, the show left much to be desired. There were long, momentum-killing gaps between nearly every band’s introduction and actual performance, one of which prompted Jett to ask, “Did I do something wrong?” Deep Purple somehow beat Black Sabbath for ‘Comeback of the Year,’ a choice that left presenter Scott Ian of Anthrax literally shaking his head both onstage and on Twitter.

Jett had to re-do her performance of ‘I Hate Myself for Loving You’ when guest star Taylor Momsen‘s vocal line was flubbed the first time around. For some reason, ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons showed up for the second take, did some cheerleading and then split without further explanation — or a single guitar lick. Naturally, Jett was a total professional despite this confusion.

Zakk Wylde played the piano and sang a touching tribute to metal stars who’ve passed away — not just in the past year, but in a unique and slightly odd move, over the last decade or so. This went from random to just plain wrong when Jani Lane of Warrant was identified as a former member of Motorhead.

In another unique touch, both of the evening’s main honorees had two different presenters speak separately on their behalf — comedian Andrew ‘Dice’ Clay and actor Nicolas Cage for Rose, then Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider and Alice Cooper for Jett.

As the delays and hiccups mounted, you couldn’t help but wonder if we were in store for an old-school blow-up from Rose, a noted perfectionist who’s not afraid to speak up (or storm out) when production problems raise their head.

But the singer, on hand both to perform and accept the Golden God Lifetime Achievement honor, seemingly handled himself with class and patience — even after the band’s set was delayed several minutes by what seemed to be microphone problems. Once everyone was ready (and Cage came back out for a second impassioned introduction), the band turned in a nine song, hour-long show featuring ‘Welcome to the Jungle,’ ‘You Could be Mine’ and a confetti-laden ‘Paradise City.’

Rose’s acceptance speech was brief, but notable for his gracious shout-out to all the former lineups of Guns N’ Roses as well as his road crew and managers. Similarly, Jett had kind words for her former Runaways bandmates Lita Ford and Cherie Currie, who were in the audience.

Soulmonster wrote: I hope he is like that in real life, though.