2010.05.18 - The Hollywood Reporter - Axl Rose Slams Irving Azoff In $5 Million Countersuit (& related articles)

Axl Rose slams Irving Azoff in $5 million countersuit

By Eriq Gardner

EXCLUSIVE: Axl Rose says his former manager tried to implement a scheme to force him to reunite with the original Guns N' Roses band members and, as part of the plot, failed to properly promote the "Chinese Democracy" album, lied about a prospective Van Halen super tour and mishandled the band's tour dates.

The claims are part of a bombshell countersuit filed yesterday against Irving Azoff's Front Line Management. In March, Azoff sued Rose, claiming the rocker violated an oral agreement to pay 15% of earnings, or nearly $2 million, from a lucrative concert tour.

Not since the G'N'R song "Get in the Ring" has Rose struck back at a foe so forcefully, alleging antitrust concerns about Front Line's parent company, Ticketmaster, to drive home a major claim that his former manager is up to no good in the music business.

Azoff is CEO, director and majority shareholder of Front Line, whose roster of artists include the Eagles, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Buffett, Christina Aguilera and John Mayer. In 2008, Front Line was acquired by Ticketmaster.

Rose claims that through Azoff's control of the "trifecta" of artist management, concert and touring promotion, and ticket sales, Azoff has been able to gain wide influence and power in the music industry. Azoff allegedly decides what artists he wants to promote through favorable touring deals and uses his power to punish artists and harm their careers if they don't follow his orders.

When informed of the myriad allegations in the countersuit, Azoff's lawyer Howard King quipped to us: "He didn't accuse Irving of being on the grassy knoll in Dallas on November 22, 1963?"

The countersuit invokes the U.S. Justice Department's recent antitrust lawsuit that sought to stop a proposed merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation over concerns about the new entity having too much control over artists and venues. Afterwards, Ticketmaster entered into a consent decree with government regulators to allow the merger to continue under certain operating provisions.

Axl's counter-complaint says that Azoff is violating the consent decree by coercing and bullying artists to do what he wants.

What Azoff wanted, the rocker says, was the reunion of Guns N' Roses. To execute this, he would sabotage Rose and his new band so that Rose would have no option but to reunite.

According to the filing, "Upon realizing that he couldn't bully Rose and accomplish his scheme, Azoff resigned and abandoned Guns N' Roses on the eve of a major tour, filing suit for commissions he didn't earn and had no right to receive."

Further, Axl says the botched tour cost him money in production startup and rehearsal expenses. Claiming breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud and breach of contract, the singer wants at least $5 million in damages.

The cross-complaint was filed by Skip Miller and Sasha Frid at L.A.'s Miller Barondess.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100926184232/http://thresq.hollywoodreporter.com:80/2010/05/guns-n-roses-reunion-.html

TMZ, same date:
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Axl Rose: Guns N' Roses Was 'Sabotaged'

Axl Rose claims music giant Irving Azoff concocted a diabolical plot to destroy Guns N' Roses ... TMZ has learned.

Rose just filed a countersuit against Azoff -- his former manager -- claiming Azoff tried to strong-arm Rose into a reunion tour with the original members of GNR. When Rose nixed the idea on the heels of the Chinese Democracy tour last year, Azoff did everything he could to screw Axl ... so he claims.

Among other things, Rose claims Azoff tried "devising and implementing a secret plan to set up Rose and the band for failure so that Rose would have no choice but to reunite with the original Guns N' Roses' members."

Rose believes Azoff was so vicious he even used Axl's childhood name -- something that carries heavy emotional baggage -- when he filed the initial lawsuit for commissions. Rose says the name William Bailey "carries significant emotional damage from Rose's childhood" and that Azoff knew it because of numerous personal and confidential conversations.

Rose is countersuing for $5 mil minimum.

https://www.tmz.com/2010/05/18/axl-rose-guns-n-roses-lawsuit-irving-azoff-irving-azoff-countersuit-band-chinese-democracy/

Rolling Stone, same date:
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Axl Rose Says Managers Had “Secret Plan” to Reunite Guns n’ Roses

Gn’R leader slams Front Line management with $5 million lawsuit

By Daniel Kreps

In late March, when Guns n’ Roses’ former managers sued Axl Rose over a $1.9 million unpaid tour commission, the band’s notoriously cantankerous leader remained uncharacteristically quiet. But today Rose responded to the suit filed by Irving Azoff’s Front Line Management with a $5 million countersuit that includes some stunning claims. Rose says that during Azoff’s short tenure as Gn’R’s manager, Azoff secretly tried to hatch a plan to trick Rose into reuniting with his former Guns n’ Roses bandmates for a tour, TMZ reports. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Rose’s filing goes on to argue that Azoff — whose management company was acquired by Ticketmaster, who later merged with Live Nation — used his strong influence in the industry to try to “bully” the frontman, and ultimately “resigned and abandoned Guns n’ Roses on the eve of a major tour, filing suit for commissions he didn’t earn and had no right to receive.”

In the countersuit, Rose claims Azoff tried “devising and implementing a secret plan to set up Rose and the [current] band for failure so that Rose would have no choice but to reunite with the original Guns n’ Roses’ members.” As Rolling Stone previously reported, Front Line Management sued Rose — or “William Bill Bailey,” as he’s named in the initial complaint — for “failing and refusing” to pay Front Line tour commissions from Gn’R’s recent treks of Southeast Asia and Canada. The lawsuit came just months after Rose split from Front Line — who the band hired in March 2008 to help broker the exclusive deal with Best Buy to release Chinese Democracy — and replaced Azoff with Kiss manager Doc McGhee.

Chinese Democracy wasn’t a big seller, but a tour reuniting Rose with Slash, Duff McKagan and the rest of his former Roses bandmates would have been a blockbuster. Rose’s Chinese Democracy trek with his current band has yet to come to the U.S.; the group’s Canadian dates launched January 13th with a three-hour marathon of the band’s biggest hits.

Rose also claims that Azoff knowingly referred to him as “William Bailey” in the lawsuit to cause him harm because he had told Azoff that the name “carries significant emotional damage from Rose’s childhood.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/axl-rose-says-managers-had-secret-plan-to-reunite-guns-n-roses-87933/

Los Angeles Times, same date:
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The Big Picture
Patrick Goldstein and James Rainey on entertainment and media

The hottest new showbiz blood feud: Axl Rose vs. Irving Azoff

OK, I admit it. As much as I love show business, when it comes to guilty pleasures, there's really nothing so marvelous as a showbiz feud. (And by show business, I also mean the media biz, since after all, the media biz has become even more showbizzy than show business itself). Even though politics has produced some colorful feuds over the years, show business is in a class by itself when it comes to nasty invective, bitterness and vitriol.

Just think about it. Whether it's David Letterman vs. Jay Leno, Scott Rudin vs. Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Katzenberg vs. Michael Eisner, Keith Olbermann vs. Bill O'Reilly or Nikki Finke vs. Jeff Zucker, Hollywood can almost always deliver a real doozy of a blood feud. And don't think journalists can't huff and puff and piss on each other with the best of 'em, as is evidenced by the great little donnybrook happening right now between Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff and Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter, who've been at each others throats after Wolff puckishly dubbed Alter "the most pompous man in American journalism."

But now we can add a wonderful new duo to our cask of great feuding antagonists: Axl Rose and Irving Azoff. As the Hollywood Reporter legal blogger Eriq Gardner reports in this delightful post, the Guns N' Roses singer has filed an eye-popping countersuit against Azoff, his former manager, claiming that Azoff, among other things, "tried to implement a scheme to force [Rose] to reunite with the original Guns N' Roses band members and, as part of the plot, failed to properly promote the 'Chinese Democracy' album, lied about a prospective Van Halen super tour and mishandled the band's tour dates."

Rose wants $5 million in damages from Azoff, who is now arguably the most powerful man in the music business. With the merger between Live Nation and Ticketmaster, Azoff now controls roughly 70% of the concert ticket market (via Ticketmaster), a huge swath of the live concert business (through Live Nation) and handles the careers of roughly 200 top artists (from the Eagles, Van Halen and Christina Aguilera to Willie Nelson and the Kings of Leon) thanks to Azoff's Front Line Management.

So Rose isn't taking on just anybody. In fact, in his suit, he says that Azoff is violating the government's consent decree (which allowed the merger to happen in the first place) by coercing and bullying artists to do what he wants. In Rose's case, he claims Azoff wanted a Guns N' Roses reunion. So Rose claims that Azoff proceeded to sabotage Rose and his new band so Rose would have no option but to reunite the old band. As the filing puts it: "Upon realizing that he couldn't bully Rose and accomplish his scheme, Azoff resigned and abandoned Guns N' Roses on the eve of a major tour, filing suit for commissions he didn't earn and had no right to receive."

There's oh-so-much more. But surely one of the highlights is Azoff's response to the countersuit. When the Reporter's Gardner contacted longtime Azoff lawyer Howard King, volunteering some of the highlights of the claim, King quipped: "[Rose] didn't accuse Irving of being on the grassy knoll in Dallas on November 22, 1963?" Over the years, Azoff has been in the midst of a number of outlandish feuds, going at it with the likes of David Geffen and former CBS Records chief Walter Yetnikoff, so I suspect there will be more fireworks yet to come.

Like so many years ago, when Azoff didn't like a story I'd written about the Eagles' Don Henley, he sent me a giant bouquet of black roses. When Azoff had a falling-out with the wife of a high-powered rock manager, he sent him a gift-wrapped boa constrictor as a birthday present, with a note saying, "Now you have two of them!" If I were Axl Rose, I'd be having someone opening my mail for a while. Who knows what kind of blood-curdling surprise Azoff may have in store for him?

https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2010/05/the-hottest-new-showbiz-blood-feud-axl-rose-vs-irving-azoff.html