2015.12.29 - Billboard - Guns N’ Roses to Reunite for Coachella, Possible Stadium Tour: Sources

Guns N’ Roses to Reunite for Coachella, Possible Stadium Tour: Sources

The band will headline this year's Coachella as well as take dates in Vegas -- possibly before heading out on a 20-plus date stadium tour.

By Ray Waddell

Guns N’ Roses, with original members Axl Rose and Slash, will headline the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in Indio, Calif., set for April 15-17 and April 22-24, according to multiple sources. The reunited band is also negotiating with promoters to play as many as 25 football stadiums in North America in the summer of 2016, and is scheduled to be one of the first acts to play the new Las Vegas Arena, set to open April 6. Guns N’ Roses is said to be asking as much as $3 million per show, with tickets topping out in the $250-$275 range.

The last show Axl Rose and Slash played together was on July 17, 1993 at River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires. Guns N’ Roses’ most recent tour, which only included Axl Rose from the original lineup, took place primarily in South America and The Joint in Las Vegas, grossing $15.2 million.

Representatives for the band, as well as Coachella producer Paul Tollett and agent Ken Fermaglich at United Talent Agency, could not be reached for comment. Executives at AEG, which will operate the new Vegas arena, also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The band’s first album, Appetite for Destruction, is the biggest-selling debut in U.S. history, with 18 million sold. It spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and launched the No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 single “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” They have sold 44.5 million albums total in the U.S., according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Billboard’s confirmation via insiders comes on the heels of two rumor-inducing hints dropped over the past week, the first a cryptic update to the Guns N’ Roses website and the second during screenings of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, where footage of a concert crowd was shown with GN’R music overdubbed. Though longtime fans may be understandably wary after the decade-plus wait for Chinese Democracy, which became a totem of sorts to frontman Axl Rose’s sometimes unpredictable behavior, this reunion bears no sign of that record’s bumpy road.

Coachella has a pedigree for coaxing much-loved acts out of retirement, or being the linchpin to plans that had already been simmering. The fest has previously hosted the reunions of Rage Against The Machine in 2007, My Bloody Valentine in 2009, Pulp in 2012 and Outkast in 2014 — not to mention Tupac’s posthumous return to the stage in 2012. Guns N’ Roses will arrive a year after two other legendary acts, AC/DC and Steely Dan, headlined the 2015 edition. Last year’s edition drew 198,000 to the California desert, generating $84.2 million in revenue, according to Boxscore.

https://www.billboard.com/pro/guns-n-roses-reunion-coachella-stadium-las-vegas/

Related article on CBS News, Dec. 30, 2015:
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Reports: Guns N' Roses to reunite for Coachella

By Andrea Park

Guns N' Roses fans have been waiting for this moment since 1993: The band's original members, including Axl Rose and Slash, are reportedly reuniting to headline the Coachella Music & Arts Festival in April.

Billboard reports that the original members of Guns N' Roses are also hoping to play as many as 25 football stadiums in summer 2016. The band is allegedly asking for as much as $3 million per show, with tickets costing up to $250 to $275.

Guitarist Slash told CBS This Morning in May that he would be open to a reunion. He said at the time, "If everybody wanted to do it and do it for the right reasons, you know, I think the fans would love it. I think it might be fun at some point to try and do that."

He also said that he did not have any more bad blood with Axl Rose; Slash left Guns N' Roses in 1996 because of a feud with the singer.

"[Rose and I] haven't really talked in a long time. But a lot of the tension that you were talking about has dissipated," he said. "We don't have all those issues anymore. There's not a lot of controversy. It's something that's more perpetuated by the media than anything."

Slash and Axl Rose haven't played a concert together since July 17, 1993, when they performed at River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires. Axl Rose is the only original Guns N' Roses member who has performed recently with the band.

The band has kept mum on social media, but Axl Rose is to address the reunion next week on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," according to Rolling Stone.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/reports-guns-n-roses-to-reunite-for-coachella/