Eagles Of Death Metal Turn Down Offer To Rejoin Guns N' Roses Tour

12/01/06 6:30pm

Axl Rose allegedly had a change of heart after kicking Eagles Of Death Metal off Guns N' Roses' current tour last Friday, but Jesse Hughes turned down the offer to come back.

Rose called EODM "Pigeons Of Shit Metal" when he took the stage at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio, which Eagles frontman Hughes says prompted GN'R bassist Tommy Stinson to throw down his bass in anger. Rose then picked up the bass and threw it at Stinson, according to Hughes, who also says the incident later brought about the firing of a member of the Gunners road crew and caused friction within the band after the show.

"I could hear screaming in the dressing room, 'Those are our friends and you've insulted our friends,'" Hughes said in an interview carried by World Entertainment News Network.

"Then at four in the morning our tour manager gets a phone call which essentially amounted to, 'Axl's thought about it, he thought you guys were a band getting shoved on his tour from the label. He's really sorry and you're more than welcome to finish the tour.'

"When my manager told me that, I just said, 'You can tell that motherfucker to go and fuck himself because I will never go through that again.'"

GN'R manager Merck Mercuriadis disputes Hughes' claims that Stinson threw down his bass and that Rose fired a crew member, and gave MTV News this version of the story:

"The Eagles Of Death Metal were asked to leave the tour not only because Guns N' Roses' audience hated them and tore them apart but because they could not handle the response. They were supposed to play a 60-minute set but left the stage after 42 minutes due to the hostile reception. The facts do not support the image they are trying to portray, which is why they are attempting to put this spin on it."

Hughes claims that Rose didn't even show up at the arena until after his band had finished their set, but he believes that a comment he made to Sebastian Bach — another opener on the tour and a good friend of the mercurial GN'R leader — 20 minutes before EODM went on stage may have been the cause of the problem.

Hughes called Bach "Savage Animal," a reference to the VH1 reality series Supergroup where Bach proposed that name (and was subsequently turned down and teased) for a band featuring himself, Ted Nugent and Scott Ian.

"When I said it to him, it was a casual burn, but I didn't mean it in a bad way at all," Hughes told RollingStone.com. "I was trying to be like, 'Savage Animal! I backin' you, bro!' But I guess it didn't come off that way, because I couldn't possibly have meant it."

Hughes suspects that Bach may have been insulted by the comment, and gave an unfavourable report to Rose.

After news of the split between the two groups got out, Hughes told RollingStone.com that he received a message from Foo Fighters main man Dave Grohl, who had an altercation with Rose years ago when he was in Nirvana.

"Dave said, 'Disappointment from Axl is like being knighted.'"

Hughes has been using his newfound time off the road to record vocals for the next Queens Of The Stone Age album with part-time EODM member Josh Homme in a San Fernando Valley, Calif. studio.

EODM will tour Europe next month.