Guns N’ Roses founding member Axl Rose issued a formal apology to the people of Cleveland on Tuesday after he decided to formally turn down his induction to the Rock Roll Hall Of Fame. In an open letter written on his band’s website the rocker tells the citizens of the rock roll city:
“I would like to apologize to Cleveland, Ohio, for not apologizing to them beforehand for not attending [the ceremony] in their city.”
Axl Rose then goes on to say he received:
“An overwhelmingly positive response” for his decision and “I think they know how much I genuinely love performing there. Cleveland does in fact Rock!!”
While Rose says the city does rock he goes on in his letter to explain that he’s not really sure how the hall of fame even works:
“I still don’t exactly know or understand what the Hall is or how or why it makes money, where the money goes, who chooses the voters and why anyone or this board decides who, out of all the artists in the world that have contributed to this genre, officially ‘rock’ enough to be in the Hall?”
Rose next congratulates the other inductees who included the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Donovan, Freddie King and others.
Axl Rose then left everyone with an anecdote:
“I once bought a homeless woman a slice of pizza who yelled at me she wanted soup. We got her the soup. You can get your own.”
Perhaps the Rock Roll Hall of Fame induction was better off with Axl Rose not in attendance because nobody needed to hear a thank you speech filled with soup based anecdotes.
