Speculation about Guns N’ Roses’ plans for their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is running rampant after a series of tweets last week from the account of Paul Shaffer, music director for David Letterman’s CBS Orchestra, keyboardist for the original lineup of The Blues Brothers, and music director and producer of the Rock Hall’s induction ceremony since its first year in 1986.
Last Thursday, when asked about the length of the April 14 induction ceremony at Cleveland’s historic Public Hall, the Twitter account @PaulShaffer stated that Guns N’ Roses wouldn’t be performing:
After Blabbermouth ran an article about the Twitter exchange, Shaffer’s tweet was quickly taken down, and Michael Lichtstein, the Vice President of Programming at Envision Radio Networks, which for the past five years has been producing Paul Shaffer’s Day In Rock (a 60-second podcast featuring Shaffer), issued the following statement to Blabbermouth:
I am writing to set the record straight on a story Blabbermouth printed earlier this evening [Thursday, March 8]. The story quoted Paul Shaffer’s Twitter account as saying GUNS N’ ROSES would not be performing at this year’s induction ceremony. Please know this tweet did not come from Mr. Shaffer, as his Twitter account is in conjunction with his syndicated radio feature with our network, and all tweets are handled by one of our staff members. No one is exactly sure what will happen at the induction ceremony, and we apologize for the inadvertent tweet.
Needless to say, the web is now abuzz with talk of a potential reunion of the original GN’R lineup, featuring Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan, and Steven Adler, as various media outlets have picked up on the Blabbermouth stories and started to question the band’s plans for the ceremony. GuitarWorld published a story, as did several radio stations and blogs.
Despite the screw-up behind the scenes of Shaffer’s Twitter account, there has been no indication that a reunion is imminent. In fact, just last week, McKagan told Rolling Stone that he doubts the original five will reunite and play in Cleveland:
I think it would be killer. Do I hope to? That’s a tricky question. It would be awesome. You have those day dreams like, “We’ll go up and play ‘Nightrain’ and ‘Brownstone’ and throw down the microphone and drop off! That’ll be killer!” But I doubt that’ll happen.
What we do know is that Axl, Slash, Izzy, Duff, and Steven will all be in attendance for the ceremony. Longtime band keyboardist Dizzy Reed told Billboard that much back in February.
Unfortunately, McKagan also told Rolling Stone that “[t]here’s been no communication about anyone playing” in Cleveland. With the ceremony only a month away, there has been no news of an Axl and Slash reconciliation, the last remaining hurdle to a reunion. It’s hard to imagine Axl giving Slash the apology he would like, so we here at Antiquiet aren’t getting our hopes up quite yet.
