When the Fear of a 19,000-Person Riot Forced the Police To Give in to Axl Rose’s Demands

Some people can talk their way out of a traffic ticket, others will try to cry their way out of it, but if you’re Guns N’ Roses’ frontman Axl Rose, he found an even more effective method when he threatened to cancel his show. Of course, this technique also runs the risk of having newspapers write about you, like the 1991 LA Times piece, “Police Face Axl Rose Tantrum.”

Infantile tactics or not, at least the show went on, right?

Axl Rose’s Traffic Ticket: Threats to Cancel Show Sparked Riot Concerns

In the dog days of summer 1991, Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose was on his way to the Forum in Inglewood, California, when his limo driver made an illegal left turn. A nearby police officer promptly pulled the limousine over, much to the chagrin of the anxious pre-show Rose. As the LA Times put it, “Inglewood police say that Rose threw a tantrum [and] threatened to call off his band’s show unless police canceled the citation.”

Axl Rose and his band might’ve been at the height of their fame in the early 1990s, but it wasn’t the singer’s star power that made his tantrum effective. In fact, his ultimatum with the responding officer initially fell flat. After Rose arrived at the venue, he employed band manager Doug Goldstein and venue manager Claire Rothman to make his case to the police, once again refusing to perform if the Inglewood police didn’t drop the ticket.

One month earlier, Rose had abruptly left the stage during a St. Louis performance, prompting the audience to break out in a riot. Fearing a similar situation at the Forum, the police reluctantly gave in to Axl Rose’s demands and canceled the traffic ticket.

City Residents (and Some Cops) Weren’t Happy With the Deal

Ultimately, the Inglewood Police Department did avoid a riot, but the bargain they made to do so angered some of the locals. According to the LA Times, one unhappy officer complained that the Axl Rose incident went against their ethos of treating every citizen the same. However, Captain James Seymour doubled down on the decision, saying, “Rather than stick our feet in the mud and say, ‘No, we’re going to treat you like everybody else,’ we chose to avoid a riot. We don’t need 19,000 people at the Forum rioting over a traffic ticket.”

Nevertheless, when Inglewood residents found out that the “Paradise City” singer got out of an illegal left turn traffic ticket just because he was famous, the residents started to call on the police department to rectify their mistake. The department released a statement clarifying that they had never dropped the ticket altogether but had retrieved it for further investigation. After Guns N’ Roses were out of the city and onto the next tour stop, the police department proceeded with enforcing the citation.

“Nobody is above the law,” then-Mayor Edward Vincent told the LA Times (via Ultimate Classic Rock). Vincent identified himself as a “jazz fan who couldn’t name a single Guns N’ Roses hit.” So, maybe Axl Rose’s technique of threatening to cancel a show over a traffic ticket does work…but only temporarily.

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