Don't mess with the braids, man ... Axl Rose. Photograph: Bru Garcia/AFP
Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose allegedly bit the leg of a security guard at his Stockholm hotel this week - and the local tabloids could not be any happier, writes Gwladys Fouché.
The incident happened early on Tuesday morning, after Rose and his band performed a gig in the Swedish capital. After the concert, Rose did what any self-respecting rock star does: he partied the night away before heading back to his exclusive hotel, drunk as a lord of misrule. And that's when the "biting" happened.
According to the tabloid Aftonbladet, the incident went like this: Rose came to reception and screamed at a female employee that he was unhappy with his room. A hotel security guard asked the singer to lower his voice. Rose pushed the guard in the chest, who then grabbed Axl's braids and pulled him to the ground. Chaos ensued, during which Rose plunged his teeth into the back of the leg of the guard. The man then shouted to the singer's bodyguard "You've got to help with this guy now!" Rose also threw a vase into an 18th-century mirror.
Rose was immediately arrested and thrown in a police cell where he spent the first hours of the morning sobering up. For the guard, this involved a trip to the hospital for a tetanus check. The Guns N' Roses frontman spent most of the following day in the cells, waiting to know whether he would face trial. He was eventually allowed to leave when he signed a document in which he admits assaulting a security guard and causing criminal damage at the hotel. He paid a 50,000 kronor (£3,700) fine.
The tabloids were hot on the singer's trail throughout his stay in Sweden. During his party tour on Monday night, Aftonbladet reported that Rose drank Jack Daniel's at a "temperature between 10C and 15C" and that the club where he partied was full of "Swedish models" - one can only sympathise with his plight.
The paper also helpfully published a guide to "rockstar scandals in Sweden" - no prize for guessing that one of them involved Pete Doherty. Meanwhile, Aftonbladet's rival Expressen printed its own timeline of Axl Rose scandals down the years.
But the circus rolls on. Both Aftonbladet and Expressen covered Rose's departure from Swedish soil - the man boarded the plane with airport staff holding blankets up so that he would be protected from prying lenses. Axl and the band left Stockholm for Oslo, in neighbouring Norway. Even though they landed at 9pm, the group was still sitting in the plane after midnight. No one knows what really happened, apart from the fact that a flight attendant brought in ice cubes from the terminal to the plane. Perhaps there are more headlines on the way.
