BIG MOUTH: Each Guns N’ Roses concert...

BIG MOUTH: Each Guns N’ Roses concert is such a potential psychodrama that when Nassau Coliseum security told anxious fans last Monday that the long-overdue band was “en route,” New York Daily News critic Jim Farber quipped: “en route from where--Bellevue?” As it turned out, the band showed up nearly 2 1/2 hours late for its showcase New York tour date. And after the band took the stage, Axl Rose launched into a rambling diatribe against various evil forces, including Rolling Stone, the New York Times, the Village Voice, arena security guards and Geffen Records, his own record company. According to Farber, Rose offered various “cryptic apologies,” saying “write to Geffen Records and tell ‘em to stop (messing) up my act.” He also blamed his tardiness on a Rolling Stone photo shoot--though it turned out the shoot was completed the night before.

“Axl’s outbursts got increasingly weird,” Farber wrote. “He even tore into Jon Pareles at the New York Times for not sufficiently worshipping the group in the past.” Rose’s antics didn’t go over any better in the Times review. Noting that Rose found “scapegoats in just about everybody except himself,” Times critic Peter Watrous described Rose as “having enough aggression to fuel a few more wars. Irrationality aside . . . it was a masterful performance, provincial demagoguery at its best, fascinating in entertainment, terrifying in politics.”

This wacko display came less than a week after Rose took the stage in Saratoga Springs, N. Y., musing that longtime GNR rivals, Poison, might be breaking up. “This is a very sad occasion,” he said sarcastically, according to a Geffen exec on hand. “You know, sometimes people just can’t get along. Poor little (Poison members) Brett and Bobby and C.C. have apparently--and this is not official--called it quits.”

Could Poison really be breaking up? “Absolutely not,” says band member Brett Michaels. “I wish I knew why Axl is saying stuff like that--we’ve spoken a few times and I thought we always got along. The band has canceled the rest of our tour, but that’s only because our bassist, Bobby Dall, broke two fingers on his left hand when he smashed it in a car door. Listen, we all have our occasional run-ins, but everyone in this band has been friends for a long time--and we plan to stay that way. We’ve been out on the road for 11 months, so we’re going to take a break and come back next summer.”