If you won the lottery, what would you do with the money? Play sensible and get those bills sorted? But that lavish sports car and condo you always wanted?
How about ponying up the cash to have your favourite band reform?
Classic Rock reports that Adrian Bayford, an English music shop co-owner, won a staggering jackpot of £148 million (approx $AU 222 million) on the Euromillions lottery at the weekend in the UK.
Bayford, 41, along with wife Gillian and their two children won the lottery’s top prize this past weekend in a cash pool that makes them the second-biggest winners in UK history.
When asked what he was going to do with the money, Bayford said his family would be investing in a new home and car – with some pizza to celebrate – but after that? The Deep Purple and Iron Maiden fan says: “I think I would just have to get Guns n’Roses together – the original lineup, mind. I’m a real fan.”
Getting Axl Rose, Slash, Izzy Stradlin, Duff McKagan and Steven Adler to reunite, let alone in the same room together, has already proven an impossibility under much more ceremonious circumstances; with Rose famously boycotting the Guns N Roses induction into the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame earlier this year.
Even though it’s approaching two decades since the classic lineup’s acrimonious split, the bitter feud between Rose and former bandmate Slash, remains one of the most verdant rivalries in modern music. As recently as June, Rose was banning fans from wearing Slash t-shirts to his concerts.
It seems it’s going to take more than Bayford’s £148 million jackpot to salve the bad blood between the two, especially given Rose has gone after videogame developers of the popular Guitar Hero franchise for a significant $US 200 million lawsuit.
News from The Hollywood Reporter indicates that the GnR frontman brought the costly lawsuit to a Los Angeles hearing this week against Activision Blizzard for prominently featuring Slash in their 2007 videogame, Guitar Hero III.
More specifically, Rose claims that the video game company fradulently induced him into authorising ‘Welcome To The Jungle’ for use in the popular game by misleading him during negotiations, saying that Guitar Hero III would not feature any reference to the top-hat wearing guitarist.
As it turned out, Slash was not only a major selling point to the game’s marketing – but he was emblazoned on the front cover.
On Tuesday, a hearing was held in a Los Angeles courtroom concerning a $20 million lawsuit brought by Axl Rose against Activision Blizzard for featuring former Guns N’ Roses band-mate Slash in Guitar Hero III.
Rose and his company, Black Frog Music, are three years too late however, delaying filing their lawsuit until late November 2010 – much later than the initial exchanges between Rose’s agent and Activision representatives objecting the material in the video game.
The reason for the epic delay? In the singer’s own words: “The reason I did not file a lawsuit is because Activision – through my managers and representatives – offered me a separate video game and other business proposals worth millions of dollars to resolve and settle my claims relating to GHIII,” said Rose in a deposition.
“From December 2007 through November 2010,” he continued, “Activision was offering me a Guns N’ Roses dedicated video game, a game dedicated to music from the Chinese Democracy album, and other proposals.” Additionally, the GnR frontman’s lawyer argued that his claims came late because “Activision had been intentionally concealing its plans to [feature] Slash in the game all along.”
Interesting trivia for Guitar Hero fans, but not a strong basis for legal council. As a result, by the end of the hearing, the judge struck out Rose’s fraud claim on the basis that the statue of limitations had expired – but allowed his breach-of-contract claim to continue in a future trial – set for February 2013.
Rose dragging out a long-winded grudge? That’s not like him…
