Axl Rose lawsuit claims being called "William Bailey" caused him emotional damage

The ongoing legal drama between Axl Rose and former Guns N' Roses manager Irving Azoff has dragged a new person of interest into the case: William Bailey. Says Rolling Stone: Buried amid the details of the $5 million countersuit Rose filed today—in response to Azoff's previous $1.9 million suit seeking compensation for an unpaid tour commission—the Guns N' Roses frontman claims Azoff deliberately misnamed him as "William Bailey" in his lawsuit. Why? As a slap in the face: According to the countersuit, the name "carries significant emotional damage from Rose's childhood." Rose has long maintained that his stepfather, Stephen Bailey, physically abused him, his siblings, and his mother during his youth in Lafayette, Indiana. So Rose readopted his birth name, William Rose, when he was 17 before legally changing it to W. Axl Rose in 1986.

Another interesting accusation: While briefly managing the band in 2008, Azoff allegedly tried to engineer a GNR reunion by "devising and implementing a secret plan to set up Rose and the [current] band for failure so that Rose would have no choice but to reunite with the original Guns N' Roses members." Of course, that never happened; instead, GNR have yet to tour the U.S.—in any configuration—since releasing 2008's long-awaited, instantly forgotten comeback attempt, Chinese Democracy.