The U.S. rockers, whose late start was greeted with a chorus of boos, were 20 minutes into their set when the missile barrage became too intense for them to continue.
“Here’s the deal: One more bottle and we go home,” fuming frontman Axl Rose warned the audience.
“It’s up to you. We would like to stay. We want to stay. We want to have some fun,” he said. “If you don’t want to have fun, all you’ve got to do is let us know. We’ve got no problem – we’ll go on our way.”
The group then left the stage for an hour, before returning to finish its set.
Earlier in the week Rose delivered an expletive-ridden tirade against the police and the organisers of England’s Reading Festival. He later wrote on Twitter that the act had been promised it could play beyond the curfew at Reading and Leeds Festival.
The band arrived late on stage at both Leeds and Reading, drawing criticism from other acts on the bill.
“In regard to Reading we feel at the very least the fans deserve an apology from those responsible for the nonsense. We’d also like to thank the fans for being so great, singing along n’ not tearing the place apart,” he said. "So u know, we allegedly had a deal in place pre-show with the city at Leeds to do a bit longer performance that was either miscommunication, someone wasn’t informed, changed their mind, didn’t care or was a con,” he added.
“Regardless the nonsense just seems so unnecessary but without real management or industry presence it is unfortunately beyond our control. We hope the fans feel they got at least what they could from us under the circumstances as for us all things considered that’s the main thing. The rest is filler.”