Festival boss: 'Guns N' Roses will play'

Guns N' Roses will play the Reading and Leeds Festivals, event boss Melvin Benn has reiterated.

There had been speculation that the band would pull out after a post on frontman Axl Rose's Twitter page suggested that the band had cancelled all future shows.

It was later reported that Rose's officially verified page had been hacked, but the message is still present on the social networking site and has not been deleted as of this morning.

Benn told NME: "I'm absolutely confident about them showing up. There were probably four or five emails back and forth between 1am and 3am Monday morning.

"[Guns N' Roses'] agent was absolutely clear that it was false - it wasn't true. I think he was in the UK, but I think he'd spoken to Axl and he came back and said it was a false alarm."

Benn added: "Axl confirmed to the agent and the agent confirmed to us. When you look at the Twitter transactions, Axl's Twittering is pretty infrequent and has generally been from a mobile phone. This wasn't in Axl's style."

Asked about the continued presence of the message on Twitter, Benn said: "I didn't know it was still on. I don't know why it hasn't been deleted. It certainly is completely untrue."

The Reading and Leeds Festivals begin on August 27. Guns N' Roses play a UK arena tour this November.