Kyle Rhoads just had a feeling Axl was going to bail.

He planned to celebrate his birthday Monday seeing Sebastian Bach and Guns N’Roses with a friend but held off buying tickets at the box office ’til just before the show.

David Dean of Buckfield had it all planned out. He bought tickets even before they went on sale to the general public: Section D, row 9, right next to the stage.

It was going to be his son Joe’s first concert.

“He’s quite famous for canceling. People said, ‘He’s not going to show.’ I said, he’s a changed man, he’ll show up,” Dean said of frontman Axl Rose.

He didn’t. Fans spent Tuesday bemoaning the temperamental rocker, who backed out of Monday’s concert with about two hours’ notice.

“I had a total inkling that might happen,” said Rhoads of Windham.

Dean’s wife reached them with the bad news during the drive to the show. Instead, of seeing his music icon with his son, Dean turned the car around and, back at home, wrote an angry letter to Rose.

“I am sure they could have come to some compromise. Celebrities, I think, if they can’t get their way, they won’t do it at all,” he said.

In his letter, Dean told Rose: “Your fans want nothing more than to embrace you, to hear you perform, for you to give us the respect that we deserve, for without your fans, what are you?”

On his Web site, Rose blamed the no-show on fire marshals for imposing extra conditions on the band’s pyrotechnics. Two state fire marshals specifically named, Nelson Collins and Bob Cadigan, were in meetings all day, according to a staffer at the State Fire Marshal’s Office.

Calls for additional information weren’t returned.

Roberta Wright, spokeswoman at the Cumberland County Civic Center, referred specifics to that office. She’d found out at 5:30 p.m. that the show was off.

“We went into high gear to try to get as many fans as we could before they left home,” she said.

They called radio stations, contacted the Turnpike Authority to let people know at toll plazas and told local parking garages.

Wright said they had sold 3,400 of 6,500 tickets. Fans can go to the show tonight in Worcester, Mass., or get refunds.

Dean e-mailed Ticketmaster for his refund Tuesday. He was sure seats at the DCU Center wouldn’t be as good.

Androscoggin Bank Colisee spokeswoman Kelly David said that arena didn’t have plans to reach out as an alternate venue to Monday night’s show and hadn’t heard from the band.

“We’re always hoping to book new, exciting acts in our building and would never discount anyone without looking into things further,” David wrote in an e-mail. “That said, due to the size of our building it is likely that GN’R is a little out of our price range and in order to make it work, we’d have to price the tickets too high.”

Through his publicist, Sebastian Bach offered a “huge apology to the people in Portland Maine.” He planned to appear on a radio station WCCC in Hartford, Conn., on Tuesday night to tell “what really happened.”