Guns N’ Roses, you could have been ours.

When the Rasputin-like 1980s rockers suddenly canceled their show this week in Portland, fans like David Dean were – literally – left out in the cold. The self-professed “biggest fan and supporter” of Guns N’ Roses was heading to the show from Buckfield with his 19-year-old son when the sad news broke.

“Do you have any idea the anguish that you cause your fans when you decide you’re not coming at the last moment?” Dean wrote in an open letter to the band’s eccentric front man, Axl Rose.

Not much, apparently. Dean calls Rose his “musical icon,” but the unreliable singer apparently couldn’t care less about the fans he disappointed. In a release about the show’s cancellation, Rose blamed government officials for cramping the band’s style.

Nothing could be farther than the truth, as the rationale behind the cancellation sounds better than any notes the scratchy Rose can probably warble. Fire inspectors and police said the band couldn’t drink beer, wine and hard alcohol on stage, which would violate Maine law.

Rose, in the vague statement, said the conditions imposed by the officials made “it impossible for the band to perform their show to the usual high standards that their fans deserve.” Apparently this statement means Guns N’ Roses fans, like Dean, deserve to see these retread rock stars drunk and stumbling.

Officials should be commended for sticking to their guns against Guns N’ Roses. The landscape of concert promotion changed forever in February 2004, when 100 people inside a Rhode Island nightclub perished when a bad rock-and-roll decision caused a terrible inferno.

The Guns N’ Roses decision is different, but it still shows officials have learned to be more cognizant, and stringent, in enforcing the laws meant to protect the public during concerts. No drinks means no drinks, it doesn’t matter who you are. If you can’t play by those rules, you won’t play at all.

Nothing was preventing Rose and his tired act from consuming all the alcohol he wished before setting foot on stage. If that were the case, and the 3,400 ticketed fans were forced to watch him try to regain past glory in a haze of Jagermeister and testosterone, they probably wouldn’t have been fans for much longer.

Rose deserves applause, then, for saving everybody the time to watch him fall. He simply alienated everyone in one arrogant, yet efficient, swoop. Perhaps Rose is frustrated because his greatest hits are now “classic rock.”

Whatever the reason, it won’t be good enough for the group’s fans. But it shouldn’t worry the rockers, since they won’t be around long anyway. As for the rest of us, well, we really think “Welcome to the Jungle” sounds great over the loudspeakers in a sports stadium.

Thanks, at least, for that.