title: autofmt_xdate deletes x-axis labels of all subplots
body: <p>I use <code>autofmt_xdate</code> to plot long x-axis labels in a readable way. The problem is, when I want to combine different subplots, the x-axis labeling of the other subplots disappears, which I do not appreciate for the leftmost subplot in the figure below (two rows high). Is there a way to prevent <code>autofmt_xdate</code> from quenching the other x-axis labels? Or is there another way to rotate the labels? As you can see I experimented with <code>xticks</code> and "rotate" as well, but the results were not satisfying because the labels were rotated around their center, which resulted in messy labeling.</p>
  
  <p>Script that produces plot below:</p>
  
  <pre><code>from matplotlib import pyplot as plt
  from numpy import arange
  import numpy
  from matplotlib import rc
  
  rc("figure",figsize=(15,10))
  #rc('figure.subplot',bottom=0.1,hspace=0.1)
  rc("legend",fontsize=16)
  fig = plt.figure()
  
  
  Test_Data = numpy.random.normal(size=20)
  
  fig = plt.figure()
  Dimension = (2,3)
  plt.subplot2grid(Dimension, (0,0),rowspan=2)
  plt.plot(Test_Data)
  plt.subplot2grid(Dimension, (0,1),colspan=2)
  for i,j in zip(Test_Data,arange(len(Test_Data))):
      plt.bar(i,j)
  plt.legend(arange(len(Test_Data)))
  plt.subplot2grid(Dimension, (1,1),colspan=2)
  xticks = [r"%s (%i)" % (a,b) for a,b in zip(Test_Data,Test_Data)]
  plt.xticks(arange(len(Test_Data)),xticks)
  fig.autofmt_xdate()
  plt.ylabel(r'$Some Latex Formula/Divided by some Latex Formula$',fontsize=14)
  plt.plot(Test_Data)
  #plt.setp(plt.xticks()[1],rotation=30)
  plt.tight_layout()
  #plt.show()
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/excTS.png" alt="Figure created by script"></p>