Re: Musican Freak Outs

In honor of Christian Bale's freakout on the set of Terminator 4 at a member of the crew (link below for amusement purposes).

What's the most angry incident you ever saw on stage either between performer and crew.....performer and security...performer and audience.......or in the case of Ray & Dave Davies, perhaps performer and performer.

I saw Graham Parker go off for 15 minutes once at the guy doing his sound in a little club once. Threw a chair ....threw the mike stand...had to be persuaded to come back on stage twice - veins bulging in his neck.......made eye contact with me in the crowd, scared the heck out of me.


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I've never witnessed a full-on freakout, but I did see (happily) M. Doughty go off on a guy who was trying to slam dance at a Soul Coughing concert.

I'm pretty sure I can quote him exactly - he stopped in the middle of a song and started yelling "Hey! Knock that shit off! Dumbass! Motherfucking dumbass! 600 people here trying to have a good time and one motherfucking idiot decides he wants to spoil it for everyone! Knock it the hell off, dumbshit!"

The poor punk the tirade was directed at looked like he was about to cry.

i saw doughty go further than that during his solo tour in '01 (bottleneck, lawrence, ks). some drunk guy kept yelling loudly, i don't think he was heckling or anything just being a dick, and doughty kept stopping the set and explaining to the crowd how bad a day he was having, each time getting more and more pissed. finally, mid song, he put down his guitar, ran into the crowd, grabbed the guy and had him removed. never was a big soul coughing fan but really enjoyed that moment...

Yep, the one time he came out here, he heckled the crowd throughout his set. Even at the very start he said he was going to try coming onstage again to a proper applause.
I love the guy, although the current release is a little off the pace.

Johnny Rotten angrily stomping off stage whilst PiL was playing "Poptones" at the Hollywood Palladium. I suppose I can't blame him - it was shortly after the Fourth of July and someone shot fireworks towards the stage. Still...my favorite song!

He did return after a while, tho.

i made debby harry cry and run off the stage

i saw iggy three nights out of 5 pass out into the waiting arms of his 16 fans during raw power tour


i saw untamed' youth fire their drummer at SF's bottom of the hill and ask for a replacement from the audience--it ws NOT an Andy Kaufman moment


i saw jeff beck get so mad at the monitor situation (BB&A) that he picked the monitor up and threw it 20 feet across the stage at a cowering stagehand


tommy stinson threw a beer at me; i replied in same; this time the stagehands did not cower

such a fine line really.
musicians that freak out vs those that don't have the purple microdot connection...
see your local band tonite.
on acid!

Jeremy Oxley's post-Sunnyboys band were called The Fishermen. The first time I saw them he broke a string in the first song and then preceded to rip out every other string while the song continued. When he'd done that, he continued singing and strumming the stringless guitar much to the bemusement of his bandmates. They were only a 3 piece so obviously it had an effect.

The singer of a band I was in, heroically jumped into the crowd and beat up TWO skinheads who were hassling someone and then promptly jumped back onstage and continued singing. It happened so quick, I almost missed it. Now I'm reminded that both incidents happened at the same venue.

During a Sydney show in about '79, The Stranglers were being interviewed backstage and without warning jumped up, grabbed the female journalist and ran onstage and threw her into the crowd. Reports after their set, said they were trying to kick members of the audience in the head. Wonder what was up their arses that night.

A friend of mine saw Whiskeytown three times and they broke up on stage each time he saw them.

M Baker,

"i made debby harry cry and run off the stage"

Please tell.

At a Wildhearts show at Stubb's in Austin, I watched lead singer Ginger get pissed at something have to do with his guitar (one of those things the musician could hear and the audience could not) and yell at his tech to come fix it. The guy came out and fiddled with something, but whatever he did, it wasn't to Ginger's satisfaction. So as the roadie was walking offstage, Ginger threw his guitar at him, and the headstock hit the guy in the middle of his back, hard. Ginger then stormed offstage without so much as a backward glance to see if the guy was OK. He eventually came back with a different guitar and finished the show, picking up exactly where he left off as if nothing had happened. That's one of the ugliest displays of rock star ego I've ever seen.

Later on he wrote a long, rambling blog about that American tour, apologized for his behavior and said he had to basically treat that tech like a god for two days to keep him from quitting.

And you know, as embarassing and childish as that tantrum was, it still didn't keep the Wildhearts from blowing headliners The Darkness off the stage.

I've never witnessed a musician pulling an onstage freak-out like any of these. I've witnessed some abusive stage patter/behavior from a musician or two ... and I once saw Elvis C. leave the stage without a word, about a half-hour into his set, while the Attractions stood around wondering what was up. He came back after two minutes, apologized to the audience, and blamed it on some guy in the front row who was pissing him off with his behavior.

The only real onstage tantrum I've seen (on a par with the ones described above) was when I saw the comedian Gallagher. Someone in the audience threw a full beer bottle at him. Gallagher found the culprit, got out into the crowd, stood on the guy's table and bellowed at him to get out. The guy hesitated a bit, until the comedian picked up another full bottle off the table, poured its contents on the guy and yelled at him to get out.

Oh yeah - forgot about the time Gary Chapman, who at the time was Mr. Amy Grant, was playing at a Christian music festival and came out on stage and futzed around for a few minutes, mumbled something into the microphone, started playing, stopped halfway through the song, futzed around some more, started the same song over again, then when the quite polite audience finally had enough and began booing he announced "You're just jealous cuz I'm married to Amy Grant!" and left the stage.

I wasn't there, so please qualify this with some salt around the rim ... but I've heard that Ryan Adams interruped a show because someone in the audience shouted a request for "Summer of '69." Upon hearing that, Ryan waded out into the crowd, found the person who'd yelled that request, handed him money for the price of the ticket, and told him to leave.

I wouldn't call this a story about a freak out as much as a freaky story. Back in 1981 I went to see some live music at Fairmount Hall, a tiny meeting hall usually used by a fraternal organization (Masons?) in an older residential neighborhood in San Diego. X was playing that night and the hall was filled with tough looking, hard-slammin' skinheads. This was an unruly, potentially violent crowd and I was wearing my leather jacket and carrying a knife...just in case.

X was great as usual. Billy Zoom was at his best, playing a mix of precision rockabilly and hard-edged power pop riffs, delivered with his surreal mechanical Ken doll meets Devo posturing. Exene and John Doe's atypical minor harmonies were on key and on tempo. The band was cooking.

But about a third of the way through the show the crowd was getting wild and nasty and the vibe was becoming unpleasant. Some in the crowd seemed on the edge of violence. It was then that a full can of beer went sailing from near the front of the mosh pit aimed right at John Doe's head. Doe dodged the can, then almost instantaneously put down his bass and DIVED straight at the guy in the audience who threw the beer at him. He landed on top of the guy with his hands around his neck, lifted him by his neck until his feet weren't touching the ground, and ran with him about 25 feet to the front door of the hall and--literally--kicked his ass out the door.

Doe then lept back on stage, picked up his bass, and resumed playing the song, all without saying a word about what had just happened. The crowd cheered wildly.

Aha--a correction. Further research indicates the Fairmont Hall venue of the X concert was the "Union Hall for IAT&SE Local 122, the stagehand union." The page in that link takes you to a site with a wealth of information on the San Diego underground music & punk rock scene of the 1980s. Not that anyone else cares....

A lot of these stories seem to involve heckling. I remember a Britt Daniel solo show several years ago, when Spoon had maybe one album out and were still mainly an Austin phenomenon. Britt was opening for Hamell on Trial and facing a capacity crowd in the club. Some guy in the crowd started heckling him a few songs in, telling him he sucked. He took it for a while, but eventually put down his guitar and went into the crowd with a pissed-off look on his face to...I don't know what. Talk? Beat the guy up?

The thing that makes this ironic, though, is that, unlike the other stories being told here, Britt didn't have the support of the crowd. The heckler was right - he DID suck. (Most of his solo tunes were third-rate attempts to sound like Wire - only underscored when he played a Wire cover.) Applause was barely polite. Once Britt realized the crowd didn't have his back, he slunk back onstage and finished his set. I always thought less of him after that night. Having shit that could cause you bodily harm thrown at you is one thing, but if you can't continue in the face of a few insults, you need to find another line of work.

Fortunately Britt has mellowed considerably since then. That said, I bet no one heckles him at shows anymore, either.

Did they dare try to heckle Ed Hamell?

Nope. It was his then-hometown crowd (in fact, I think it was his farewell show before he moved back to NY, which didn't help Britt's case any) and everybody knew better. Every Hamell show I've been to he heckles the audience, especially if someone dares to get up to go to the bathroom.

I'd boo Serpant ID based on the name alone.

All of this reminds me of a Sparklehorse article I once read. Mark Linkhouse was talking about being stuck in a wheelchair and how it was impossible to deal properly with hecklers. Don't have the magazine anymore, so I can't quote it verbatim. Sorry.

I remember a band named Serpant ID that got roundly booed while opening up for Social Distortion at the Berkeley Square eons ago (it took an AC/DC cover to win the crowd over somewhat). Never did hear from again (for probably obvious reasons).

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Smashing Pumpkins took the stage as headliners and Billy Corgan was saying something to the effect of "Where's everybody going? Why's everybody going to the falafel stands?"

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I've been at the falafel stand for most of Billy's career. I got a hummus-stained copy of "Gish" around here somewhere. Anybody want it? It smells pretty strongly of (((sniff-sniff))) ... garlic.

I saw a remarkably weird couple of sets by the late and lamented Chris Whitley. One of which may be called an on-stage freakout, but the others were just weird.

I saw him do a song ("Judy") 3 times in a row because the applause wasn't good enough and stopped a song when 2 people got up to go to the bar.
He does "house concerts" now.

Some great freak-outs here! I wasnt at the show (fortunately) but I enjoyed watching this Billy Corgan freak out:

[www.youtube.com]

Is he wearing a dress?

Madis - I assume you're referring to Hamell doing house concerts and not Chris Whitley.

If Whitley showed up at my house now to do a concert I would be alarmed, to put it mildly.

yes, Hamell is following in the steps of Pat Dinizio and will actually play in your living versus Dinizio playing in your kitchen.

That'd be an audience freak-out.

I've read that Pete Doherty took that route, after his drug/legal problems became so overwhelming that Babyshambles couldn't get a concert booking anywhere in the UK.

I was at a Genesis show one time when Phil Collins started to freak out. Apparently, he could see someone committing a murder in the crowd. 12 months later, he recorded "In the Air Tonight."

Possibly the most ludicrous of all urban myths, that.

I do recall Mac McCaughan of Superchunk berating the entire crowd roundly for failing to applaud enough when they took the stage. This would have been around 1995. In spite of his initial fit of pique, they ended up putting on a great show.

Saw a Jeff Tweedy solo show a couple of years ago where he got fixated on this one dude in the audience for some reason. He initially made a comment about the guy having on a backwards ball cap and repeatedly called him a frat boy. He just kept ripping on this guy after every song, to the detriment of everyone in attendance. Finally the guy left/went to the lobby, and Tweedy seemed more at ease for the last 30 minutes. I still have no idea what it was about the guy that bothered him so much. It may just have been about the hat.



Post Edited (02-06-09 15:49)

I saw Courtney Love berate a guy in the front of the audience, just for wearing a Pearl Jam t-shirt.

Considering the source, though, that probably doesn't qualify as a musician freak-out. (We can argue about her musical talent, but it's safe to say that her whole career has been one long "freak-out.")

I saw Hope Sandoval flip off an audience and sulk off the stage because people were talking during a quiet number. It was about mid-way through the set and she did not return. Does that count as a "freak-out?" She seems like a pretty mellow lady, after all.

On a related note, I once saw a Mazzy Star audience boo a band off the stage. As an alleged member of said audience, it was embarassing. The behavior was so very unexpected.

Anyone care to take a crack at guessing who got booed? Memory is hazy ... the band didn't quit mid-song, but they cut their set short. I think. It's been a while and the drugs were 'a-coursin' through my veins.

I'd go with Acetone, only because Acetone opened for them when I saw 'em (1996 or thereabouts).

I have nothing to say good or ill re. said Acetone.

i saw the cocteau twins get booed off the stage at lollapalooza '97 in kansas city (the metallica year). it was pretty sad, not only to see people throwing rocks at them, but also that the two chances i've had to see them i've missed them...

The Cocteau Twins performing in an amphitheater in the middle of the afternoon during the summer opening for a crowd that was there to see Metallica was always a recipe for disaster, especially when the rest of the lineup was Soundgarden, the Ramones, Rancid and the Screaming Trees.

That was kind of like tossing a swan into a pit of velociraptors and hoping for the best.

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The Cocteau Twins performing in an amphitheater in the middle of the afternoon during the summer opening for a crowd that was there to see Metallica was always a recipe for disaster, especially when the rest of the lineup was Soundgarden, the Ramones, Rancid and the Screaming Trees.

That was kind of like tossing a swan into a pit of velociraptors and hoping for the best.

Another one of those "Jimi Hendrix Experience opening for The Monkees" sort of mismatches.

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"Nobody thought, 'This is screaming, scaring-the-balls-off-your-daddy music compared with the Monkees,' you know? It didn't cross anybody's mind that it wasn't gonna fly. And there's poor Jimi, and the kids go, 'We want the Monkees, we want the Monkees.'"

[...]

"We went early to the show and listened to what this man could do because he really was a world class musician."

-Peter Tork, speaking about Jimi Hendrix

Even as a little kid, Mike Nesmith was my favorite Monkee. But Tork was my second fave.

I hadn't realized that Davy Jones was one of the other guests on the first Beatles episode of Ed Sullivan until I chose this morning - entirely at random, which was odd considering it happened 45 years ago today - to listen to an archived episode of This American Life this morning that featured a story about Charlie Brill & Mitzi McCall, who were also guests on that show.

"The Cocteau Twins performing in an amphitheater in the middle of the afternoon during the summer opening for a crowd that was there to see Metallica was always a recipe for disaster, especially when the rest of the lineup was Soundgarden, the Ramones, Rancid and the Screaming Trees"

I saw Bjork at a Big Day Out show shoehorned in between The Ramones and Soundgarden and she blew them both away. (with a very stripped-back band to boot. I think it was just drums, bass and a guy playing percussion, sax and keys)

Saw Julie Andrews throw a dish at somebody once.

Post Edited (02-15-10 20:06)

whenever andy mcka(w)y of roxy music freaked out i felt grateful just to be there too.

went to a dead milkmen concert and it ended by the lead singer chasing a slam dancer in the audience and tackling him.

at a black 47 concert i was right in front of chris byrne and there was a big fight and i happen to be right inbetween it. one guys attempts to hit another guy and hits me acciedentally and in the process i spill my beer on chris byrne .
later on in the show i apologize and over a beer he tells me we have a short talk of his stint in the nypd. very cool guy.

song they were playing at the time- every little thing gonna be allright-bob marley