Great bands- embarrassing live concert moments

I was there when the Pogues famously fired their constantly drunk lead singer. He barely sang an entire line the whole show, kept stumbling back into the other musicians, and finally wandered of the stage for a couple of songs, leaving other shocked and disgusted band members to sing in his place. Shortly after the show I read an article about how the Pogues finally fired their singer, and it described what I had seen to a T.

 

I put "screw-up" in quotes, OK? If he still does it, then it's obviously not one...

 

I've mentioned this before, so wont elaborate too much here, but when Bruce Springsteen played Sydney in March 2003, the power went down 4 times in the first hour. 30000+ understanding but slightly annoyed people..... the problem was apparently that the technology they were using was too advanced for the venue, which was in fact a cricket stadium, not meant for rock concerts (although I have seen many there without hitch).

We got some extra encores for the trouble (Rosalita being one) and when he came out for the first encore, alone behind Bittans piano, he described it as a "weiner shrinking" experience

Due to some issues he had with the promoter, it was later reported by foreign media after he left the country, that he was heard to say that he would not return to Australia for a long long time.

 

Did Carl Perkins lose his fingertips in a ceiling fan onstage? That had to be the most horrific of all, yes?

Peace Love and don't bleed on my blue suede shoes.
Marky

 

I have two "barf" stories and a "choking" story:
When I was a kid, I saw Steve Lawrence and Edie Gourmet (no, I know I've butchered the spelling of their names) with my parents at The Ohio State Fair. It was evening, and in the summer in Ohio, we get lots of June Bugs and moths and the like. From what I understand, as Edie was opening her mouth widely to belt out a song, in flew a June bug. She rushed to the side of the stage where she up-chucked profusely.
Second story: a local Columbus, Ohio band in the eighties, who where quite good, called Ronald Koal & the Trillionaires, were doing a live broadcast. I don't know what happened, but lead singer Ronald Koal hit this really high note then proceeded to "projectile vomit". He tried to play it off like it was part of the act, but it was pretty obvious what had happened.
Third story: Also when I was a kid, I remember seeing an awards show on TV, where Lou Rawls was singing live. The song was "You'll Never Find" or whatever it's called. Towards the end, he completely lost it, and started coughing over and over and over. They cut to a commercial.

 

There's the ever-jubilant Van Morrison at the 1974 Montreaux Jazz Festival "If you don't like it go f*** yourself ok? There's a guy paying me to stand up here and sing and that's what I'm doing. Do you wanna come up and do it?..."

 

Jefferson Starship at the Wisconsin State Fair[1990 winds of change tour]....someone from the audience hands Grace Slick a pink elephant[right before they went into White Rabbit]and she starts this rant saying"the pink elephant says F you" for like 5 minutes...all the while i'm thinking there may be kids in the audience who may be offended by this.

 

Bruce at No Nukes (Shame, Shame)

Let's not forget Bruce Springsteen's well-documented public humiliation of ex-girlfriend and celeb photog Lynn Goldsmith the night of his 30th birthday on September 22, 1979, during his performance at one of the No Nukes concerts at Madison Square Garden.

 

Never heard that one...as far as I know, Carl was picking up until the stroke that he eventually passed away from.

And anyway, didn't Mythbusters prove that a ceiling fan isn't strong enough to take off someone's head, let alone some fingertips?

 

Here is a brief account by photog Bob Leafe:

M.U.S.E. Concerts (No Nukes) - Madison Square Garden, NYC 1979

Around the time of the 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' album, Lynn, a MAJOR music photographer, was Bruce's girlfriend and tour photographer. After their breakup, Bruce supposedly had an agreement with her that she was not to photograph him anymore.

During his No Nukes performance, Bruce spots something, suddenly leaves the stage and plucks secretly-shooting Lynn from the 12th row, escorts her up onto the stage, down the back steps, and out the door.

While this is occurring, everyone is standing around, going 'Who IS that'? I knew who it was and fired away. This shot was published in a Springsteen book.

---For the shot (in B&W and captioned "Lynn Goldsmith and Bruce Springsteen"), go to

http://bobleafe.com/layout/Results.tpl?cart=105784627278012&artist=Bruce+Springsteen&startat=1

and scroll down to 1979.

 

Sorry that Lynn Goldsmith found it humiliating to be pulled up on stage. Didn't being pulled up on stage "at random" during the "Dancing in the Dark" video help kickstart Courtney Cox's career?

 

And then there's Van Morrison's Performance on The Band's "The Last Waltz". Talk about drunk!


_Alan

 

There was quite a bit of substance abuse going on that night. I think I read once that a certain performer came out with a bunch of coke stuck to his nose? They had to airbrush that out of the film.

 

Neil Young came out with a big coke booger hanging out of one nostril, and they had to remove it frame by frame -- which was an expensive, painstaking process in those days.

Re: Lynn Goldsmith, if the accounts I've read are accurate, she was pulled on stage by the hair, berated by Springsteen over the PA system, and then given the bum's rush. Not exactly the Boss's finest hour.

 

He may be drunk but I wouldn't call it an embarrassing performance! (Except maybe for his outfit.)

 

Another Pete Townshend story, as told to me by a friend. In Indianapolis during the 1982 WHO tour, Pete falls on his **** as he jumps and windmills. The fall tore a huge hole in the seat of his pants. Pete gets up like nothing happened and played the rest of the show with his **** hangin' out.

 

As I stated in another thread recently, I've been listening to several bootlegs from the Stones' 1969 U.S. Tour, and Keith frequently suffered from major tuning problems on that tour as well. I've seen many guitarists who are able to tune on the fly, so to speak, while they are still playing. I guess that Keith can't do this.

Someone in this thread mentioned seeing Bob Dylan when he was stoned or drunk during the 80s. While I was a student at the University of Georgia during the mid- to late-80s, I saw Dylan give perhaps the worst performance I have ever seen from a major artist. The whole concert was a game of "guess what song I'm playing now?", as every song was in a different key, or tempo, or both, than the original recording. A friend of mine was one of the promoters of the concert, and got to go backstage. She said that Dylan was clearly drunk or stoned out of his mind. I've since seen Bob give several great performances on the Never Ending Tour, so I can forgive him for the one bad concert that I saw. I've been through bad periods in my life, too, I just didn't have thousands of paying concert-goers witness them.

 

How about the Beatles on Ed Sullivan with John muffing some of the lyrics of Help while Paul grimaces and professionally sings back up on the verses as John is momentarily lyrically lost.

 

Well, there was that time Rick(y) Nelson and band went to Greenville, South Carolina to play a concert. What's embarrassing about that you ask? The nightclub that he was booked to play was in Greenville, "NORTH" Carolina, about 300+ miles away! They got back in the plane and although a little late, still made the show.