Booed in general or other audience disapproval (see third example) I've only seen it happen to a couple of opening acts and they weren't booed off the stage, but more so not exactly encouraged when they wanted to finish their set (booed but it didn't cause them to storm off). The first was a band called The Katz who opened for Van Halen on their Women and Children First tour in 81 (I think). Van Halen, back in the day, were notorious for picking lame/off the beaten path openers that would ensure that they would be roundly welcomed to the stage after the dreary openers got off and The Katz were no exception. A very by the numbers, generic club rock band that "got lucky" to open for Van Halen, but the audience hated them. By the time their 30 minute set was almost over the lead singer was basically pleading for the audience to let them do one more song. It was kind of sad. The finished their set, but it was to a very unhappy audience. Starfighters who opened for Ozzy Osbourne (with UFO in the middle slot) were also booed when they wanted to continue with their set past what the audience felt they should. The singer wound up flipping the audience the double birds at the end. That didn't go over well. My third example is Santana and though they weren't booed off the stage, they were so boring that a massive cup fight erupted during their set at the 1982 Texxas Jam (which also featured Point Blank, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Sammy Hagar, and Journey). This was back when they touring for Shango and did set featuring a lot of songs from that album and Zebop!. They were real jazzy/jammy as well and the audience couldn't relate to them after three fairly concise, hard rocking acts before them. So, the crowd wadded up their paper beer drinking cups and the entire Cotton Bowl in Dallas turned into a free-for-all of people throwing them at each other for remainder of their set (about 30 minutes or so).
After the Fire openned for Van Halen on the Fair warning tour. Not really booed off, but they knew it was time to leave.
THE BAND/BOB DYLAN, The Forum. Was it 1974? The audience booed the Band off the stage, believe it or not. They kept shouting "Dylan!" It was shockingly embarrassing. My dad (who drove us and was waiting in the parking lot) sympathized with me. He told me they booed Benny Goodman as well back in the day..
I was at the LA Coliseum in 1981 when Prince was famously booed off the stage when he was one of the opening acts for the Rolling Stones. He came out in a trench coat and a G-string and proceeded to get pelted with cups and socks filled with sand. Bill Graham came out afterwards and taunted audience members to come up and try to get in front of the crowd.
I shared this in the thread about most despised bands but will again.... Went to the Texxas Jam at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. It was 1983 and I was a sophomore in HS. At that time, firmly a meat 'n taters rock fan, as were most of the 80-85,000 there. The music started early afternoon with Uriah Heep. They were followed by Ted Nugent, Triumph (my favorite that day) and Sammy Hagar (a firm Texas crowd favorite) in order. The headliner was Styx, promoting their Kilroy album. To say that the crowd was displeased with the kind of show that Styx was trying to stage would be a huge understatement. I'd never seen anything like it and still haven't to this day. It was uncomfortable to be around it. The boos were merciless and the crowd was getting more and more out of control as they continued their set. Beer, cups and trash were being thrown toward the stage and amongst the crowd itself. Never liked Styx but they earned my respect that day for daring to keep plugging what they believed in without giving up. The guts and balls it took to stand in the face of that kind of vitriol had to be admired.
Cup fight! November 27, 1982. the B-52's and Joan Jett open for The Who at the Tangerine Bowl in Orlando, Florida. The B-52's came on the stage to a real hostile and angry crowd that spent the early afternoon loading up on alcohol in the lots outside only to enter the stadium and have all of their stash of the spiked bottles of Coca- Cola, pints and wine sacks taken away. Real tight security that day. The only thing to drink was the soda purchased in paper cups by the vendors. The B-52's took the stage and got pelted for half the set with balled up cups. It was a real shame, because even though I wasn't a B-52's fan, I thought they did put on a decent show. It was a sad sight to watch crews have to come out with brooms and mops to clean up the mess between acts. Not sure that the line-up was well thought out. This is even worse to me in hindsight when I think about how mediocre The Who set was.
I was at that same show. I passed out standing on the ground earlier in the day during Nugent due to heat exhaustion. I woke in a Soho doorway where the policeman knew my name ... (actually, in the first aid station). Later, during the Hagar set my friend was beaten up for bumping shoulders with a guy (I'm assuming was on meth) when they passed each other on the stadium floor. My other friend and I looked on in horror as this guy, who must have been 15 years older than my friend (we were about 16 at the time), punched my friend mercilessly in the face. Well, after that, we stayed around beaten, exhausted, and shell shocked for Styx. They came out with the "Mr. Roboto" stuff and we were like, "dude, let's get out of here". We were gone within three songs. I caught that After the Fire set with Van Halen, but that was the Diver Down tour, as a band named G-Force (the Brothers Giovanni, see?) were the openers for the Fair Warning tour. They got some boos as well.
White Lion. Opening for AC/DC 1988 ?? They were getting pelted Dude beside me bought a couple beers just to throw at em Got pretty crazy
figures van halen would have lame bands open for them.....i saw them on their first major tour in 1976 or so in philly and i basically booed them as they were so bad......such a terrible band.....
Men Without Hats (or talent) opening for The Stranglers in Toronto in '81. They were terrible and got just what they deserved.
Alice in Chains courted disaster when they opened for Kiss on their '96 reunion tour. Saw them in Louisville, and when their drummer stopped their set to howl an intentionally off-key rendition of Beth, I thought the crowd was going to storm the stage. The anger coming from the audience was palpable. What was the band thinking?
Damn, that sucks tho' I can definitely see that happening. We are about the same age then. I went to a lot of those Texxas Jams (five) and The Super Bowl of Rock and Roll at Texas Stadium and the crowd was always kind of the same. I got my head busted open by a flying bottle of spit at the 85 Jam during Bon Jovi's set (Scorpions, Deep Purple one) and had to visit the aid station myself. Not sure if they even do these types of things anymore but I was stitched up at the Cotton Bowl and back in my lower balcony seats for The Scorpions set (by the way, has anybody ever understood what the heck Klaus Meine is saying when talking to an audience?). I heard Night Ranger wasn't treated too well but didn't witness it so won't comment. Regarding Van Halen, saw them on Fair Warning, Diver Down and the 1984 tours (in fact, I think the 84 tour Dallas gigs were some of the last with DLR as frontman, at least in the US). I remember After the Fire and can't recall the band that opened the 84 tour but have no recollection of the Fair Warning openers. I was pretty young during their Fair Warning tour and was as scared as I was excited!
Here's something I wrote some years ago for another Forum: --- The Beastie Boys - Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool - 30 May, 1987 Growing up in the 60s, it was hard not to fall in love with Liverpool. It seemed to be full of musicians and comedians, and I thought everyone lived like The Liver Birds! When it came time to think about where I wanted to study, Liverpool was high on my list. When the first lecturer I met there during my day of interviews turned out to be the brother of the owner of the village café, it just seemed like fate. I had to go there. Liverpool is a great place, and Scousers are great people. They can be hysterically funny, but they don't suffer fools gladly, and they are fiercely loyal both to their city and to each other. Liverpool also has a reputation, unjustly I feel, as being a rough place. True, it is a port, and has more than its fair share of shady characters and shady areas, but overall it is a vibrant, exciting place. Like a lot of places, the locals fancy themselves as a bunch of hard-nuts. Rivalry with other cities, and especially with other soccer fans, meant fighting was, and is, a way of life. Into this arena in May 1987 came The Beastie Boys, three white guys from very privileged backgrounds. Like Napoleon, they would soon meet their Waterloo! In my concert going experience, there are a few acts that seem to generate an excitement and expectation level before each show that is palpable. You have the feeling that an energy level is building, and the place could explode at any minute. The Stones have that, Paul McCartney (in lieu of The Beatles) has that, Led Zeppelin had it. I had been turned onto the Beasties by a friendly local record store salesman, Tim. How could you not like the amusing lyrics and the Zep riffs? When the Liverpool date was announced, Tim asked if I was interested in going. Of course, it seemed like it would be fun. We turned up at the Royal Court Theatre, and immediately you could sense something in the air. There were tons of scallies outside trying to find some scam to get themselves inside. We strolled up to the door and Tim knew the security guard that checked our tickets. "It's pretty lively in there," he said. After stopping for a beer, we entered the theatre proper. The energy level in the room was running at alarm levels. "F--k, this place is wound up," said Tim. Deciding that this was perhaps not the best night to be front of stage, we hung around at the back, just in front of the mixing desk. The support act was another Russell Simmons act. I can't remember exactly who, but they were tolerated more than enjoyed, and the crowd taunted them the entire time. Eventually, it was time for the Boys themselves to take the stage. They had 2 guys running turntables behind them, and two strippers in cages on each side of the stage. No sooner had they begun than it started raining cans of beer on the stage, and the throwers were good shots! They hit the turntables, they hit the strippers, they hit the Beasties. After a few minutes, the show was stopped, the band left the stage, and someone made an impassioned plea for the 'nonsense' to stop, and that the show would not continue until people stopped throwing stuff, and refrained from throwing anything when the band re-appeared. There were some jeers from the crowd but the rain of missiles stopped. The band re-appeared on stage, and immediately the can throwing re-started with renewed vigor and renewed accuracy. The strippers were out of the cages in a heartbeat. The DJs were more interested in ducking behind their turntables than spinning discs. The Beasties were doing their best to act tough, and dodge the missiles, but they quickly realized that they were up against a far more potent force than they could cope with. They made one more plea to no avail, and then left the stage for good (with their baseball bats between their legs!). An announcement was then made that the concert was over, and people should leave the venue. This did not go down well with the crowd, who intensified their bombardment of the stage even more. When people realized that the band really was not coming back, some decided to take matters into their own hands. There was an almighty crash, and the mixing desk and lighting console were suddenly reduced to their component parts. People started trying to storm the stage and destroy the rest of the gear. The next thing we hear is a poof, and suddenly the place is filling with tear gas. Things were rapidly getting out of hand. Tim looked at me, and said, "I think its time to go, don't you?" We left just as Merseyside's finest arrived in their meat wagons. They would arrest 5 people, and later arrest Adam Horowitz for allegedly returning one of the cans with a baseball bat and hitting a female fan in the face. We strolled out with the chant of "We tamed the Beasties!" ringing in our ears. Outside on the street, Tim and I looked at each other with that "Did that really just happen" look. The show had lasted less than ten minutes. It was a surreal experience. No concert before or since matched the ferocious energy level that oozed from that crowd. You could sense that something big was going to happen, and it did. --- http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...sVUAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ZJADAAAAIBAJ&pg=2523,1698869 http://www.beastiemania.com/gigog/show.php?g=19870530
This may or may not count for the purposes of the thread: King Crimson were playing their first North American concert, since '84, at Univ. @ Buffalo Center for the Arts in May '95. California Guitar Trio was the unannounced opening act. Fans couldn't wait another minute to see Crimson. So, the tension level was high when when these 3 hit the stage. Somebody near the front even yelled, "Play one song and get off the stage!" They went through their set, and left to a standing ovation! Never seen anything like it. Yes, it was well-earned. CGT returned to Buffalo a few years later at the Tralf, and recollected a bit of the story. This was tucked away in my memory bank, until there was an opportunity to see them again, a couple years after that, in Toronto at the Opera House. After the concert, they all came out for the meet & greet (sign autographs, pose for pics and chat). I reminded Paul Richards of the opening gig with Crimson. He explained that they had already performed a number of dates in Europe. So, they were well-rehearsed. They also had the confidence with a "let's show them" attitude, which they did. Very impressive!
I was at the 3rd and final 1984 show in Dallas....the last show of the US tour, they had a brief Europen jaunt later in the summer. I deliberately missed the opener, which was Y&T.....Autograph had been the opener earlier in the tour, I would have seen them had they played Dallas
I was at an Ozzy Osbourne show in '95 when Filter opened (this was when "Hey Man, Nice Shot" was on the radio and MTV) and the crowd was pretty impatient and booed them. I didn't mind because I thought Filter sucked.
Rock fans are really a class act! Maybe that's why I stick to jazz when going out, despite enjoying rock music on disk. No boozy, smelly booing <moderated> for me.
Definitely in the "other" category: Slayer, 1988, City Limits, Pittsburgh One of those Altamont things where evil is palpable and you know things are gonna go wrong. Overkill and Motorhead opened (what an amazing lineup). I was first row center and there was a wooden barricade supported by metal bars between the audience and the stage. When Slayer hit the stage the crowd thrust forward and the barricade completely collapsed. I fell forward with the weight of the crowd on top of me, and I remember thinking I was going to suffocate; I honestly don't remember how I got out of that. The whole thing was one of the most violent, insane things I've ever been a part of. People were running up on stage, kicking Kerry and Jeff's guitar effects pedals around, punches flying everywhere... Slayer stopped within a few seconds of playing, the house lights came up, and Tom started to ask the crowd to please calm down and be cool. What commenced was then about half the crowd booing him and flipping him off. He just stood there bewildered. Keep in mind this is Slayer, standing there looking at us like we are completely evil and out of control (which was true). Anyway, things were sorted out and calmed down enough for the band to play a full set, but the whole thing was an unbelievable physical endurance test just to stay vertical and not get in a fight...more like being in a war than enjoying yourself at a concert.
During SARSstock in Toronto, Justin Timberlake came out to do a song with the Stones, and Keith and Mick had to come forward and vouch for him because everything the crowd had was being thrown at him. That really wasn't a Timberlake crowd. Anyone could have told you that. ccm
The Knack opened for Boston at the Swing Auditorium on February 24, 1979. Hated The Knack. Loved Boston. The Knack were not allowed to finish their set. No Sharona! So guess I didn't sit through the opening act!
During part of Iron Maiden's tour for Powerslave they had Twisted Sister (!) opening for them. Not a smart move, the diehard Maiden crowd had no patience for TS's anthem-based makeup & hair schtick, they were mercilessly booed (and pelted with whatever could be chucked their way), TS held in there for a few songs but cut their set short and got the hell out of there!
