Last week we posted 10 of our favorite moments in rock and roll heckling. And like a lonely barfly clutching a lukewarm bottle of High Life yelling for “Freebird” you demanded satisfaction. You wanted the best, you got the best! Here are a half dozen more concert tales of terror.
Judas! – The controversy surrounding Bob Dylan’s radical shift from strictly acoustic protest folk to a new electric sound is one that could have volumes written about it. Two particular incidents from the period are ingrained in music fans’ minds. It’s difficult to say what really happened at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Historians and revisionists would like to believe that the crowd of folkies was booing Dylan’s new electric sound. Al Kooper who played keyboards at the Newport set refutes this in his book Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards, claiming that the truncated 15 minute set (the pickup band was going on with only one rehearsal under their belt and a repertoire of just three songs) was more a matter of circumstance than a reaction to the fans’ disgust. At the behest of Joan Baez and the festival’s organizers a choked up Dylan returned to the stage with an acoustic guitar in hand and played a tearjerking “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue,” with the particularly potent and timely lyrics instructing listeners to leave their preconceived notions behind. Later Dylan would tour the U.K. with a new electric band. At a performance in Manchester one audience member screamed “Judas!” to which Dylan replied, “I don’t believe you, you’re a liar” instructing the band to “play it f***ing loud!” The band lurched into a feedback-drenched version of “Like a Rolling Stone.” The infamous heckler, John Cordwell, later recounted that it wasn’t so much the new sound but rather the sound in general—a shoddy house system and a throwaway performance by Dylan—that he was angry about. Both incidents are covered in depth in the Dylan doc No Direction Home as well as in Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There.
Glad to See You Go – Seemingly unnatural pairings are the easiest way to provoke a crowd revolt. Take two slightly dissimilar bands, put ’em on back to back, and watch the fireworks. While some bands struggle (I once saw a band opening for AC/DC play an uphill-battle set under a constant barrage of beer cans from a hostile crowd ready for “Hell’s Bells”) some welcome the venomous rage and often thrive off of it. Synth duo Suicide were of the latter. One story later recounted in Marc Masters’ book No Wave details a gig the band played opening for the Ramones at New York’s Palladium in 1978.
The duo often opened for big New Wave groups like Elvis Costello and the Cars, absorbing the wrath of angry audiences and spitting it right back. At a 1978 show opening for the Ramones at the Palladium, hecklers nearly drowned out Suicide’s set, to which Vega yelled “What’re you all f***in’ booin' for? You’re all gonna f****n’ die!” “We didn’t want to entertain people,” Vega said years later. “We wanted to throw the meanness and nastiness of the street right back at the audience. If we sent them all running for the exits, that was considered a good show.”
The Ramones—those Carbona-loving losers from Forest Hills—certainly were no strangers to harsh audience criticism either. During one infamous command performance for C. Montgomery Burns’ birthday the reclusive tycoon quips, “Have the Rolling Stones killed,” met only with a meek “But sir…” protest from Smithers. “Do as I say!” Burns staunchly replies.
“Five Minutes Alone” – At a show in San Diego, California, Pantera proved to fans that you should never mess with Texas. Singer Phil Anselmo dealt with an angry heckler by whipping the crowd into a fury and inciting the masses to administer a lesson to the angry concert-goer … with their fists. In response to the incident the battered recipient’s father filed a lawsuit against the band. The incident inspired the song “Five Minutes Alone” from Pantera’s 1994 record Far Beyond Driven. Drummer Vinnie Paul would later recount that he fan’s father said, “You just give me five minutes alone with that Phil Anselmo guy and I'll show him who’s big daddy around here.” [Anselmo’s] response: “You just give me five minutes with that cat’s dad and I’ll whoop his ass.” In a tragic twist Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell would later end up on the wrong side of a heckling incident gone awry. A deranged fan allegedly angry that the Dime’s new band Damageplan was playing old Pantera songs fatally wounded the guitarist at a 2004 concert in Columbus, Ohio. The world of heavy metal is still reeling from the loss.
Amy Winehouse to Bono: “No! No! No!” – They may have finally gotten her off to rehab but before going Amy Winehouse was making headlines almost daily with some foul-mouthed invective. Whether it’s the alcohol talking or just a spotlight-stealing move, Winehouse hasn’t held back, taking on adversaries despite any career-stalling repercussions. So far her approach is working. At the 2006 Q Magazine Awards—before the singer had broken stateside and garnered a clutch of Grammys—Winehouse had one outburst that thrust her directly into the tabloids front pages. During U2’s acceptance speech for the Band of Bands award, an intoxicated Winehouse echoed many fans’ sentiments when she blurted out “Shut up! I don't give a f***!” Out with the old, in with the new, I guess.
The Wall – No one would believe that a phlegm ball lobbed at an overzealous Pink Floyd fan by a derisive Roger Waters would lead to one of the most self-indulgent and overblown concept records in rock history. But that’s exactly what happened when a fan tried to scale a fence to jump on stage with the band at a show in Montreal on the 1977 tour in support of their last decent record, Animals. Waters, feeling increasing alienation from his own fanbase, concocted the storyline of The Wall; a rock star withdraws emotionally and becomes a vapid shell of a man to deal with the rigors of the touring lifestyle. Semi-autobiographical, the sessions took their toll on the band, prompting the dismissal of founding member keyboardist Richard Wright. Classic rock radio still has not fully recovered from the damage wrought in the wake of this double LP and Waters’ use of Nazi imagery did nothing to endear him to many of the band’s fans.
Stay tuned as we uncover more antics and shenanigans in our follow-up piece “When Musicians Attack.”
As an added bonus here are a few clips submitted by the commenters at Ultimate Guitar of some other rockstars antics:
Queens of The Stone Age
Brian Jonestown Massacre
The Who vs. Abbie Hoffman at Woodstock