Rock stars are known for causing commotion at their concerts. Whether it’s by egging on the audience to be ever more raucous, or performing incredible stunts, or setting off enough firebombs for four cities’ worth of Fourth of July celebrations…“wild” is kind of their whole deal. But while everyone knows about Ozzy Osbourne biting off a bat’s head or the chaos that was Woodstock ‘99, you might not have heard about these crazy concert shenanigans!
Videos by American Songwriter
1. Foo Fighters Cause an Earthquake — 2011
Foo Fighters know how to rock, but one concert in New Zealand in 2011 literally moved the earth. The show brought 50,000 fans to an arena in Auckland. The noise of the music paired with the enormous crowd caused seismic activity to register up to a mile and a half from the concert venue. In other words, it was so loud that it caused literal geological tremors. Local seismic stations measured it at three shakes per second. Just a year later, a Foo Fighters concert in Belfast was audible 12 miles from the venue—but hey, volume is a feature for the Foos, not a bug.
2. Slipknot Fans Start a Bonfire — 2021
It’s not exactly surprising that Slipknot concerts can get wild. Going nuts is one of the basic rules of a heavy metal gathering. But things got out of hand in 2021 when fans at a concert in Phoenix, Arizona, started an actual bonfire inside an arena. The band kept playing for a while, but as the fire grew bigger—with flames jumping as high as 30 feet in the air—it became clear the venue wasn’t safe anymore. The music stopped for about 30 minutes so that the bonfire, stacked high with wooden chairs fans had piled up, could be extinguished.
3. Rage Against the Machine Show Turns Into a Police Standoff — 2000
In 2000, Rage Against the Machine was featured at an unusually high-profile event—namely, just outside the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles. MTV had planned the concert as part of an effort to encourage the younger generation to vote. But with tensions already high in Los Angeles after several months of protests, the concert teetered on becoming part of the riots itself. 2,000 LAPD officers were on site in riot gear, and helicopters circled above while the band performed. As tensions escalated, they began to shoot tear gas and rubber bullets at concert attendees, and the day wrapped up with six arrests.
4. The Who Causes Explosions Onstage — 1967
Who drummer Keith Moon was known for his increasingly elaborate bits onstage. In the late 1960s, hard rock was still new, so Moon was a trailblazer. One of his favorite gimmicks was to rig his drum set with a cherry bomb so that it would explode during the final performance of the night. But during a 1967 performance on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, he decided to go bigger than ever before. Some accounts say he used 10 times his usual amount of explosives for the trick. The resulting explosion sent instruments flying across the stage and likely contributed to guitarist Pete Townshend’s permanent hearing damage.
[RELATED: The Origins of the Blazing British Rock Band The Who]
5. Jimi Hendrix Burns His Guitar — 1967
Musicians setting fire to their instruments has become such a classic rocker move that it’s now a parody of itself. But that move originated with one of the greatest guitarists of all time—Jimi Hendrix himself. Hendrix wasn’t so widely known by the time of his 1967 performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in California. Worse still, the loss of a coin toss meant he had to appear right after The Who. How was he going to contend with their bombastic stage antics? Hendrix later described the gesture he decided on as “a sacrifice of love”: as he ended his performance, the band’s manager soaked his guitar in lighter fluid. Hendrix threw several lit matches at his Stratocaster until it was spewing flames. Finally, with the instrument still smoldering, he threw it into the crowd and walked off stage. Jimi Hendrix went from up-and-comer to instant legend.
Photo by Getty Images/Getty Images
