PERFORMING live in front of thousands may be a dream come true for rock and pop stars – but what if the gig-goers’ behaviour tries your patience?
Simply Red lead singer Mick Hucknall saw red this week, stopping a gig to berate an audience member.
The 80s super band were performing at the OVO Arena Wembley for their 40th anniversary tour when frontman Mick called out a fan’s behaviour.
In footage Mick can be heard saying “shut it” whilst pointing at a person in the crowd.
The singer, 65, then shouts: “Sock in it! I’m sick of hearing it!”
He then addresses the rest of the audience to apologise for the outburst.
Mick continues: “I’m sorry about that but you know, I can’t concentrate – he’s yelling so loud.
“You’ve come to hear me sing, not him, with the greatest respect.”
While Mick’s outburst has gone viral online, it is positively tame compared to some of the most infamous meltdowns in rock history.
Courtney Love
From flashing on stage, to stage diving and even punching fans, Courtney Love’s on-stage meltdowns are unrivalled.
Love’s husband, Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain, tragically took his own life in 1994 which sadly appeared to prompt her behaviour to spiral.
In 1995 the Hole lead singer faced battery charges after allegedly punching four young male fans who were waiting for her gig to start in Orlando.
“She told the crowd she would not start playing until there were more women in the front,” 19-year-old Robert Lucas testified.
Lucas claimed she jumped down from the stage within seconds and started throwing punches. He said he was hit three times in the left shoulder and that he was bruised for a week.
The judge dismissed the case on grounds that the teens “weren’t exposed to any greater amount of violence than could reasonably be expected at an alternative rock concert”.
The same year she berated the crowd at a music festival, before stage diving into the fans, giving them the middle finger and flashing at them before security pulled her out.
She later said she had little memory of 1994 and 1995 as she had been using large amounts of Rohypnol and heroin at the time.
Axl Rose
The Guns n Roses frontman turned on-stage tantrums into an impressive art form.
But none more so than during a 1991 gig in St Louis which sparked a riot,
Rose got so enraged at a fan videoing him that he launched himself off stage into the crowd to snatch the offender’s camera.
When he eventually made it back on stage he ended the show abruptly shouting “Well, thanks to the lame-ass security, I’m going home!”, slammed his microphone down on the stage and left.
It was left to guitarist Slash to tell the audience “He just smashed the microphone. We’re out of here.”
But the angry fans were having none of it and proceeded to riot for three hours with dozens of people injured.
Rose was later charged with inciting the riot but the case was dropped after a judge ruled he wasn’t to blame.
Guns N’ Roses did not return to play St Louis again until 2017.
Kanye West
In 2016 the volatile rapper delivered one of the most iconic onstage meltdowns in music history.
After showing up 90 minutes late to his show in Sacramento he exploded into a rant, berating Beyonce and Jay-Z, criticising everything and everyone from radio playlists to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the politics of Hillary Clinton.
He the dramatically shouted “Get ready to have a field day press because the show’s over” before dropping his mic and storming off stage as the crowd booed.
He later cancelled the rest of his tour citing exhaustion and a ‘debilitating medical condition’.
Amy Winehouse
To close her 2008 Glastonbury set Amy Winehouse belted out her hit Rehab from the photo pit.
But she soon appeared to take umbrage with a fan in the front row and elbowed him in the head before security could usher her back on stage.
However there were no hard feelings from the fan concerned. James Gostelow said: “Not everyone can say they have been hit by Amy Winehouse.”
He claimed the incident was a case of mistaken identity after someone in the crowd threw a hat towards Amy.
“I saw a hat being thrown from behind me and it hit Amy’s beehive,” Gostelow explained. “She looked down, saw me looking up and her elbow went for me. She caught my forehead, then someone may have shouted something from the back, which is when she went in again.”
Pitbull
Mr Worldwide lost it when a fan would not stop throwing dollar bills on stage during a 2009 Colorado gig.
The rapper gave him several warnings but when he didn’t stop he decided to bring the offender up on stage to publicly shame him in front of the rest of the crowd.
But the guy didn’t get the message and that’s when things went wrong. “When I bring the m******a up on the stage, he throws a wad of money in my face,” Pit told MTV after the incident. “Natural instinct kicked in . . . As soon as he threw that money, it was on from there.”
Pit punched the offending fan in the face with a powerful right hook -then got back to rapping “Bojangles.”
Keith Richards
In 1981 the Rolling Stones were playing their final show of their Tattoo You tour in Hampton, Virginia, when a fan apparently got over-excited at their rendition of Satisfaction and stormed the stage.
Richards clubbed the fan a couple of times with his guitar and then casually re-strapped the instrument and carried on with the track.
In an interview later he said that security hadn’t acted quickly enough and he was just watching Mick Jagger’s back.
And he even paid the $200 to bail the fan out of jail later.
Oasis
The relationship between the Gallagher brothers has always been tense to say the least.
But a 1994 gig in LA a dodgy set list, hard drugs, tiredness and frustration could have sparked the end of the band just as they were making it big.
According to guitarist Paul “Bonehead” Arthurs, Liam was “snorting lines of crystal meth on stage”. Noel apparently threw a tambourine at Liam’s head to stop him. No fight happened that night, but Noel quit the band the next day before rejoining later.
But the band when on to conquer the world for another 15 years before their dramatic split in 2009 following another row between the brothers backstage in Paris.
They reunited this year for a sell-out tour, and so far there have been no reports of any bust-ups.
Justin Bieber
Belieber or not, most of us are familiar with the Canadian singer’s temper tantrums.
From egging a neighbour’s house in 2014 to explosive confrontations with paparazzi, we’ve seen it all.
One of Bieber‘s most iconic meltdowns was when he was mopping up spilt water on stage at his concert in Oslo in 2015.
As the pop singer reached the edge of the stage he threw a piece of clothing down to absorb the spillage.
Then, a sea of hands sprouted up, reaching for Bieber’s shoes.
“Hey no, what are you doing? Stop it” he told them. But the desperate fans persisted and as he leant forward to collect the T-shirt, the fans went for his hands.
“Guys, nevermind, I’m done. I’m not doing the show,” he raged.
And with that, the sassy singer struts off the stage, casting away the hoodie he had been wearing in the process.
Billie Joe Armstrong
Some things never change, much like Billie Joe Armstrong’s punk rock attitude.
During his Green Day set at Germany’s Hurricane Festival on June 22, Armstrong finally lost it with a fan who had been firing water at him.
According to fans, the culprit had been using the water pistol for an hour.
The Green Day legend can be seen in a TikTok shoving his middle finger up at someone in the audience while continuing to sing.
He then rips off his guitar, sets it down, and gives the attention-seeking fan a proper telling off.
Frustrated Armstrong then lunges forward with bulging eyes, ferociously pointing at the fan.
The footage doesn’t capture the audio but he seems to be saying “beat your [explicative]. Do you understand me?”
