Fights?

[Michedelic]

Was it a Sharks vs Jets sort of thing, with lots of finger snapping?

I wonder if they danced just as well?

 

[PWRL]

I wonder if they danced just as well?

I hope!

 

[Michedelic]

I was on the road in ‘84 doing sound for a cover band that could be described as MTV hesher rock; we were all over Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota. They’d get booked into meat market bars for a week at a time, usually in smaller towns, but once in Lincoln, NE, they were in a venue that was narrow, but built with downward tiers of seats like a movie theater, dancefloor at the bottom, large windows at the top like a storefront, mixing booth up against a large section of glass, very weird layout. Front door bouncer station was just on the other side of a short wall. This big dumb musclebound galoot got a little too hammered, and was hustled up the steps and out the door, with the bouncer wrestling with him. Bouncer comes back in, ‘roidrage boy gets up off the sidewalk, and starts charging at the door. Bouncer is talking to someone, I noticed this guy about to burst in, so I shout out a heads up(with a huge plate glass behind me, I was sweating it that this palooka would miss his mark and crash through), bouncer catches him right at the door and pummels him. Cops called.

 

[NZBassman]

True story... was watching another band playing once
The singer said a few words to guitarist - presumably about how (badly?) he played the song they had just finished... guitarist said something back to the singer.... next thing singer kicks guitarists peavey combo amp over and says F-you!
So guitarist calmly unplugs his guitar, puts it in his case, unplugs amp and pedals, grabs his gear and just walks out..... singer then realizes they are 3/4 the way through a gig and follows guitarist out saying "Hey - whatcha doing... we're in the middle of a gig... come on man.... pleeeeease....."
guitarist said absolutely nothing and didn't even look at singer... just walked straight out to his car, loaded up and drove off.....

I left a few minutes later myself

 

[Beej]

 

[SubHuman]

Many years ago when I used to play out live with a band we did a mix of Rock copies and our own originals. One of our guitar players used to bar hop and hand out demo tapes of our set list to get us jobs. 95% were decent paying fun times. Not sure why he was at a dive bar handing out our tape but he was probably drinking and gave the owner a copy. We had many great times playing bars and clubs this way...never having to do a live audition. This dive bar hired us based on our tape set list and we started our three 45 minute sets one very hot Summer, Saturday evening not knowing what we had gotten ourselves into.
Well this bar was a biker bar that wanted all boogie blues which we did not play! Halfway through our 1st set the “patrons” started getting nasty booing us and some were starting to tell us what to play! A fight broke out during some heavy drinking at the pool table and punches were thrown. A few people got thrown out and threatened to shoot up the place. We were scared $hitless! Oh yeah our crowd that usually followed us only stayed for 1 or 2 songs and left as soon as they caught the crazy vibe of this bar. We were alone and on our own.
Nasty big dudes all drunk and yelling! Not a great situation. I was ready to pack up. I kid you not!
There was a guy in the audience that was part of their biker group and I saw/heard him playing some decent blues harmonica. I called a quick break and we got him up on stage with a mic. We figured out what key he played in and we played 3 sets of 45 minutes each of nothing but improvised boogie blues with this giant biker dude hyper ventilating on his mouth harp. They suddenly loved it and everyone went nuts. Remember the Blues Brothers and Raw Hide? Same situation except no chicken wire.
They actually asked us back but we told them we were eternally booked! Ha! Needless to say I never played another bar/club sight unseen. I really thought we were going to get in a fight that night. I still laugh how crazy and surreal the whole situation was. Ahh Rock n Roll...gotta love it!
The crazy thing is someone was stabbed and killed at the exact same bar the next weekend!

 

[Sponson Thrisby]

YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME?!?!

"I don't think about you at all."

 

[Sponson Thrisby]

Was thinking: that’s definitely a Clint line. And it sure was, just not Clint Eastwood!

Roddy Piper in "They Live". "I have come to chew bubblegum and kick a$$. And I'm all out of bubblegum."

 

[WI Short Scaler]

This was probably in summer '88 or so. I was still a drummer and we were at best a mediocre band playing for a local agency.

They called late on a Sat and asked us to fill in for a cancellation at a bar in Lac De Flambeau, about two hours north of where we were and a place we had no knowledge of. It turned out to be right next door to the local tribe casino and was a rough place for sure. We got through our sets with a minimum of issues, there were some disgruntled grumblings from people who had come to see the band originally slated to perform but not too bad.

So after the gig we were tearing down and our bass player was nowhere to be found. Eventually he came running back to the vehicles in a cold sweat. Turns out he was getting "intimate" with a certain young lady and her boyfriend and his crew were looking for him. So we had to scramble to get some gear in the back of the pickup packed around him to create a "hidey" hole for him. These hostile gentlemen hovered around making it known they were going to rough him up when they found him. We tried to say he had already left because he had to be home for work in the AM but they weren't buying it. The police were onsite and stood around to keep them from digging through our vehicles to look for him, and a couple cars followed us out of town for a long ways when we left. Turned down future gig opportunities there.

 

[1st Bass]

Lac de Flambeau? What a name for a dive bar! You could have guessed ahead of time what to expect!

 

[PWRL]

The crazy thing is someone was stabbed and killed at the exact same bar the next weekend!

From the way you tell it, it sounds a lot more believable than crazy.

 

[NZBassman]

We had an 8 week Friday night residency once at a tavern in Auckland 20 odd years ago.... and one night during a set a fight broke out down the back by the pool tables.... we continued playing, then the fight got bigger and closer to the stage, so Drummer leapt over his kit and stood in front of his kick drum with his arms folded as if to say "no-one is going to touch my kit"
Then out of nowhere the bouncer / security guy just grabbed one of the fighters by the scruff of the neck and literally threw him out of the tavern..... came back inside, grabbed another guy and threw him out too.... the 2 guys were outside fighting for about 30 seconds when Police turned up....
a few people left the tavern after this, but we continued playing and there were no further incidents

 

[WI Short Scaler]

Lac de Flambeau? What a name for a dive bar! You could have guessed ahead of time what to expect!

Actually, it's the name of the local tribe/band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians.

Yeah, we were young and stupid and didn't consider the ramifications of what a "tough" crowd that might turn out to be. I don't even remember the name of the bar, just that it was next door to the casino.

 

[1st Bass]

I’m glad no one got hurt!

 

[Joe Nerve]

2 gigs in my life that scared the crap out of me... one is too long a story, so I'll tell the other .

NY Islanders have a space they use for pre-game parties. I got called for a gig when they were playing the Rangers. I'm not a hockey fan, so I didn't really know what a big game this was. There were lots of fans at the party. Anyhoo...

A couple of pretty girls in Ranger Jerseys somehow got on stage and coaxed the mic out of our singer's hand. They started chanting "GO RANGERS, GO RANGERS!!" and I don't have to tell you how well that went over. The Islanders pay for the party, the space, the band. People were beyond infuriated and threatening our lives on stage (thankfully we were a little out of reach). We somehow wiggled out of getting pummeled, but that was the last time the bandleader ever got a gig in that spot. And it was an awesome spot.

Happy to be here today.

 

[SunByrne]

A couple of pretty girls in Ranger Jerseys jumped on stage and coaxed the mic out of our singer's hand. They started chanting "GO RANGERS, GO RANGERS!!" and I don't have to tell you how well that went over.

I admit I LOL'd. The only way this could be worse is if you were in Philadelphia at a Flyers party. No way you come out unscathed.

 

[turf3]

Nothing like a room crammed full of insecurity.

And the insecurity's crammed full of booze.

 

[NZBassman]

Sometimes the troubles are all on one side of the stage:
When the Kinks played at Cardiff’s Capital Theatre high-running tensions among band members came to a head while the group was on stage in May 1965 .
Drummer Mick Avory was looking to exact a little revenge on Davies' brother Dave, who had kicked over Avory's drum set in retaliation for an alcohol-fueled fight the night before.
The Kinks had performed just two songs at the Capital Theatre when Dave Davies told Avory, “Why don’t you get your cock out and play the snare with it? It’ll probably sound better.” Needless to say, Avory did not take Dave's suggestion too kindly. When the dust between the two settled, Dave was laying on the stage unconscious while Avory, convinced he had killed his bandmate, fled the concert hall and went into hiding. Dave was rushed to Cardiff Royal Infirmary and received 16 stitches.

When the police caught up with the Kinks' drummer, he denied the whole thing happened. The cops cleverly replied however, that they had the entire audience as witnesses to what went down on stage.

Dave Davies ended up dropping all charges against Avory and somehow, against all odds, relations in the band were smoothed over. The same couldn't be said for their chances of success in the United States, however.

Because of the onstage bust-up and various other misdoings, the American Federation of Musicians refused to let the group tour the United States for the four years that followed the incident, a time when British music had stormed American shores courtesy of the Beatles. The group's popularity in North America undoubtedly suffered as a result. As Davies plainly stated, “In many respects, that ridiculous ban took away the best years of the Kinks’ career when the original band was performing at its peak.”

“We came about in the first days after Beatlemania, got chased everywhere we went and had to have police escorts to and fro,” Ray said. “I never even heard a note we played for a long time, the crowd’s screaming was always so loud. ... We were battlers. But the very thing that makes a band special is what ultimately causes it to break up. What made our music interesting ended up being the very thing that destroyed it."



Read More: Why the Kinks' Dave Davies Was Knocked Out by Bandmate Onstage | Why the Kinks' Dave Davies Was Knocked Out by Bandmate Onstage

The night The Kinks exploded

"The first song they played, fans going wild, was the original big hit that shot them to fame, “You Really Got Me“.

Then there was a kind of awkward pause, and some chit-chat, as though they weren’t sure what to do next. They looked around at each other. But then, Dave Davies, brother of Ray, standing on the right of the stage, took a kick at Mick Avory‘s drum kit. Looking back at it, my guess is that his intention was simply to give the big bass drum a playful prod, rather than the great thump that he actually delivered.

Avory’s bass drum suddenly began rolling across the stage – I mean, right across the stage, from right to left a distance of maybe fifteen feet. This was weird, but some might have thought it was part of the act. It soon became apparent that it wasn’t.

Mick Avory stood up, picked up his hi-hat and advanced towards Dave. He moved behind him, still on the far right of the stage. Holding the hi-hat half way down the metal post, with the two cymbals to the top and pedal beneath, he raised the whole thing above his head and brought the cymbals crashing down on the back of Davies’ neck. My recollection of this part of the proceedings is crystal clear.

Sounds like the time Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey had an argument over Moon taking drugs.
(from Ultimate Classic Rock)

The situation came to a head during that tour of Denmark when Daltrey, finally fed up with Moon’s drug-induced behavior and lackluster playing got a hold of the drummer’s stash and flushed it all down the toilet. Moon reacted with predictable fury and Daltrey wound back and socked him in the nose, bloodying and nearly breaking it. “It took about five people to hold me off him,” the singer remembered in the book Roger Daltrey: The Biography. “It wasn’t just because I hated him, it was just because I loved the band so much and thought it was being destroyed by those pills

Moon was obviously irate about the assault, and Townshend and bassist John Entwistle, both of whom also regularly imbibed in pharmaceutical uppers, agreed that Daltrey had gone too far and summarily fired him from the group. The decision stood for about a week until the group’s managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp convinced the three men that in order to maintain their upward trajectory, they needed to bring him back into the fold. After agreeing to apologize and abstain from any further violent outbursts, Daltrey was rehired and the Who were free to capitalize on their chart-breaking hit, “My Generation.”

 

[Sponson Thrisby]

Sounds like the time Keith Moon and Roger Daltrey had an argument over Moon taking drugs.
(from Ultimate Classic Rock)

The situation came to a head during that tour of Denmark when Daltrey, finally fed up with Moon’s drug-induced behavior and lackluster playing got a hold of the drummer’s stash and flushed it all down the toilet. Moon reacted with predictable fury and Daltrey wound back and socked him in the nose, bloodying and nearly breaking it. “It took about five people to hold me off him,” the singer remembered in the book Roger Daltrey: The Biography. “It wasn’t just because I hated him, it was just because I loved the band so much and thought it was being destroyed by those pills

Moon was obviously irate about the assault, and Townshend and bassist John Entwistle, both of whom also regularly imbibed in pharmaceutical uppers, agreed that Daltrey had gone too far and summarily fired him from the group. The decision stood for about a week until the group’s managers Kit Lambert and Chris Stamp convinced the three men that in order to maintain their upward trajectory, they needed to bring him back into the fold. After agreeing to apologize and abstain from any further violent outbursts, Daltrey was rehired and the Who were free to capitalize on their chart-breaking hit, “My Generation.”

I recently watched an episode of Brian Johnson's "A Life on the Road" where he interviews Daltrey. I loved the story of how accurate he became swinging the microphone around. At one show someone threw a sharpened penny which cut him on the face. He saw who did it, and got him back with a microphone to the nose.