Five shows that almost ended artists’ careers
Playing music onstage is far from the walk in the park that people make it out to be.
Every fan who doesn’t know any better might think that all anyone needs to do is sing a glorified karaoke of their own song and manage to get people dancing. But if you look at the energy that Freddie Mercury and Mick Jagger put out every time they played onstage, it was about much more than just vocal ability; they needed to make sure everyone was having a fantastic time.
However, artists like Patti Smith found out that things can go a little haywire when the subtle details aren’t in place.
There are many moving pictures in any great rock and roll show, and the moment things start to go wrong is normally when everyone’s heart jumps into their throat onstage. It should be about having fun half the time people are playing onstage, but whenever they face moments where everything goes wrong, it can be a life or death situation when someone gets hit with something from the audience or ends up going up in flames.
But not every show on this list has to end with blood and broken bones. Sometimes a show can drain all the life force out of a group without anyone realising it, and even if no one onstage got hurt, the drive might not be there anymore or their creative muse that they relied on for so many years completely disappears.
That doesn’t mean that these artists didn’t eventually make their own recoveries from their respective incidents, but this was the moment when most of their careers were put on life support. They could still continue to perform if they wanted to, but there was bound to be a different approach if they decided to get back onstage.
Five shows that almost ended artists’ careers
Alice Cooper
It’s hard to take any of Alice Cooper’s near-death experiences all that seriously. As much as he loves the idea of making a great show for his audience, there’s no way that anyone would think that he was in any real danger when he got beheaded every single gig and killed in every grotesque way he could think of. But during one infamous dress rehearsal, Cooper came close to dying by his own sword when he was hanged in the gallows before the show started.
The whole illusion was to have a wire catch Cooper before the noose choked him, but when performing the stunt, the wire broke and sent him flying down a few feet, knocking him out cold. According to Cooper, that was God giving him a warning, because had he had a bigger chin, the noose would have caught him and he would have been accidentally hanged before everyone’s eyes. Most fans pay good money to see something grotesque at one of Cooper’s shows, but I’m pretty sure that they would draw the line at actual executions.
Keith Richards
The idea of anything getting in the way of Keith Richards playing music would be a lost cause. Somewhere along the line, Keef has reached a level of immortality that very few people are ever going to achieve, and even if he put more miles on his body than anyone else, he was more than willing to do what it took to make sure he was on that stage every night. But there was a good chance his moments of stardom were finished before they properly began at the first Rolling Stones gigs.
As much as they were a danger to themselves offstage, Richards had a brush with death when turning a microphone around and being knocked back by an electrical shock. Whereas most people presumed that he was dead, Richards would be taken to a hospital immediately after the incident and be fully revived and ready for the next show. That may have been one of his first brushes with the other side, but when there is no longer any true civilisation left on Earth, Richards will probably still be there strumming away on his guitar.
Patti Smith
Patti Smith came from a world that wasn’t supposed to have any set structure to the music, and even when she had the traditional verse/chorus approach to her songs, it was always about jamming and soaking in the moment whenever she sang. When she got the chance to perform at a few bar gigs, though, she went tumbling into the audience and ended up with injuries that would have put anyone else on life support, fracturing her skull, neck and tailbone.
Anyone even thinking about going back onstage after that would probably be hedging their bets as to whether they would move around at all, but Smith wasn’t going to let an injury define her. She is an artist through and through, and even if she didn’t have the same motions as in her prime, she still ensured that everyone had an experience they wouldn’t soon forget when they left her show.
Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam have always taken their live shows incredibly seriously. Grunge was always about finding some sort of community between the band and the crowd, and while Nirvana got desensitised to fame after a while, Eddie Vedder knew the importance of building that friendship with the audience. So when fans walked into one of their concerts and didn’t walk out when they played Roskilde in 2000, there was a good chance that none of us would hear from the grunge heavyweights for a long time.
After a rush towards the stage ended up crushing nine fans, Vedder was beside himself with grief. They were supposed to bring joy to people, and now that they had inadvertently caused the deaths of their fans, Vedder seriously considered hanging it up and never playing another gig as long as he lived. While the members of the band found the strength to soldier on, songs like ‘Love Boat Captain’ and ‘I Am Mine’ are still reminders from Vedder about how grim things can get when everyone isn’t careful.
Metallica
No one goes to a metal show expecting to hear something soft. Black Sabbath had built the genre to be full of some of the most dangerous music ever conceived, and Metallica knew how to give fans the time of their lives in whatever city they hit. But when the stages start getting bigger and the theatrics start getting larger, it gets a little bit tricky figuring out where to stand, and James Hetfield paid a brutal price for it when he was engulfed in flames in the middle of their show in Montreal.
After playing the intro to ‘Fade to Black’, Hetfield accidentally stood above a canister that was about to let out a chemical flame, burning half of his body and completely ending the show. Although Hetfield could have easily killed himself in the blaze, he was never going to let his fans down, eventually deciding to get another guitarist ot play his parts while he sang so his body could recover. Metallica might have a discography that divides some of their fans, but moves like this are proof enough that they know how to treat their fans well.
