The onstage accident that changed Karen O’s life: “I was a serious trooper”
The history of rock ‘n’ roll is littered with examples of people making an art form out of their own self-destruction. Iggy Pop spent the entire 1970s trying to kill himself in a way that people would remember. The only thing stopping The Replacements from being the biggest band in the world was The Replacements themselves. Trent Reznor has a whole song called ‘Mr Self Destruct’, and while Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs may not seem like a reasonable addition to that list, in their early days, she absolutely was.
Today, the New York indie godheads seem like one of the better-adjusted bands of their era. Their recent history isn’t as pockmarked with inter-band hostility as, say, The Strokes’ is. They’ve never had a dud album. Yes, Karen O, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase may take time away from Yeah Yeah Yeahs when they need to, but it’s always long enough to make people miss them, while being short enough that they are not forgotten. This maturity is hard won when you look into their band history, though.
More specifically, the four years spent more or less entirely on the road from their formation in 2000, through the release of their 2003 debut album, Fever to Tell (a masterpiece of the era, by the way), to the end of touring for it in 2004, a lot went down. Karen O has said on more than a few occasions that she spent more or less that whole four-year period drunk, and once the band became known for their chaotic, unmissable live shows, providing for them suddenly became more important than O’s own personal safety.
This came to a head in a genuinely terrifying gig the band performed in Sydney, Australia, as a warm-up show for the 2004 Livid Festival. One that forced the band, and Karen O in particular, to look her attitude towards live shows in the eye and decide whether doing memorable rock ‘n’ roll performances was more preferable than a long and happy life.
What happened to Karen O in Sydney?
The incident happened during a performance of ‘Rich’, where O crawled over one of the monitors at the front of the stage. After crawling too far, she lost her balance and pitched forward, frontflipping off the stage. Now, this would be bad enough, as O fell about five feet and landed back-first on the barrier, then onto the ground. However, that’s nothing an ice pack and an early night won’t solve, especially when you’re in your early 20s, the way O was. No, what made this a genuine brush with death was following her offstage close behind her.
You see, it wasn’t just the Yeah Yeah Yeahs singer that pitched forward offstage, but the monitor she was crawling on, too. This 60-pound monitor also fell five feet off the stage and landed square on O’s head. The more one thinks about this little escapade, the more one realises it’s a miracle that O didn’t die. Not only did she live, though, the utter maniac finished the song, then got through the next song in the setlist before her bandmates cottoned on that something was terribly wrong.
As noted in Meet Me in the Bathroom, Lizzy Goodman’s oral history of the New York rock scene in the early 2000s, Karen O spoke about the immediate aftermath of the accident. She said, “The next day, I looked like I had elephantitis. I couldn’t walk without pain. But I was a serious trouper, dude. I played a show two days later and my boyfriend at the time, Angus, pushed me out in a fucking wheelchair.”
This incident forced Karen O to reorganise her priorities. Later in the book, she said, “I kind of learned the hard way what I could do and what I can’t do and what I was capable of. That really informed and set the course for me.” Pretty soon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs concerts would become a lot less about “what crazy shit Karen O would do” and more about what an incredible live act they are. A fine place for a band to be in, and one that they, happily, see themselves in to this day.
