Pick a Day

Music History Events: Incidents

July 8, 1971 A mini-riot during a Mott The Hoople concert prompts London's Royal Albert Hall to temporarily ban rock groups from the venue.

June 10, 1971 Police fire tear gas into the rowdy crowd at the Jethro Tull concert in Denver, but the band continues playing even though some of them have trouble seeing their instruments.

May 15, 1971 Pink Floyd, Mountain and the Faces perform the "Garden Party" concert at Crystal Palace Park in London. A small pond in front of the stage becomes an aquatic graveyard when hundreds of fish die during Pink Floyd's performance. What killed the fish? Reports vary, but it is either vibrations from the band's estimated 95-decibal sound system or smoke flares set off in the water. The band receives a bill for the dead fish.

May 13, 1971 Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane crashes her Mercedes into a wall near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which forces the cancellation of some recording sessions.

November 5, 1970 Long since retired from touring with his group, Brian Wilson joins The Beach Boys on stage at the Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles only to suffer inner ear damage in his good ear from an excessively loud sound system. After losing his balance a few times, he is helped backstage.

June 22, 1970 The Who show in Atlanta is delayed after Pete Townshend, frustrated waiting to take off in Memphis, jokes about planting a bomb on the airplane, resulting in a search of the aircraft and a few hours of questioning.

June 16, 1970 The organizers of the Woodstock music festival report that they have lost over $1.2 million on the event (money which they will later make up through movie and soundtrack rights).

December 2, 1969 An intruder kidnaps Cindy Birdsong of The Supremes and forces her to tie up her two companions and get in a car with him. Birdsong escapes by jumping out of the car, and the man is arrested four days later in a bizarre case that makes national headlines. The intruder turned out to be a maintenance man at Birdsong's apartment building.

November 15, 1969 Janis Joplin calls out a policeman at her concert in Tampa, Florida, when he uses a bullhorn to yell at audience members who have left their seats. "Don't F--k with those people!," she screams. "What are you so uptight about? Did you buy a $5 ticket?" The cop tells Joplin that she needs to tell the crowd to remain seated, and she replies, "I'm not telling them s--t." After more stage ranting where Joplin threatens to kick his face in, she is arrested after the show, charged with using "vulgar and indecent language." After posting a $504 bail, the charges are later dropped and she pays a $200 fine.

October 11, 1969 Muddy Waters is severely injured in a car crash just outside Chicago that leaves three other passengers dead. Waters will remain absent from music for about a year, and will rarely stand up on stage again.

August 18, 1969 While filming the violent gangster movie Ned Kelly in Australia, Mick Jagger is hit in the hand by a stray bullet from an old gun being used as a prop.

August 2, 1969 Bob Dylan makes a rare return to his hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, to attend his 10-year high school reunion. Accompanied by his wife, Sara, he joins classmates at the local Moose lodge before the event, and it proves awkward. He never makes it to the reunion itself, and makes no more public visits to the town.

July 8, 1969 Singer/actress Marianne Faithfull, girlfriend of Mick Jagger, attempts suicide with barbiturates while on the set of the film Ned Kelly (also starring Mick). She is dropped from the cast of the movie, eventually recovers, and when awaking from her coma, tells friends that "wild horses couldn't drag me away." The Rolling Stones song "Wild Horses" is built around that phrase.

July 1, 1969 John Lennon receives 17 facial stitches, and Yoko Ono gets 14 of her own, after a car crash in Scotland.

May 20, 1969 Chicago singer Peter Cetera is attacked at a Dodgers-Cubs game at Dodger Stadium. Explaining the incident, Cetera says: "Four marines didn't like a long-haired rock 'n' roller in a baseball park, and of course I was a Cubs fan, and I was in Dodger Stadium, and that didn't do so well. I got in a fight and got a broken jaw in three places, and I was in intensive care for a couple of days. With my jaw wired together, I actually went on the road, and I was actually singing through my clenched jaw, which, to this day, is still the way I sing."

April 23, 1969 Los Angeles' famed folk and rock club The Ash Grove, launching pad for everyone from Linda Ronstadt to Canned Heat, catches fire and nearly burns to the ground.

March 31, 1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold a press conference in Vienna where they announce their "Bagism" project, giving the entire press conference from inside a white bag.

November 22, 1968 In Ireland, singer Marianne Faithfull, heavily addicted to cocaine, miscarries what was to be her second child, fathered by boyfriend Mick Jagger.

September 15, 1968 Jim Morrison collapses during Jefferson Airplane's set at a concert in Amsterdam, forcing The Doors, who are sharing the bill, to go on as a trio.

September 14, 1968 Roy Orbison loses two of his three sons - Roy Jr. (age 10) and Tony (age 6) - when his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee, burns down. Orbison was on tour in Europe at the time.

June 3, 1968 Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol and art critic and curator Mario Amaya at Warhol's studio in New York City. Solanas had been to see Warhol after asking for the return of a script which had apparently been misplaced. Warhol is seriously wounded in the attack and barely survives.

March 4, 1968 An icy car crash sends Temptations members Eddie Kendricks and Otis Williams to a Somerset, Pennsylvania, hospital.

January 28, 1968 During their tour in Australia, members of The Who and The Small Faces, among others, are escorted off their flight from Adelaide to Essendon for drinking beer on the plane, being rowdy, and using "very bad language." Two of the flight's four attendants are said to be in tears.

November 5, 1967 Robin Gibb of The Bee Gees pulls his girlfriend, Molly Hullis, to safety and assists other passengers when the train he is riding derails at Hither Green in south-east London, killing 49 people.

October 1, 1967 Mick Jagger's apartment in London is burglarized, with girlfriend Marianne Faithfull's furs and jewelry being among the items listed as stolen.

August 9, 1967 At England's National Jazz and Blues Festival in Sunberry, Jerry Lee Lewis is kicked off the stage after the overenthusiastic crowd responds to his set with a near-riot.

March 21, 1967 John Lennon takes his first major LSD trip and freaks out while recording backing vocals on the track "Getting Better." Producer George Martin, not realizing the effects of the drug, takes Lennon to the roof of Abbey Road Studios to get some fresh air. Paul McCartney and George Harrison, upon learning where John is, rush up to get him down. The group works on a piano track for "Lovely Rita" instead.

February 3, 1967 Joe Meek, an experimental pop pioneer who wrote and produced the Tornados' "Telstar," fatally shoots his landlady before turning the gun on himself.

October 8, 1966 Cream drummer Ginger Baker collapses while on stage at a Sussex University gig in England, just after completing his epic 20-minute solo on "Toad."

August 13, 1966 With some members of the media turning on The Beatles after John Lennon's comments that they are "more popular than Jesus" are published, the Texas radio station KLUE-AM holds the first "Beatles Bonfire," where people can burn their Beatles albums.