Pick a Day

Music History Events: Incidents

June 13, 1998 During the Dave Matthews Band set at the Tibetan Freedom Concert in Washington, DC's RFK Stadium, concert-goer Lysa Selfon is struck by lightning. With help from an off duty paramedic, she is revived and eventually makes a full recovery.

April 24, 1996 After being forced to cancel shows, Stone Temple Pilots issue a statement saying that lead singer Scott Weiland has "become unable to rehearse or appear for these shows due to his dependency on drugs. He is currently under a doctor's care in a medical facility." Weiland sees this as a betrayal, and his relationship with his bandmates turns rocky.

June 25, 1995 During Elastica's set at the Glastonbury Festival, concert-goer Antony Genn jumps on stage and dances naked for about a minute while the band plays on.

September 9, 1994 Green Day play a free concert at the Hatch Shell in Boston. A few songs into their set, many in the crowd cross the line from moshing to rioting, and police order an end to the show. With their album Dookie climbing the charts, the band has been playing to exuberant crowds, which causes problems when casual fans find themselves engulfed in mosh pits.

April 27, 1994 Ace of Base's Jenny Berggren is attacked in her parents' home by Manuela Behrendt, a 21-year-old German "fan" wielding a hunting knife. After stabbing Berggren's mother in the hands during a scuffle, Behrendt is arrested and banned from returning to Sweden.

August 25, 1993 Snoop Doggy Dogg drives his Jeep Cherokee to Woodbine Park in Los Angeles, where his passenger, McKinley Lee, shoots and kills a rival gang member. Both are tried for murder but found not guilty in 1996.More

January 27, 1991 At the Speakeasy club in Los Angeles, Dr. Dre roughs up Dee Barnes, the female host of a rap music TV show called Pump It Up. Dre, who was upset over a segment on the show, later reached a settlement with Barnes, who filed a $22.7 million lawsuit.

June 23, 1990 During their headlining set at the Glastonbury Festival, The Cure pause during a performance of "Fascination Street" so a police helicopter can rescue a woman who's nearly been crushed to death by the overzealous crowd.

October 18, 1989 During a gig opening for The Rolling Stones in Los Angeles, Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses announces on stage: "Unless certain people in this band get their s--t together, these will be the last Guns N' Roses shows you'll f--king ever see. Cause I'm tired of too many people in this organization dancing with Mr. Brownstone." It's an early indicator of the fissures that will arise between the capricious Rose and his drug-addicted bandmates.

August 27, 1989 Izzy Stradlin of Guns N' Roses is arrested at the Phoenix airport after urinating on the floor of the plane, apparently upset at having to wait to use the bathroom. His publicist explains that it was Izzy's "way of expressing himself."

July 28, 1987 Ozzy Osbourne performs "Jailhouse Rock" at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London, England. He says it's his "last good memory of the '80s."More

July 27, 1986 At a Cure concert at The Forum in Inglewood, California, a shirtless man with a cowboy hat goes to the center of the floor section and stabs himself repeatedly with a hunting knife. He survives, and is identified as 38-year-old Jonathan Moreland. He claims he was trying to impress a girl who jilted him.

January 26, 1986 Lynyrd Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins is left paralyzed from a car accident that kills his female companion. He can't play with the re-formed band the next year, but chooses his replacement: Randall Hall.

August 10, 1985 While taking part in a yacht race, Duran Duran singer Simon Le Bon is trapped along with five other team members after his boat capsizes. The British coast guard scrambles to rescue the stricken crew, and after repairs to its keel the vessel goes on to take third place in the 1985/86 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race.

January 28, 1984 The legendary Nina Simone tells NME she was forced to record her 1978 album Baltimore under duress when she was kidnapped by five men and held in a basement for three days without food or water. She retracts the statement later.

February 18, 1977 Fela Kuti's residence is sacked by nearly a thousand soldiers, inspiring his song "Zombie."

April 21, 1976 A night after George Harrison joins Monty Python during their performance of "The Lumberjack Song" at a New York show, Harry Nilsson tries it. While Harrison blended in as a member of the chorus (dressed as a Mountie), Nilsson wears dark glasses and makes a spectacle. When he goes to the front of the stage to shake hands with audience members, he falls into the crowd and breaks his arm.

September 5, 1971 While Wishbone Ash are on stage at an outdoor concert in Austin, Texas, hot dog vender Francisco Carrasco is shot dead. The tragedy inspires the song "Rock 'N' Roll Widow."

August 21, 1971 Inmate George Jackson is shot dead in a bizarre escape attempt at San Quentin prison, prompting the Bob Dylan song "George Jackson."

January 4, 1968 Jimi Hendrix spends the night in a Swedish jail after trashing a hotel room, reportedly during a fight with his bandmate Noel Redding.

February 15, 1961 Jackie Wilson is shot in Manhattan. The following issue of Melody Maker carries the front page headline Girl Fan Shoots Jackie Wilson, but controversy over the incident persists in spite of Wilson's claim that this is what really happened.

January 24, 1961 Mel Blanc, who was the voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and many other cartoon favorites, gets in a horrible car accident on a stretch of road in Los Angeles known as "Dead Man's Curve." Hearing the news, Roger Christian is inspired to write a song about the treacherous turn.

November 11, 1957 Shirley Bassey is held hostage at gunpoint in a London hotel by a deranged man who enters as she is approving dresses for her tour. After a three-hour standoff with police, he releases the singer.

December 5, 1945 Flight 19 disappears over the Bermuda Triangle, inspiring a song by B.A. Robertson.

April 3, 1924 The married Beulah Annan murders her lover Harry Kalstedt then sits drinking cocktails and playing "Hula Lou" over and over again while he dies.

March 7, 1918 Lena Guilbert Ford, who wrote the lyric to "Keep The Home Fires Burning," is killed in a zeppelin raid on her London home.

August 17, 1915 Leo Frank, the murderer of Mary Phagan, is kidnapped from his prison in Milledgeville, driven to Marietta, and lynched. This inspires the musical Parade.

October 15, 1890 New Orleans police chief David Hennessy is gunned down in the first widely publicized Mafia murder in the USA. The event is memorialized in the song "The Hennessy Murder."