Pick a Day

Music History Events: Alcohol Involved

July 11, 1994 At the Kansas City stop of Lollapalooza, where The Verve are the only British act on the bill, their frontman Richard Ashcroft collapses into convulsions and taken away in an ambulance after getting drunk with members of The Breeders and The Bad Seeds. That night, Verve drummer Pete Salisbury is arrested for destroying his hotel room. Says Ashcroft, "America nearly killed us."

September 4, 1986 Gregg Allman is arrested in Belleview, Florida, when a police officer sees his 1985 Trans Am weaving on Route 441. He blows a .27 (legal limit: .10) and is charged with drunken driving and driving with an expired license. Allman is sentenced to five days in jail and ordered to do community service, which he serves by playing a drug-and-alcohol-free graduation party for area high schools. He does his time in January 1987, a month before his aptly titled solo album I'm No Angel is released.

January 6, 1986 Following a suicide attempt and an alcohol-fueled nervous breakdown, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford finally goes to rehab. He gets out a month later, completes the Turbo album with the band, and manages to stay sober.

February 3, 1981 At The Who concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London, Pete Townshend drinks four bottles of brandy onstage, and instead of playing, mouths off to the crowd. His bandmates just keep playing without him. Months later, Townshend gets treatment for his alcoholism but turns to drugs, once again putting his life in danger. In early 1982, he rehabs again and finally gets sober.

November 3, 1979 Days before his 18th birthday, teen idol Leif Garrett, under the influence of drugs and alcohol, crashes his mother's Porsche 914 en route to buy cocaine. He escapes serious injury but his best friend, Roland Winkler, is left a paraplegic.

December 3, 1978 The Cure drummer Lol Tolhurst accidentally pees on Billy Idol backstage after a show in Bristol, England, where The Cure are opening for Idol's band Generation X. Idol is entertaining a young lady in a men's room stall when Tolhurst unloads his lager, missing the urinal and hitting Idol's leg. The Cure are kicked off the tour the next day.

June 14, 1968 The Jeff Beck Group, with lead singer Rod Stewart, make their US concert debut, opening for the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East in New York City. Stewart has stage fright, which is cured when he takes some swigs of rum from a bottle he shares with guitarist Ron Wood.

November 17, 1943 After celebrating opening night of the Broadway revival A Connecticut Yankee with his songwriting partner Richard Rodgers, lyricist Lorenz Hart disappears for two days. A struggling alcoholic, he's discovered incapacitated in a hotel room where he's been drinking heavily. He dies shortly after from pneumonia.