Pick a Day

Music History Events: Incidents

June 27, 2012 Rihanna is very lucky to escape with her life after being among 300 people evacuated from a motel during a fire in an elevator shaft. It takes ten firefighters to put out the resulting blaze at the Corinthia Hotel in London, where Rihanna was performing at the Hackney Weekend concert.

June 18, 2012 At a Radiohead concert in a park in Toronto, metal rigging over a stage collapses one hour before show time. Various technicians were setting up the stage equipment when the incident occurred, injuring some and killing one drum technician, Scott Johnson, who was pinned under the rubble.

June 14, 2012 Drake and Chris Brown are involved in a fight at a New York City nightclub, with Brown accusing Drake of throwing a bottle at him. They had beef over Rihanna, whom they both dated.

May 25, 2012 At a concert in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Garbage lead singer Shirley Manson interrupts a performance of "Stupid Girl" to call out a guy in the crowd who's being abusive. "Dude, never hit a woman," she tells him.

February 29, 2012 A man is found dead outside of a house owned by rapper Rick Ross. The Miami Herald reports that Gregory Paul Nesbitt, 39, was shot to death outside of Ross' Miami Gardens mansion. Although Ross used the house to record and to house guests, the rapper was not home at the time of the incident. Police say Nesbitt is known to them but did not speculate on why the victim would be on Ross' property.

February 21, 2012 Adele flips off producers at the Brit Awards when she is ushered off stage before she can finish the acceptance speech for her Album of the Year win.

October 15, 2011 Seal, along with Hilary Swank and Jean-Claude Van Damme, attends the 35th birthday party of Chechen president and human-rights abuser Ramzan Kadyrov. The celebrities take a lot of heat for pimping themselves out to this unsavory ruler.

August 18, 2011 During a severe storm, high wind and heavy rain cause a stage to collapse while Chicago band Smith Westerns are performing. Four are killed and over 70 injured. Organizers decide to cancel the festival, where Eminem, Face to Face and Foo Fighters were scheduled to perform.

August 8, 2011 While on tour with Maroon 5 and Train, Gavin DeGraw is attacked by a group of men on a New York City street. He suffers a broken nose and is taken to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.

May 17, 2011 Rapper Wiz Khalifa and his girlfriend Amber Rose narrowly escape danger at a London nightclub. Khalifa is performing in the packed club when a bystander breaks a bottle over another patron's head. A fight ensues and Khalifa and Rose dodge bottles as they promptly exit the club with their entourage. Club promoters are upset that Khalifa ended his show early, as they reportedly paid the rapper 14,000 euros to do the show.

November 9, 2010 A three-alarm fire in a warehouse where Neil Young stored everything from vintage cars to guitar cases causes damage estimated at about $800,000. The cause is promptly investigated, but fire officials say they don't find any evidence of arson.

September 16, 2010 Country singer Justin Townes Earle is arrested in Indianapolis after storming offstage and trashing a green room. Reports say Earle was also intoxicated and he allegedly punched a woman backstage. Earle is forced to pay $200 in damages to the venue but is released from jail on a $150 bond.

July 23, 2010 Kings of Leon have a strange encounter during a show in St. Louis when just a few songs into their set, they abruptly leave the stage, complaining about a flurry of bird poop coming from a flock of pigeons chilling in the rafters. The band never returns, and a full refund is made available to all concertgoers.

June 10, 2010 Appearing at Milan's PalaSharp Arena to promote his self-titled solo record, Slash, in the midst of performing the Guns N' Roses classic "Sweet Child o' Mine," is tackled by a concertgoer. The guitarist bravely keeps on rocking, eventually switching guitars and finishing the song. Afterward, Slash described the night as "a kick-ass rock show."

September 29, 2009 After the band plays a gig at Club Academy in Manchester, England, tens of thousands of pounds worth of Noah and the Whale's equipment is stolen from a locked trailer in a car park near the venue. In December, police recover most of the gear, including items of great sentimental value to the band, nearly 100 miles away in a barn where the perpetrators had been storing it.

August 5, 2009 Steven Tyler of Aerosmith falls off the stage at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota, suffering injuries to his head and neck, which force the rest of the band's tour to be canceled. Tyler falls when he is entertaining the crowd with a dance while a technical problem is being sorted.

August 24, 2008 Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson emerges unscathed after he crashes his Cessna 206 float-plane near Bancroft, Ontario. Three other passengers, including wife Natalie, are also miraculously uninjured. The Transportation Safety Board is unable to determine the cause of the crash, but clears Robertson of any wrongdoing.

February 9, 2008 An oversold venue is to blame for the deaths of 10 fans and the injuries of six at a concert by Indonesian metalcore band Beside. Conflicting reports on numbers seem to confirm that the venue, meant to hold 700, was well over capacity, with perhaps as many as 1,500 people inside. The fans were killed in the crush as they tried to leave the packed venue while hundreds more were trying to force their way in.

August 1, 2006 30-year-old Andy Richardson dies after he is beaten in the mosh pit during the Deftones' set at the Family Values tour in Atlanta.

June 5, 2006 Elliot Easton of The Cars breaks his clavicle when the band's tour bus swerves to avoid an accident, and Easton falls out of the bunk. Performing with "The New Cars" fronted by Todd Rundgren, he plays four shows in a brace before getting surgery, which ends the tour.

January 1, 2006 Guitarist/songwriter Bryan Harvey (of House of Freaks) is murdered in his home along with his wife and two young daughters. The crime is part of the Richmond spree murders, a series of deadly home invasions in Virginia perpetrated by Ricky Javon Gray and his nephew Ray Joseph Dandridge over the course of a week.

August 7, 2005 "Walking In Memphis" singer Marc Cohn is shot in the head during an attempted carjacking in Denver, Colorado. Miraculously, he makes a full recovery.More

July 3, 2004 Glenn Danzig gets in a fight backstage after a Danzig show when a member of support band North Side Kings confronts him because they were bumped from the bill and didn't play that night. Danzig pushes the guy but gets punched in the face in retaliation.

May 26, 2004 Days after touching down in the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to film a documentary on the war-torn country, Sum 41 are forced to evacuate from their hotel in Bukavu after serious fighting erupts. They are rescued by UN peacekeeper Chuck Pelletier. Sum 41 would go on to name their third studio album Chuck in honor of Pelletier.

July 26, 2003 Limp Bizkit appear at the Hawthorne Racetrack in Chicago as part of Metallica's Summer Sanitarium tour with Deftones, Linkin Park and Mudvayne. But the crowd soon shows how they feel about frontman Fred Durst and his crew, as the band is booed and Durst is pelted with coins and bottles, leading him to launch into homophobic taunts. As a result, Limp Bizkit leaves the stage after 30 minutes and only six songs, but not before Durst challenges audience members to a fight.

November 20, 2002 After an altercation at a gas station, neo soul singer D'Angelo is arrested at his home. Making matters worse, he resists arrest and is pepper sprayed by police.

January 12, 2002 Adam Ant, suffering from manic depression, is arrested after bringing a starter pistol to a London pub and threatening to shoot customers. He left to get the pistol after some patrons were poking fun at him for his clothing.

September 3, 2001 When thousands more fans than expected show up for a free System Of A Down concert in a Los Angeles parking lot, authorities won't let the band take the stage and a riot ensues; their equipment is trashed and six are arrested. The show was to celebrate the release of their album Toxicity the following day.

April 21, 2001 Peter Buck of R.E.M. gets unruly on a British Airways flight and is arrested. He is accused of drinking 15 glasses of wine, overturning a service cart and engaging in other bad behavior, but charges are eventually dropped. Buck claimed that ingesting both a sleeping pill and wine caused him to lose it.

June 3, 2000 In what becomes known as "the horse incident," Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw are arrested in Buffalo, New York, after Chesney mounts a police horse and rides off. At trial, they're found not guilty; Chesney says he thought he had permission to get on the horse.