DD Smash, Queen Street, Auckland, 1984
It was called the
‘Thank God it’s over’ concert to celebrate the end of the university year, but
shortly after headliners DD Smash took to the stage at Auckland’s Aotea Centre,
the power went off.
As the
10,000-strong audience waited impatiently, a drunken man urinated on the crowd
from above; when police tried to arrest him, they were obstructed and bottles
were thrown. Arrests followed and then riot police arrived. Dave Dobbyn, DD
Smash’s lead singer, apparently told the crowd, “I wish those riot squad guys
would stop wanking and put their little batons away.”
Concert promoter
Hugh Lynn said a group with a gang connection had kicked the switch for the
sound system power supply.
"When the
inspector came up on stage and said 'stop the show' I said to him 'that's the
worst thing you can do.' If the music had kept going it would have kept the
attention of the people but when it stopped they turned to another show - the
riot that was building."
When the promoters
announced they were pulling the plug, the audience rioted. They poured onto
Queen St, Auckland's shopping central, smashed shop windows and left behind
broken bottles, rubbish and upturned cars. Dobbyn was later charged with
inciting violence, but was cleared of all charges but not without a severe ticking
off from the judge.
Suicide, Brussels, 1978 (and everywhere
else)
Even punks
couldn’t deal with the abrasive New Yorkers. Alan Vega and Martin Rev made Sid
Vicious look like a pre-schooler.
They started
intimidating their audience early on. Vega: “At one of our first shows, there
was a guy who’d brought this trombone. I jumped into the audience, fell over
and knocked the slide out of his trombone. The crowd took real offence to that,
so they attacked us with chairs, tables, anything they could get their hands
on. That became the norm. I started carrying a bicycle chain on stage,
figuring, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”
At Suicide’s
European gigs the booing began shortly after they took the stage. Full beer
bottles began to be thrown. In England a skinhead jumped up on to the stage and
thumped Vega, breaking his nose. In Scotland an axe was thrown at them.
"In the
seventies I was afraid for my life every night but that didn’t matter, it
energised me,” Vega later said.
In Brussels in
1978, opening for Elvis Costello the audience booed, heckled, and eventually
stole Vega’s microphone. Costello was so disgusted that he delivered a
shortened set, then walked off stage. The crowd erupted in a riot and police
arrived with tear gas.
The Rolling Stones, Blackpool, 1964
As with Altamont,
we can’t blame the band. After 44 years had lapsed, Blackpool finally lifted
its ban on the Stones and apologised.
During the gig on
24 July 1964, some in the crowd started to spit at the band. Keith Richards
took umbrage at one particular troublemaker and stood on his hands and kicked
him in the face.
The place erupted
and angry fans smashed crystal chandeliers, tore seats up and smashed a grand
piano. About 50 people were treated in hospital. Eventually, police officers
with dogs calmed the situation.
The town council
then imposed an indefinite ban on the Stones.
Four decades
later, the leader of Blackpool Council exonerated the Londoners. "Some
sections of the crowd were outraged at the performance – they found it
suggestive. Nowadays it would probably seem very normal, but back then the
Rolling Stones were very new to the scene and it wasn't something the fans were
used to. A lot of people got very wound up. The crowd were hysterical and they
went wild and trashed the ballroom.”
Guns N'Roses, St Louis, 1992
Who’d have thought
a drug-addled prima donna rock star would instigate a riot?
The trouble kicked
off when Axl Rose became frustrated with an unauthorised photographer taking
pics, and after security failed to retrieve the camera, Mr Dickhead launched
himself into the crowd and snatched it himself, hitting security and fans in
the process. He returned to the stage, slammed his microphone down, and stormed
off.
A local journalist
who hung around like a good hack should do while others fled like cowards,
recounted his experience in an open letter to Rose.
“I can still
remember certain details vividly: rioters swinging from cables under the light
and speaker rigging on the stage, the sound engineer warning me there would be
“massive death” if it fell down; police trying to hold the stage by shooting a
fire hose at the crowd, though it lacked sufficient water pressure; a man
jumping into the stream, then pulling down his pants and waving his penis at
the cops.
“There were other
things, too: a man with a gash on his shoulder and blood on his face running
madly up the aisle; another, his head strapped down, being carried out on a
stretcher; Crone (Thomas, a fellow journo) being viciously jabbed in the
kidneys by police trying to clear the lower bowl as I shouted that we were
members of the press.
“The cops’
response was a string of vulgarities unfit for publication. ‘We’re reporters’,
I pleaded. ‘That’s nice,’ another said, as they dumped us down a steep
staircase.”
Rose was charged
and convicted with four counts of assault and one of property damage, and fined
US$50,000.
Bill Haley, Hamburg and Berlin, 1958
In 1958, during a
show in Hamburg, Germany, rock and roll stars Bill Haley & His Comets were
midway through a set when some teenagers started fighting each other.
About 100 police
officers arrived, which at first didn’t deter these hardy pugilists who also
chucked various objects until the concert was pulled.
Later that month,
when the Comets played at the Sportpalast in Berlin, another riot erupted with
five police officers being badly beaten and six fans hospitalised. In West
Germany, the riots were condemned as examples of out-of-control juvenile
delinquency, and in the East the authorities called Haley a “rock and roll
gangster” with an anti-socialist agenda.
BW Festival, Gisborne, 2015
Stuff reported on
the 1st of January 2015 that 63 people were arrested and 83 injured, with seven
of those hospitalised.
Police told the
so-called newspaper the riot broke out in the festival campgrounds around early
evening on New Year’s Eve – the third day of the five-day festival - and the
disorder lasted about three hours.
The police were
pelted with cans and other objects, vehicles were overturned and fires were
lit. Another media report suggested it began when a tent was set on fire.
The campground
director said a mob mentality took over when a small group started to cause
trouble.
"It's hard to
say where it starts really but they started to cause trouble, started to light
fires and just create general unrest. That built into a bit of a mob mentality
and then they start to move in mass I guess, start to do things like charge the
fences and break down the internal fences and things like that."
The festival
line-up included Shapeshifter, David Dallas, Peking Duk, Sticky Fingers, Home
Brew and Flume.
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