Have you ever had a physical fight while on stage?

p90fool

Onstage band member fights never escalate beyond our "who glares wins" band motto (it's always me btw...) but I've punched a punter in the throat for trying to push my wife off her drumstool so he could "have a go" mid song, and smashed a guy in the face with my headstock for getting aggressive with our 4'11" girl singer.

Moral; don't do pub gigs during the Royal Welsh Show, where a town of 3,000 people hosts 400,000 educationally subnormal farmers who've saved up all year to come and fight, drown in the river and best of all, rape someone. 

NickB

'Twas only last year at the Red Lion in Brackley. One of those yokel towns where all they want to do is drink, do a few lines of the Peruvian marching cut with Ajax, and fight. So I'm with my Rhythm and Blues band, The Scoundrels. We're about 3/4's the way through our 1st set, and as he walks in I clock him. He's a f**king meat head, dark blue wife beater vest, shaved head, tats, arms and neck are the same diameter (about the size of my thigh) and a mean look. I thought to myself, he looks trouble. Sure enough, 2nd half, I'm belting the riff out to Money (that's what I want), and he kicks off, pouring his drink over his ex and assaults her new beau. Bouncer runs in, a slip of a lad, said meathead lays him out across the stage, into the PA. Claret everywhere.... shall I catch the PA speaker or carry on belting the riff? I caught the PA speaker. Gig ended, we got paid and vowed never to go near that shit hole again.

chillidoggy

Not within the band, but audience participation fights, yes. One such broke out while playing in one of Margate’s less salubrious boozers, long since razed to the ground. Singer announced that if they didn’t stop fighting, we’d stop playing. The fight continued, so we made our exit out the back with our gear. And at a boozer in Ramsgate, we turned up to find they’d substituted the normal chairs with plastic garden ones in an effort to save the glazed windows, which turned out to be absolutely the right thing to do.

FarleyUK

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

stratman3142

I remember a pub brawl at a gig in Lower Feltham many years ago.

I can still visualise a beer glass hitting the wall above the bar and exploding into glass shards. Then all hell broke loose with a mass fight. I quickly retreated to the back wall with the rest of the band. Our sax player grabbed a mic stand off a bloke, who was either trying to nick it or use it as a weapon.

I couldn't find my 1st wife anywhere. When she finally turned up, she said she'd been down the front protecting the monitor speakers  

VimFuego

FarleyUK said:

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

I grew up in Hemel, that's just any given saturday night there. 

FarleyUK

VimFuego said:

FarleyUK said:

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

I grew up in Hemel, that's just any given saturday night there. 

Can confirm.

The great thing is, I caught it all on video as well. It's a proper Blues Brothers moment.

koneguitarist

Worst for me was when I was about 16-17, skinny as a rake playing in my old mans band down south Wales valley’s in late 70s. A fight broke out between about 20 or so miners, like the Wild West tables and chairs flying glasses smashed and my old man shouting encouragement to the fighters. Remember my older brother kicking someone off the stage as we kept playing.
then Bar man hit bar with pool cue 3 times for everyone to stop and said “That’s enough Lads, can we all look for Dai’s ear on the floor somewhere”!
bloke standing there with blood down his neck holding his hand to his head! 

I was scared shitless but my old man loved it all.
I also did a gig in a Glastonbury pub about 10years ago and threw a punter away from me over someone’s table, luckily he was thrown out not me. 

thermionic

Someone once told me of a visit she’d made to pub somewhere in the Valleys (I think it war in or near Caerphily) in the 80s, where one of the locals’ party trick was to get you to ask him if he wanted a drink… he’d whip his hat off and grin “No, i’ve got one ear!” (you have to do it in the accent). Might well have been the same Dai.

That Keef clip reminds me of watching Y Cyrff (Mark and Paul from Catatonia’s first band) in the students union bar in Aberystwyth - we had been the support band. Typical drunk student crowd, not really interested in the music, and one guy in particular spent the entire time shouting abuse at them from the front. As they finished a song, the other guitar player Barry (RIP) finally had enough and flung down his Telecaster, leapt off the stage, punched this guy in the face, then jumped back up, and went straight into the next song.

koneguitarist

Did a gig once at a wedding where brides father tried to kill the groom by strangling him on stage, someone had to hit him with a chair to get him off. Both carted off to hospital.
I was also called toCrown Court as a witness too. An assault at one of our gigs. The place was Crossways near Dorchester and a fight between four women, brutal. Not helped by other guitarist asking where’s the mud!

Supportact

Not on stage. But my old band played a festival one time in the Midlands, and during our set there was this biker looking guy sat down by the stage with his feet up on the edge of it, heckling away. Our guitarist was closest him so got most of it.

Anyway we were in the beer tent afterwards and from across the room i see our guitarist confront this guy, who then pulled a knife on him! Very scary moment, but it all ended peacefully thankfully. Luckily the guy I'd been talking to knew this guy and his mates and had some kind of sway over them, and he stepped in and sorted it. Worrying moment though. 

Supportact

VimFuego said:

FarleyUK said:

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

I grew up in Hemel, that's just any given saturday night there. 

Haha, I did too! Trying to guess which pub @FarleyUK was talking about, there are a fair few possibilities though... 

FarleyUK

Supportact said:

VimFuego said:

FarleyUK said:

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

I grew up in Hemel, that's just any given saturday night there. 

Haha, I did too! Trying to guess which pub @FarleyUK was talking about, there are a fair few possibilities though... 

It involves a type of flower and something a monarch wears....

Supportact

FarleyUK said:

Supportact said:

VimFuego said:

FarleyUK said:

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

I grew up in Hemel, that's just any given saturday night there. 

Haha, I did too! Trying to guess which pub @FarleyUK was talking about, there are a fair few possibilities though... 

It involves a type of flower and something a monarch wears....

Ok I know where you mean! Haha. Last time I was in there there was a fight outside. 

FarleyUK

Supportact said:

FarleyUK said:

Supportact said:

VimFuego said:

FarleyUK said:

Not in the band, but we had a couple of crowd punch-ups - what started as two people arguing and then ending with most of the pub fighting.

Mostly involved girls pulling each other's hair, then throwing drinks over each other, then glassing each other, then grabbing chairs etc.

Oddly enough, both happened at the same venue in Hemel Hempstead.

I grew up in Hemel, that's just any given saturday night there. 

Haha, I did too! Trying to guess which pub @FarleyUK was talking about, there are a fair few possibilities though... 

It involves a type of flower and something a monarch wears....

Ok I know where you mean! Haha. Last time I was in there there was a fight outside. 

That's an improvement I guess...!

drwiddly

Many years ago my band had a regular gig in a south London boozer where the clientele was mainly Millwall supporters and gangsters. Many a fight broke out but we were rarely under threat. One night a drunk decided to lob a full pint of lager at us which smashed on the wall behind the drummer. The drunk was then escorted from the premises by our road crew who 'had a word' with him in the car park.

jeztone2

When I was in Heroes of Switzerland our singer had his car stolen at gunpoint after a rehearsal. This was in Nottingham’s Gun crime days around 2004. Then he had a gun pointed at him in Brixton while trying to park our splitter van. Otherwise it was pretty boring.