One of my favorite on-stage meltdowns.
You call that being reformed? Sounds like he simply found a new tribe.
Couple years ago when Social Distortion played the Hilton here in town, Mike Ness got pretty pissed off (rightfully so, IMO) at some jerks in the pit throwing their plastic cups of beer around and up onto the stage, and paused a moment between songs to angrilly admonish them to “show some fuckin’ respect”. I loved him for that. 
I was given tickets to a Bo Diddley show in Portland, OR in 1990. At one point his percussionist looked at his watch in the middle of a song, which did not go unnoticed by the crowd. At the end of the show Bo began lecturing the audience about the need to watch out for schoolchildren when driving through school zones. Fair enough. Then he began ranting about the need to give unruly kids “the ol’ five-iron,” while shaking his fist. Someone yelled, “Violence solves nothing!” to which Bo responded by challenging the guy to a fight, right then and there. Everyone began booing and groaning and pretty much began wandering away. It was definitely time to go, the show having sucked anyway.
Decapitation, Fender Stratocaster style!
A very fun display of animosity from an artist during a live performance: Elvis Costello and the Attractions at UC Santa Barbara sometime in the '70’s. The Concert Event Staff Security were very forcibly keepinjg people in their places. Anyone who stood up to dance or attempted to boogie in the aisles were pushed or thrown back into the seats. After a few of these muggings happened on the main floor in front of Elvis, he stopped the show in mid-song and began screaming at the Event staff, just ripping them a new one! The Staff head tried to charge onto the stage, but the roadies tackled him. Elvis told them to get the fuck out of the hall, he would even pay the rest of their wages. The staff assembled in front of the stage then marched out, one of them giving Elvis the one fingered salute the whole time. The crowd then rushed the stage and a wild, gyrating, happy time was had by all as Elvis ripped into his material with a new found intensity! “Pump it Up” nearly tore the roof off the joint!
I witnessed so many altercations between bands and event staff and/or audiences at punk shows in the late-'70s/early-'80s I can’t even remember them all. But one that stands out was at a Clash concert in 1979. People kept climbing over a wooden railing separating the stage from the audience in an effort to slam-dance near the stage. The event staff kept aggressively throwing people back over the railing. Joe Strummer was furious and warned the staff to stop it. When they didn’t comply, he ran offstage; he returned with a fire-axe, apparently intent on chopping down the wooden railing. At this point the crowd went nuts, and everyone who could do so jumped over the railing and began dancing. The staff clearly had lost all control, and they disappeared, not to be seen again that evening.
Good ol’ Joe. I miss you, buddy. God how I miss you. 
If for no other reason, it’s worth watching for the exchange at the very end:
**Lady: Is that blood on there?
Guy: Yeah
Lady: From where?
Guy: From people’s faces.**
I am not quite sure why, but that was the funniest thing I have seen in a long time.
As my bass player said [at a rank bar in Alaska, after I’d been threatened by a guy with a knife] “Remember, guitars are cheap!”
I’ve loved Fugazi for a long time and have seen them live, but this doesn’t surprise me. They scolded some audience members for acting like idiots when I saw them, but it mostly got a good reaction out of everybody else. They seem like they expect their fans to display a certain level of maturity that other concert crowds don’t have. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that when you gather several hundred people into a room that the collective IQ gets reduced. Besides, if the crowd didn’t like the shitty opening act, the main attraction has no business punishing them for it.
Still it was probably an off night for Fugazi and they usually put on a great show. I think it’s because they record all their stuff on their own crappy equipment without “studio magic” so that a live show sounds cleaner and crisper than anything on their albums.
Best one I saw was Dave Van Ronk in a drunken rant. He played 3 songs, grumbled something, hiccuped and left.
Best one I heard of I can’t verify (but have no reason to doubt). One of the posters on a music list I frequent claims to have been clocked by Joni Mitchell at a big outdoor consort.
Holy cats, there are some great stories in this thread. Thanks for sharing, every peoples!
Just had to share what Joseph Arthur himself had to say about the gig on his website’s Notes from the Road section (Sun sinking in a day gone by):
There’s certainly no reason to doubt his story; who would voluntarily admit they got their ass kicked by Joni Mitchell? If anything, that’s something you hide with deep shame for the rest of your life.
I saw a video of Fleetwood Mac during the “Rumours” era tensions among the band where Stevie Nicks was twirling around in her witch dress and brushed against Lindsay Buckingham, who (obviously angry) shoves or kicks her. Been a while , can’t remember which.
I was in a small bar watching the guitar player from a one hit wonder band with a new group. They were good and everyone was into it. Then about three songs in, the guitarist notices that the bartenders have a tiny b/w TV on behind the bar, tuned to a basketball game. Guitar guy brings song to a screeching halt, launches into a rant about people being there to see HIM and turn off that TV right now!! Probably three people out of 200 noticed the TV until he made a big deal out of it.
Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter?
Man, this is going to bug me.
To me, it sounded like something out of Napoleon Dynamite - all he needed was to end that last sentence with a “DUH!” and it would have been perfect.
Not really animosity, but more like irritation: U2 in Los Angeles, Popmart tour. Somebody in the audience close to the stage got a beachball inflated and it was bouncing around. Someone threw it at the Edge. It bounced off of him and he just kept playing, but Bono grabbed the ball and threw it back hard where it had come from. He didn’t say anything but looked like he was scowling underneath those shades.
Now if you piss him off all he’d do is point a missle at you.
Lessee, Motorhead in SF in the early 80’s was a pretty violent show. But it was crowd on crowd. Punks and metal freaks were not a good mix then. Lemmy did a phone interview for my college radio station at a different time. Really professional. He was waiting for the call and then talked openly for IIRC 30 minutes that was alloted to us.
A Surf Punks show was always guaranteed to be violent but again crowd on crowd rather than between the act and the crowd.
I saw Greg Ginn, guitarist for Black Flag, get his guitar just mashed during a song. He retuned it, and then wailed like a madman. Swinging it around with serious intent to wack anybody near the neck. Henry Rollins, Chuck Dukowski, etc got out of his way.
Bo Diddley was a really cool guy when I interviewed him in 1984ish. Hung out back stage and just shot the shit in SF. I saw him at the Sacramento Blues Festival in 1981, and he rocked the house. Damn, that was a great show.
Stones and the movie Gimme Shelter is pretty much the epitome of this subject. There was also a recent thread linking a You Tube clip where Richards doesn’t miss a beat and unstraps his guitar and whacks some dude on the stage before the roadies whisk him off. Then restraps his guitar and starts playing all the while Jagger just keeps singing. priceless.
You can’t just leave it there! Spill the whole story! 