I once saw the band Cracker get into a fist fight with event staff, because the staff were not allowing audience members to stage-dive. If I remember correctly, some equipment was smashed up, too.
Good times, good times. 
Wouldn’t surprise me if she had a temper tantrum. I saw her at an outdoor concert on Boston Common many years ago. She was partway into “Coyote” and fluffed the words. I don’t know if anyone up front laughed, but rather than get out of it gracefully she stormed off stage, blaming it on all the people wandering around rather than sitting in their seats. She refused to return until everyone was seated, and threatened to leave if people got out of their seats again.
I saw the second show of a Jeff Beck show at the Orpheum in Boston, around '71 or '72. Todd Rundgren opened. As much as I like Todd, this was perhaps not the best choice of an opening act for Jeff Beck fans. Add to that Rundgren’s inclusion of Hello People, a mime act that performed on stage while he played. Needless to say, he did not return for an encore. My friend had been to the first show, and said that a firecracker exploded feet from Rundgren’s head during that set.
I saw the guys from Anthrax really rip into a guy once. Don’t know what started it, but John Bush asked him if he wanted to come up on stage and find out. The ushered the guy out the side door.
The strangest thing I ever saw was at a Bruce Dickinson concert, small club, someone grabbed the mike and Bruce tried to take it back. When the guy wouldn’t let go Bruce started hitting him on the head with it. You could hear the thump thump. The guy was bleeding pretty bad and he ran into my ex wife who got blood on her pants.
I saw Ozzy Osbourne on his “Retirement Sucks” tour back in 96 or so. Prong was the first opening act, and they were awesome. In fact, I went out and bought Cleansing the next day. Filter was the second opening act, and most of the band was in an advanced state of inebriation by the time they took the stage. The drummer was the only one who appeared to be at all sober. The guitarist was barely able to stand, and was hunched over his guitar and swaying as he played. We kept waiting for him to pitch forward over the monitors and fall into the gap between the stage and the audience. They had cups of beer lined up all the way across the drum kit riser, and Richard Patrick was drinking throughout the entire set. They were awful.
The crowd grew steadily more hostile and insulting, and was chanting for Ozzy in between booing and shouting for Filter to get off the stage. Richard Patrick was making faces at the crowd and occasionally giving us the finger, and as the heckling got more insistent, he started throwing his beer cups into the crowd. There were about two or three rows of people between my friend Frank and I and the stage, and he apparently heard Frank when he demanded, “Just play ‘Hey Man Nice Shot’ and get off the stage!” I got hit with the next flying beer cup.
When Ozzy finally took the stage, the crowd utterly went berserk for him. The crush of people that close to the stage was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, and the next day, I had bruises on my back and the backs of my legs from people trying to climb over me to get closer to the stage. At one point during Ozzy’s set, he stopped between songs to announce to the crowd, “I don’t know who keeps blinding me with that laser pointer out there, but if you’re standing next to him, punch him in the fucking head for me.” I wouldn’t have wanted to be that guy.
Fuck it, the band was The Stain and the lead singer is John Stainbrook. They’re nominally famous, mostly known for their canned music for ESPN and other TV venues. and he recently won a copyright case against Staind. He is also currently vying to take over the Rebublican party in Toledo. Weird things in the Noe vacuum…
It was a legendary punkrock moment from my life and the craziest show I’ve ever seen. It was my first real punk concert and perhaps my third or fourth concert, ever. It was in a college town back around '87 or '88 at an abandoned Warehouse/Factory near the campus. Stainbrook was wired and climbing hand over hand on old pipes running along the low ceiling and dangled out over top of the audience. He had some glowing blacklight silly string hanging all over his hair and was cutting shirtless Jesus poses all night. The crowd was psyched and pumped and slam dancing.
I didn’t see too much of the beating, other than a guy forcibly dragged from near the stage into a corner to be beaten by roadies or “band security” armed witth 2X4’s. I was on the other side of the fairly large warehouse and it was just a jumble of commotion. I have no idea what happened to the victim. Heard nothing more about it. But then Stainbrook pulls a blued 1911 .45 after the song and runs from one end of the stage to the other pointing it at the audience, screaming, “Any of you fuckers want some?!! You want some!? You want some!?” I think they played one more song and left.
Sure was a powerful rush and emotional ordeal for the crowd, though. If entertainment is provoking emotional response in an audience, then that was some effective entertainment.
Everytime I see the guy on the news, all I see is him pointing a .45 at me with crazy glowing silly string hair.
He also had a preacher show in the 90’s with music and evangelism on a local network.
I saw Sting perform at the UGA Coliseum in Athens in 1985. It was the “Dream of the Blue Turtles” tour.
The audience was full of drunk, rowdy frat boys who kept whooping and hollering throughout the show, no matter what sort of song Sting was playing or what mood he wanted to set.
When he started playing the first few chords of “Moon Over Bourbon Street,” he talked over them, saying. “This is a song about a vampire.”
“It’s a quiet song,” he continued. And then, testily: “And I’d like you to be quiet.”
I’d never felt so bad for any musician before in my life. I was embarrassed for Sting, and ashamed of my classmates.
The Bruce Dickinson?
Sorry
Yes. The Bruce Dickinson. More cowbell, please.