Sometimes “descriptive” thread titles really suck. But;
A few years ago I watched a Sting concert on TV. Some guy in the audience held up a sign that said, in effect, “I know all the words to Roxanne”
Sting took him up on it and brought him up on stage and handed him the mike. I’ll be damned if the guy didn’t do pretty good. Even Sting had to cop to it.
Does anybody know if this was a real occurance, as presented? Was the dude actually a “nobody” from the audience, or was it a setup?
Peace,
mangeorge
Well, I wouldn’t doubt. I went to a Natalie Merchant concert in New Haven about a year ago and she pulled some college student up to talk to her. Got the girl to admit her favorite song was Thank You (not sure that’s the title). Asked her if she wanted to sing it, girl said “yes”, band started, and Natalie walked away from the stage, leaving the poor girl there alone to sing it.
The student couldn’t believe it, was like in shock, then chased after Natalie. Eventually, they sang it together.
How do I know this wasn’t a setup? Because when we were walking back to our car, we ran into that girl breathlessly recounting the story to her friends.
And once upon a time (in LA, IIRC) Keith Moon passed out during the gig, and Pete Townshend pulled some drummer out of the audience and they finished the show.
So I don’t know if the Sting story is true, but it could be.
Just called the proper authority. He says something like, “It would probably be between Sting and the concert promoter, but I’ve never really seen too much staged stuff at his shows. He’s a pretty spontaneous guy.”
Darren Hayes, lead singer with Savage Garden, used to regularly bring fans up on stage and sing a song to them during his concerts, so I guess it could have been done at the Sting concert to!
Yeah, I did some searching and found that he is pretty fond of bringing fans on stage. But he stood aside and let this guy sing. And then complimented him. 
Green Day lets people come up during their sets and play. They hand the kids the instruments they were playing and they let them play. It’s really cool.
I can believe this! I saw 10,000 Maniacs years ago when Natalie was still with them, and she pulled audience members up to dance on stage.
Scott Halpin was the fill in drummer for the Who.
John Mellencamp used to get audience members up. He and the sound crew would check them out quietly in the mix and if they could sing Mellencamp would let them go for it.
I’m jealous! I’ve seen a million concerts, and never once saw something like this. Not even a celebrity walk-on.
I was at a Better Than Ezra show in Houston a couple years ago, and front man Kevin Griffin picked a random fan out of the audience to play guitar for one song (Porcelain, maybe? I forget.) When fan #1 turned out to be a crappy guitarist, he kicked him off stage and got fan #2 to play instead. Fan #2 did a pretty fair job.
This is sort of a hijack (sorry) but abovementioned Proper Authority recounts a story about model/“singer” Tyrese.
At one of his shows, Tyrese gave out his cell phone number and invited women from the audience to call him. The first lady to get through was going to get invited onstage and he was going to sing a ballad to her. So this woman called him, he whispered some sweet nothings to her over the phone and asked her to come over. When girlfriend got to the stage, all hyped and excited, Tyrese decided that she wasn’t attractive enough to be wooed with song, started laughing and yelling “No, that aint her!”, and had her escorted offstage. He then handpicked some pretty young thing from the audience and sang to her instead.
Dick.
LOL!!! That’s cold! "It’s good ta be da [Rockstar]!
You are writing about The Who concert at the Cow Palace in San Francisco during 1973. I knew someone who went to it. After the guy drummed with the band for less than an hour, everyone began to leave the stage. The group stopped the volunteer audience member and pointed him back out into the seats. Pretty d@mn cold if you ask me. He should have at least gotten a tour jacket.
I saw The Who do the make-up concert for this blunder. It was at Winterland in 1976 at what was one of San Francisco’s finest venues. The dance floor was the size of a basketball court. Moon didn’t skip a beat and it was simply one of the finest shows I have ever seen. Frankie Laine’s nephew had sat in line for two days previous and got all of us second row balcony seats at a 15° viewing angle over the stage. They had the first laser light show I had ever seen and the song list was superb. The woman I would meet three years later and live with for five half a decade was sitting on the other side of the auditorium in almost the same exact seats.
I have a CD by a band named Daniel Amos, on which, at a festival in 2000, they went through a series of concocted excuses to get off stage. Each member left, leaving only the singer/leader. He then said that it wasn’t worth it, and and invited an entire audience band up to perform “I Love You # 19”, one of their old standards.
I heard somewhere that they had planned it before they got onstage, and maybe had picked out people beforehand, but it was pretty cool anyway.
Michelle Shocked toured recently and at the gig I saw (King Tut’s, Glasgow), she did the encores with audience members replacing the entire band!
She seemed to have met one of them the day before and a couple, I think, were local musicians lined up specially, but others did seem to be just volunteers out the audience. Took a few minutes ‘rehersal’ on stage to get each song going but it got a great response!
I remember seeing flipper once in Sacramento and it ended up with the band members out in the audience drinking beer and watching the “real” band perform
Of course, at the last Dashboard Confessional concert I was at, they sang, literally, only about half the lyrics, leaving audiences to sing the rest (not on stage, natch). I imagine it’s some elaborate ploy to get people to buy more DC records, since it worked for me: i’m gonna buy them so I can sing at the next concert. Of course then they won’t be doing it prolly 
I don’t know about the incident the OP is talking about, but back in 1996, Sting had a concert in Dallas…he let a guy from the audience sing the “I’m so happy, I can’t stop crying” song. Sting basically sang back-up with him. It was cool as shit, but I’m thinking it must have been somewhat set-up as the guy asked his woman to marry him right after singing but while on stage.
I saw Jimi Page several years ago in DC. (Incredible show BTW) For his encore, his lead singer (Paul Rogers, I think) didn’t come out. Page starts playing “Stairway To Heaven” and the audience sang the whole song. Pretty cool!