These Rock Stars Almost Died While On Tour

you may not immediately go to rockstar when you think of the most dangerous jobs in the world but the truth is that anything can happen when rockers hit the road here are some of the rock stars who nearly died on tour as both a guitarist extraordinaire and a constant presence on the rock scene since the 1960s eric clapton has pretty much seen it all but old slohan's success has come with a great number of personal demons his appetite for drink and drugs used to be copious to say the least and for a long time he refused to even admit that he was an addict on his 1981 us tour things came to a head in a dramatic way on march 13th of that year clapton had just wrapped up a show in wisconsin when suddenly a brutal pain hit him he later wrote in his autobiography i was diagnosed with five bleeding ulcers one was the size of a small orange the doctors told roger forrester who wanted to fly me back to england that i could die at any moment since one of the ulcers was pressing on my pancreas and could burst imminently clapton ultimately pulled through and was able to return to work after a quite literally sobering stint in the hospital unfortunately he soon hit the bottle once more in fact clapton didn't fully sober up until after his son's death in 1991. david bowie's career was filled with great art and even greater music so maybe it's unsurprising that even his death in 2016 came with the soundtrack of sorts his final album black star however both bowie's career and life almost had a far more premature ending bowie wasn't one of those artists who toured the globe well into their 60s and there was a very good reason for that during his a reality tour in 2004 a blocked artery gave him a serious health scare after a show in germany and although emergency surgery saved him the incident caused bowie to consider ending his career altogether bowie was 57 at the time and although he appeared as ageless and animated as ever his band had started to notice that he wasn't all that well he had already started displaying symptoms during an earlier date in the czech republic but it wasn't until the june 25th gig at the hurricane festival when things really took a dark turn bowie's guitar player jerry leonard later said we played the entire set and it seemed normal not quite as energetic and as charged as the performance before we finished the show and then it seemed like david was in a lot of pain and obviously something was wrong though bowie survived the ordeal and carried on with his recording career his touring days had at long last come to an end metallica singer guitarist james hetfield has had two brushes with death on tour the first happened on september 26th 1986 when the thrash metal giants were caught in a bus accident in sweden on their european tour the crash killed metallica's bassist cliff burton although the other band members escaped with just a few injuries hetfield's second close call was in 1992 when metallica were co-headlining a tour with guns and roses in montreal a miscommunication with the pyrotechnician led to a situation in which hedfield was far too close to a magnesium flame when it went off hedfield later recalled so i'm burnt all my arm my hand completely down to the bone side of my face hair dawn then i look down and watch the skin just rising and things going wrong luckily hetfield survived this painful ordeal and the band resumed touring a few weeks later though it was a while before he played guitar again to put in context just how close hadfield came to losing his life the band's bassist jason neustadt later pointed out if he had been breathing in he would have been dead for a long time foo fighters drummer taylor hawkins was at the very top of his game the band had released some of the biggest albums of the 1990s going platinum on multiple occasions and we're selling out concerts left right and center unfortunately with great success comes ample opportunity to party and that's exactly what hawkins did in 2001 hawkins was hospitalized during a tour of europe causing the foo fighters to call it quits on their final four gigs it soon came to light that the drummer had overdosed on heroin so severely that he spent two weeks in a coma hawkins has been known to somewhat downplay the incident often saying that he merely liked to party a bit too hard and referring to his time in a coma as a quote happy nap however that's not to say hawkins didn't take that wake-up call to heart in 2018 hawkins said there was a year where the partying just got a little too heavy and thank god on some level this guy gave me the wrong line or the wrong thing one night and i woke up going what the happened that was a real changing point for me guns and roses are pretty much the poster boys for rock and roll excess but even so guitarist slashes close call in a san francisco hotel during one tour in 1992 is almost too strange to believe predictably drugs were involved less predictably however this overdose actually did kill him slash's heart reportedly stopped for no fewer than eight minutes until paramedics were able to revive him that may sound like an impossible amount of time to go without a heartbeat but the length of time that a heart can be stopped before a person is considered beyond saving depends on a number of variables so who knows of course you might expect that temporarily dying in the middle of a tour would be a pretty daunting experience for somebody but as slash tells the tale being dead for a considerable period of time didn't phase him all that much he later told the guardian they took me to the hospital but i said i'm fine signed myself out went back to the hotel and we flew to the next gig phil enselmo's heyday as the front man of groove metal titan's pantera had no shortage of drama notably and salmo almost died of a heroin overdose in 1996 during the band's great southern trend kill tour according to enselmo himself his heroin use was a natural extension from the various painkillers he'd used to manage a serious and painful back condition called degenerative disc disease the singer's own eventual statement about the incident made it clear just how close he'd been to death's door and selmo said i philip h and selmo immediately after a very successful show in dallas injected a lethal dose of heroin into my arm and died for four to five minutes in his statement anselmo promised to keep pantera's tour going and keep himself in the land of the living december 1971 was a bad month for frank zappa on december 4th the artist and his mothers of invention band inadvertently inspired deep purple's hit song smoke on the water when a fan decided to whip out a flare gun during their show at montreux casino in geneva switzerland the ensuing fire quickly became an inferno that burned the whole building down fortunately there were no casualties or even serious injuries thanks in part to the heroics of concert organizer claude knobs and reportedly zappa himself who smashed a window with his guitar to help people escape then just six days later the band was playing the rainbow theater in london when a fan rushed the stage reportedly in a fit of jealousy over his girlfriend's zappa infatuation and pushed the singer off zappos fall into the orchestra pit crushed his larynx and gave him chronic back pain along with an assortment of grievous injuries he later wrote the band thought i was dead my head was over on my shoulder and my neck was bent like it was broken i had a gash on my chin a hole in the back of my head a broken rib and a fractured leg one arm was paralyzed zappa ended up spending the next year in a wheelchair in 1978 the who's buckwild drummer keith moon died after an accidental overdose at only 32 years old but that was far from his first od on november 20th 1973 the who played the first gig of their u.s tour in san francisco in the end however the band was forced to enlist a crowd member named scott halpin to finish the show as moon had taken a pretty big dose of ketamine to help calm his nerves he stopped playing and then passed out part way through won't get fooled again before being helped off stage by the band's roadies halpin played three songs with the who while moon was revived backstage unfortunately halpin wasn't around to rescue the band on march 9 1976 when moon was once again unable to play a gig this time at the boston garden the concert had to be stopped and rescheduled and although moon's troubles were initially explained away as a debilitating case of flu it was later revealed that he had ingested a near-lethal amount of brandy and barbitus lead singer roger daltrey told howard stern and a lot of the stuff that he did that people laugh about they think oh that was really funny yeah when you there at the time some of it wasn't funny at all in 1995 alt rock superstars rem toured the globe in support of their album monster but the tour turned out to be a deeply unpleasant experience for several band members bassist mike mills had a tumor scare for example while michael stipe had to have surgery for a hernia but the first and worst of the tour's many problems came for drummer bill berry who almost died of a brain aneurysm a march show in lausanne switzerland proved difficult for barry who started to feel a nasty pain in his head and eventually had to leave the stage when it pretty much knocked him out he later described the experience to the la times saying it felt like a bowling ball hit me in the head there wasn't any warning i was just singing the falsetto part on tongue when it happened barry was later diagnosed with not just one but two brain aneurysms one of which had already ruptured fortunately this daunting situation had a happy ending berry was rushed into surgery which proved successful and rem was able to resume touring by may of that year still although the drummer reportedly made a full recovery the experience might have caused him to re-evaluate his life and career barry left the band on good terms in 1997 saying that his priorities had simply shifted head banging on stage might be a fairly significant part of corn vocalist jonathan davis's job description but in 2006 a strange blood condition turned this routine metal move into a potential tragedy several of the band's tour dates in europe that year went down the train when davis started to notice strange marks on his skin that left his body looking literally beat up describing the symptoms the singer later recalled we had just done a show in hamburg germany i was on the bus and noticed all this bruising all over my body it wasn't bad just here and there but i was like what the hell this ain't right i don't remember hitting myself or anything and i never bruise the bruise is eventually turned out to be a full-on blood infection brought on by a blood disorder called thrombocytopenic perpapa or itp for short this condition can kick in when your blood platelets are too low and it stops your blood from clotting normally causing internal bleeding and bruising as well as potential hemorrhages as a result if davis had been too cavalier with his head banging he may well have wound up in a very bad way indeed the singer's itp reportedly stemmed from an allergic reaction and was itself nearly fatal fortunately he was quickly seen by a doctor and made it to a hospital just in time the year was 1977 and poet turned punk rock trailblazer paddy smith's band was touring as a support act for a far more traditional rocker bob seeger but this tour would have drastic and long lasting consequences for smith during a concert in tampa florida she fell off the stage and suffered a number of horrific spinal injuries impeded by a broken neck vertebrae and a fractured spine her fall sidelined smith's career for a long time and recovery required both a large amount of physical therapy and a lengthy stint with a neck brace the accident reportedly happened when smith spun on the stage and lost her footing though she and her career ultimately recovered in 2012 smith told uncut that her back was still bothering her even decades later and that she felt seeger's crew was to blame she said i was being careful on the stage because there wasn't as much room or light i didn't whirl around as much as usual but when i hit the monitor with my foot it was half hanging over the lip of the stage we needed more space and light and we didn't get it and i had an accident keith richards is so notorious for cheating death that there is a somewhat well-known saying in the world of rock and roll that he and cockroaches would be the only living things to survive a nuclear war as the late great robin williams put it he is the only man in the planet who can go anthrax right the rolling stones guitarist had one of his earlier near-death experiences way back in 1965 when the stones were bringing their music to america a december 3rd concert in sacramento california was business as usual right up until the point at which the guitarist's instrument connected with a microphone stand a large number of sparks and one stunned guitarist flew as a surge of electricity knocked richards out in the most dramatic way possible the mic stand had been ungrounded and the ensuing electrical shock nearly killed richards one audience member later described the events saying i saw the blue light i literally saw keith fly into the air backward i thought he was dead i was horrified we all were silence fell over the crowd fortunately richards had been wearing a pair of rubber-soled boots that day which may have been instrumental in saving his life in a textbook example of his ability to survive basically anything richards was back on stage the very next day in 1993 radiohead was a very different band from the arty and experimental outfit they are today riding high on the wave of their grunge influenced album pablo honey they spent the summer of that year touring the u.s and on independence day performed for the show mtv beach house but this holiday nearly ended in tragedy after tom york took a dip in a nearby swimming pool as the band performed the song anyone can play guitar york gave a wild performance that culminated with him diving head first into the pool he then climbed out again and immediately reached for a live microphone whilst soaking wet fortunately someone had the presence of mind to quickly take the mic out of the singer's reach the incident doesn't show up on the aired version of the show in which you can only briefly see york urgently conferring with a crew member after climbing out of the water but if the story is true it's probably fair to say that york owes that person his life charlie puth's musical output may not be the heaviest in the world but during his career he has worked with a number of rock icons including ozzy osbourne and slash and if nothing else hooth's touring schedule alone seems to be far more metal than most considering that it has reportedly almost killed him twice huth got his start as a youtube star in 2009 and eventually hit the mainstream both as a songwriter for other artists and as a singer-songwriter in his own right unfortunately hitting the road didn't come quite so easily for pooth in 2019 he recalled i used to get sick a lot on tour i almost died twice like literally it was really tough i kept getting sick i was sick for like a year with a cold and i just wasn't really taking care of myself pouth didn't go into specifics about precisely what kind of health problems he had faced but he did say that he eventually came to understand how you can live life on the road without having to suffer he said now i know how to tour i figured it out sometimes a rock star doesn't even need to be on tour to be thrown into peril all it takes is one bad day few know this better than travis barker of blink 182 fame in september 2008 the duo project of barker and his friend adam dj am goldstein performed a one-off free concert in south carolina afterwards they were set to fly back to california but unfortunately their lear jets takeoff ended in a crash that killed four people on board only the two musicians survived barker told joe rogan just how terrible it was i was in such a hurry to get out of the plane and exit the plane i jumped right into the jet which is full of fuel so my whole body lit up barker was left in critical condition by the crash with over 65 of his body badly burned the drummer's road to recovery included 27 surgeries and was so arduous that at one point he openly offered one million dollars to any friend who would be willing to end his pain parker eventually regained the will to live but rather understandably has preferred to avoid flying ever since if you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts please call the national suicide prevention lifeline at 1-800-273-talk 1-800-273-8255 you

Channel: Grunge

Views: 249,830

Keywords: grunge, rock stars, tours, david bowie, charlie puth

Id: JxcF1nz_ooo

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021