With the recent blow-up over Guns N’ Roses at the Reading Festival in the UK, a pattern has definitely emerged. This now marks the third recent incident where an audience has had a severe issue (in some way shape or form) with a performer.
Strike one: Billy Corgan cut a gig at the Viper Room short due to heckling. Strike two: Tila Tequila is attacked (no, seriously) at the Gathering of the Juggalos. Strike three: Guns N’ Roses at Reading (and, to a lesser extent, Leeds).
Let’s do this in chronological order. Corgan, by all accounts played a great show before his incident. He’d played some newer stuff, sure, but he kept the stage banter to a minimum and brought quite a few of the hits that people (in all likelihood) came to hear. He did his part to entertain; it was when he wanted the audience to follow him in doing something different - in this case, breaking out a ukulele to do a new song. Not the most “rock and roll” thing to do, granted, but nothing too out there. The audience, who had been into the show up to this point, turned like a pack of vipers (no pun intend--aw, who as I kidding?) and basically booed him off the stage.
Tila Tequila...there are quite a few circumstances surrounding what happened to her. You could argue that she trashed the Juggalo crowd before the festival (which, apparently, didn’t happen)...you could argue why was she booked for a crowd like that in the first place...you could argue that she was warned ahead of time that things were gonna get ugly...BUT, at the end of the day, she went out and gave it the ol’ college try. The music may have sucked out loud (and, trust me, it did.), but...throwing rocks at her on stage and chasing her back to her trailer and do what they could to continue the assault? That’s flat-out uncalled for.
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