The craziest things musicians have done on stage

In 1956, Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and was shot from the waist up, as censors feared his wild hip gyrations would degrade America's moral fiber. A little over a decade later, Jim Morrison of The Doors would go several steps further at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami, as a late flight and some heavy drinking led to Morrison slurring his way through a set that was already chaotic due to the venue being oversold. He chided the audience for existing, tried to invite fans on stage (which the local cops immediately stopped), and began removing his shirt. To read some detailed briefs on the incident, despite goading the audience into seeing his own personal Lizard King, Jim Morrison never exposed himself, but you couldn't convince the police of that, who put out a warrant for his arrest for indecent exposure.

It's called "Tired Grandfather," in case you were wondering. Yes, during the Tour of the Americas '75 , Mick Jagger and Co. sometimes brought out a large, phallic inflatable on stage. More akin to a waving inflatable arm person, this rather large and suggestive prop earned the "Tired Grandfather" name by only sometimes achieving full inflation — often bouncing around in different states of fill as Jagger ran towards it and attacked it. A controversial item, the prop was an immediate fan favorite but was only brought out during this one spat of dates.

In 1985, Los Angeles' L7 were happy to merge punk and metal into wild new shapes. Following the release of the 1992 album Bricks Are Heavy, which was produced by Butch Vig fresh off of handling Nirvana's Nevermind, the group shot into notoriety. As an all-female hard rock act, L7 ran into scrutiny that their male counterparts often didn't, and when it came to their performing at the 1992 Reading Festival, they met some of their harshest pushback yet.

 By all accounts, the group's afternoon set wasn't great (they allegedly didn't even get to soundcheck), but an unruly crowd started slinging mud at the band right off the festival grounds, interrupting their songs and frustrating the group. Co-singer Donita Sparks got hit in the head and had enough, and she reached into her pants and retrieved a shocking souvenir that was launched into the crowd. Before they even got backstage, they knew the event would make headlines, but to many, the trading of rude behaviors only enshrined their hard rock credentials.

The Kit Kat Club is not much of a concert venue, primarily because it's a strip club. The Red Hot Chili Peppers were just starting, so they didn't have a lot of say in the places that booked them, and they proceeded to try and fit in with the mostly naked people by being mostly naked themselves, putting tube socks around their most sensitive of instruments. As attention-grabbing as such a stunt was, it soon became a part of the band's iconography, with a photo of them in such fashion gracing the cover of their Abbey Road E.P. from 1988.

At the 2013 Billboard Music Awards, self-produced R&B crossover star Miguel was performing his signature song, "Adorn," when he decided to jump over a small gathering of fans before landing on a new stretch of the stage. Well, "landing" is a strong word, given that he leg-dropped fans Cindy Tsai and Khyati Shah while television cameras peered on. While laughed about online as Miguel was harshly criticized for his poor decision, Tsai sued him two years later, and she had all the video evidence she needed to make her case.

In June 2013, Amanda Palmer, formerly of Dresden Dolls fame but now a full-bore indie-rock sensation in her own right, played the famed Glastonbury Festival and was caught by cameras having a wardrobe malfunction. Notorious print outlet The Daily Mail, in an article credited only to "Daily Mail Reporter," claimed she was "making a boob of herself," mentioning the photo they took but not a single song she performed. 

A few weeks later, at the Roundhouse rock club, Palmer delivered a new song called "Dear Daily Mail," focusing on the incident. Encouraging people to film her response to said wardrobe malfunction, her sardonic lyrics were soon coupled with a complete and total disrobing, which elicited cheers from her fans and went viral quickly, with Palmer making a strong and humorous point about the way the press treats female performers.

In April 2016, rapper YG dropped the music video for his Nipsey Hussle collaboration "F--- Donald Trump." Racially charged and profoundly defiant, the song summed up the sentiment many felt about the surging candidacy of eventual United States President Donald Trump. By being so direct, the song caught on via social media, failing to chart on Billboard but still getting certified Gold for sales of a half-million copies. Over three years later, at Tyler, The Creator's celebrated Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, YG did the song again with a special guest: Trump hush-money recipient Stormy Daniels . "I am the reason that Donald Trump is f----d," she declared to a roaring crowd, proving that several years into his presidency, the sentiment still rang true for many.

The KLF will go down as one of the wildest pranks ever played in pop music history. A dance outfit formed by two frustrated music industry pros, The KLF (or The Timelords or The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, depending on what era you start at) sampled records without clearances and scored a fluke chart-topper with a "Doctor Who" dance remix. 

While their move from sonic jesters into more serious acid house innovators garnered them some genuine fans, the defiant and dark comedy sported by members Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty carried throughout their careers. Making hits despite themselves, their performances at the 1992 Brit Awards featured the band on stage with grindcore outfit Extreme Noise Terror, ruffling feathers with their unhinged performance before Drummond took a machine gun and fired blanks into an unsuspecting live audience. Unsurprisingly, they were not invited back.

When Jimi Hendrix took the stage at the Monterey Pop Festival, he was relatively unknown in the U.S. While an introduction by the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones excited some people, no one was fully prepared for The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Psychedelic, raw, and noisy, Hendrix and his tight band took guitar rock in wild directions, generating an immense buzz across only nine songs, half of which were covers. There was a lot of showboating, but it was earned, as Hendrix knew exactly how talented he was. 

All his suggestive movements and clever stunts still didn't prepare audiences for his closing trick: during his rendition of "Wild Thing," out came some lighter fluid. Before long, his guitar was on fire. He stood over it as if summoning spirits out of it and soon smashed his axe further before throwing it into the crowd. He sustained burn injuries on his hands from the incident, but it was all any publication talked about the following day, instantly launching Hendrix into superstar status.

In 1996, Oasis was on top of the world. With their planet-conquering sophomore record (What's The Story) Morning Glory?, the laddish Britpop stars had bullied their way onto American rock radio and were developing a worldwide following. It's no wonder they were asked to perform on the popular MTV Unplugged program, but two weeks of rehearsals were punctuated by only occasional appearances by frontman Liam Gallagher. Songwriting brother Noel was, of course, miffed, but when it came to the day of the live taping at the Royal Festival Hall, Liam showed up intoxicated, forcing production to carry on recording with only Noel singing. Noel stepped up to the challenge, but not before hearing heckling from one of the venue's box seats from his own brother, who managed to sneak up there and, at one point, threatened to come down and sing as promised. He never got the chance, and soon the band's planned U.S. tour went up in smoke.

On the first Sunday closing night of the 2012 Coachella Festival, headliners Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg took to the stage to roll through their catalog of certified classics. No one was truly prepared for their special guest: A digitized, hologram version of the late Tupac Shakur. He was approximately the size of Snoop and Dre and soon shouted out the headliners and Coachella proper. Yet, having died over a decade prior, how exactly did Tupac shout out Coachella? All through the use of technology, of course. While some people were excited by the stunt, others felt it was disrespectful to Tupac's legacy, specifically with the generated Coachella nod. While it was undeniably the talk of the trades, discussions of a tour with the hologram fell through, as the company that made it soon went bankrupt.

There are a lot of outrageous things that noise-rap outfit Death Grips has done, from leaking their major-label debut to making an album cover that had the record name written in black marker over fully erect male genitalia, but their 2013 Lollapalooza aftershow might be their most notorious stunt. 

While fans waited at Chicago's Bottom Lounge for the band to appear, their songs played overhead, and a drum kit was set up on stage. Nothing too wild there. Projected behind the kit was an alleged suicıde note emailed to them by a fan, which created an uneasy atmosphere. Time passed, and restless fans soon learned the band had no intention of even showing up, claiming that the setup and projection were the show in question, passing it off as a surreal performance art piece. While Death Grips fans have put up with many antics, the crowd didn't take the news well, destroying the kit in protest. Sometimes the most memorable shows are those you don't play.

If you're a fan of Phish, then you know that every Halloween will be something special. Starting in 1994, they devoted most of their Halloween performances to a full-length cover of a classic album, providing their own noodly interpretations of landmark records by the likes of The Velvet Underground and Talking Heads. While they sometimes got really obscure with their picks (see their 2014 set covering the Disney sound effects LP Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House), their 2018 Halloween performance had even the most hardcore music nerds scratching their heads. They performed Scandinavian prog band Kasvot Växt's 1981 album, í rokk? As the show continued, fans scoured the internet for clues and found some reviews and interviews, only to discover they were all fake. Phish mounted a massive faux campaign to surprise their fans, only to do it again in 2021 by covering a new fictional act: their own Sci-Fi Soldier.

In all likelihood, you've seen the video: It's a sunny outdoor concert, and hitmaker Akon is on stage during KFEST when security picks a 15-year-old fan named Anthony C. Smith out to meet his idol. The performer takes off his shirt to show his built body, then immediately picks the teenager over his head and launches him back into the crowd. The viral clip shows Smith upset and confused by what just transpired. Over a year later, Akon pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment after a case was brought against him. It resulted in him paying a fee of $350 and serving 65 hours of community service. If he hadn't struck that plea deal, he easily could've been "Locked Up."

G.G. Allin has a notorious reputation in rock history, arguably known for his onstage antics more than his actual music. He was known to defecate on stage, urinate on audience members, shove a microphone into various orifices, cause lots and lots of damage to equipment or stages, and much more. While his band, The Jabbers, had a short-lived run and Allin garnered a reputation for his rebel attitude, his live performances started as erratic and only got crazier from there. It reached the point where his sets were rarely completed in full, as police or venue staff would be forced to stop his performances before even more damage was done.

Several years into his career as the face of modern industrial-pop music, Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor was no stranger to controversy, especially with his cohort Marilyn Manson opening select tour dates for him. Their show was designed for the alternative crowd, but their stop at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, generated headlines before a single note was played. 

While the Mormon-heavy population was known to be traditionally conservative, the venue manager felt that Manson's show was too offensive, so they removed him from the bill — even though they kept Nine Inch Nails' slot. Not people who take lightly to being censored, Reznor invited Manson on stage during his set, where the two took to the microphones to lambast everything from the promoters to the Mormon Church. They then took a copy of The Book of Mormon and ripped it up, tossing the pages into the crowd. Needless to say, Reznor didn't perform again in the state until the year 2000.

Tipper Gore infamously founded the Parents Music Resource Center after walking in on her daughter listening to the song "Darling Nikki" by Prince. Finding it so offensive, the PMRC was formed to warn and advise parents about which songs had objectionable themes, eventually leading to the creation of the "Parental Advisory" sticker featured on album covers to this day. Rage Against the Machine, a group that wears their politics explicitly on their sleeves, decided to go without sleeves entirely during the 14 minutes allotted for their 1993 Lollapalooza set, painting the PMRC letters on their chest and covering their mouths in duct tape and wearing ... nothing else. They stood on stage playing no music, soon eliciting boos from the crowd for their naked protest. Don't worry, though: the band made it up to their fans by playing a free concert later.

The government of Venice, Italy, had the swell idea of staging a free show at Piazza San Marco featuring the music of Pink Floyd, broadcasting the whole thing to several countries to help drum up some tourism dollars. While the band agreed to the gig, concerns started to grow. Why perform at a landmark instead of a proper stadium? How could the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo handle overflow when its capacity was 7,450 people? Would the band be too loud that it'd ruin centuries-old architecture? 

While the band did agree to turn down their decibel volume from 100 to 60 and performed from the comfort of a floating barge, an in-person audience of 200,000 fans overwhelmed the city, leading to metric tons of litter being left behind along with permanent damage to the Judgement of Solomon marble statues. After the band left, many citizens felt that the event left the city worse off than before they showed up. Despite Mayor Antonio Casellati's excuses, the city council that elected him quit, thereby taking Casellati's position away from him.

A list of the craziest things musicians have done on stage wouldn't be complete without mentioning perhaps the most infamous rock moment in rock concert history. It was 1982 in Des Moines, Iowa, and Ozzy was in the middle of his Diary of a Madman tour. A young fan had stolen a bat from his high school's science department and thrown it on stage. Ozzy noticed, held it up, and, thinking it was a toy, took a bite out of one of the wings. At that moment, he realized it was not a toy and tossed it back into the audience. As a precaution, he was taken to the local hospital to get some rabies shots, but those shots' effects led him to collapse on stage just a few days later. He survived and managed to finish the tour, but now with the added boon of the bat incident securing his place in rock history.

In the modern social media age, fans can become just as famous as their idols, even if that fame is only 15 minutes long. From Michael Bublé bringing up a 15-year-old kid to sing with him and knock it out of the park to Green Day pulling audience members to play parts of their songs, fans are physically closer to their idols than ever. 

During a performance of The Born This Way Ball at the Toyota Center in 2013, pop diva Lady Gaga turned a performance of the beloved album cut "Scheiße" into something special. As it wasn't a single, the complex choreography executed by her backup dancers was only known to her hardcore acolytes. Partway through the performance, she sees a kid in the audience doing the choreography pretty well, points him out, and insists he is brought up onstage. While not as precise as her tight crew, the kid still does a remarkable job of keeping up with her dancers, and she makes sure her audience knows how proud of him she is and how talented her fans are.

It seemed like a pretty regular performance at first. Here was Milli Vanilli, the new jack swing duo who had taken the world by storm with massive crossover pop hits like "Girl You Know It's True" and "Blame It On the Rain," conquering the airwaves and becoming overnight superstars. 

During a taping for MTV at the Lake Compounce theme park in Bristol, Connecticut, a recording of "Girl You Know It's True" started to skip, and the two handsome band members Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus were clearly not singing their parts. In fact, they weren't singing at all. While the Compounce incident was initially brushed off, stories of the group's fraudulent nature kept bubbling up. Despite winning the Grammy for Best New Artist in February 1990, the band's founding mastermind Frank Farian finally let the cat out of the bag that November: Morvan and Pilatus were just the photogenic fronts and didn't sing at all. 

Their Grammy rescinded, Farian tried to put the real singers front and center for a new release, but the interest had waned, and especially following Pilatus' accidental overdose in 1998, Milli Vanilli became a very tragic footnote of pop music history.

While it's sometimes hard to count television tapings the same as live performances, back in the 1960s, things were a little more off-the-cuff. During The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, London's hot new band The Who was invited to perform their emerging hit "My Generation." The band already had a reputation for memorable live shows, as Pete Townshend often ended their sets by smashing his guitar on stage. Adding to the fury, drummer Keith Moon would set up his drum kit with some small explosives. 

During the Smothers Brothers taping, Moon went a little overboard with his preparations, packing a more-than-generous amount of bomb bits. When the moment to trigger the effect came, it singed some of Townshend's hair and left shrapnel right in Moon's arm. The only person unphased by the potentially deadly event was bassist John Entwistle, who kept his cool like always.

If you're a popular enough band to have your songs played on the radio, you know it's probably good form to play some radio concert gigs, be they holiday Jingle Ball  or random lineups for larger promoters. During Green Day's set at the 2012 iHeartRadio Music Festival, it was clear that Armstrong wasn't too pleased with how things were going, as a countdown timer told him he only had so many minutes left in his set. Catching his last 60 seconds being displayed, he swore, called out pop acts like Justin Bieber, and left in a huff, making headlines for not conforming to a radio conglomerate's tight set time. Unfortunately, the event only highlighted that frontman Billie Joe Armstrong might have been dealing with substance abuse issues, which was confirmed days later when it was announced that he was entering rehab.

The Stooges' are proto-punk kingpins, and New York City often felt like a second home to the band. In the midst of touring their celebrated third record, Raw Power, keyboardist Scott Thurston was brought in to replace Bob Sheff. After a successful show at Max's Kansas City on July 30, the band hoped Thurston's second performance the following night would also go down without a hitch. Unfortunately, while trying to walk across the patron's tables at the front of the stage a few songs on, frontman Iggy Pop fell and crashed into some glassware, cutting himself open to the point of spurting blood. Alice Cooper, who was allegedly in attendance, insisted Pop go to the hospital, but Pop knew that even as he was slowly bleeding out and stagehands did their best to seal his wounds with marking tape, that night would go down in rock history.