Stevie Nicks – Fleetwood Mac
No one was walking out of recording Rumours without some wear and tear. The entire concept of the record was about their relationships falling apart, so having to bare their souls out in the open while their exes were in the room was never going to be the best feeling in the world. Right as Stevie Nicks was at her wit’s end, though, she managed to get one of her final bits of magic for the record.
Despite ‘Gold Dust Woman’ being one of her signature tunes, the recording was made after Nicks was suffering from a sore throat and contracted a cold. There were a lot more problems behind getting the song done with the outro’s broken glass, but after hours of waiting to get the right take, she transformed into the witch that she was talking about, screaming her lungs out as the final parts of the tune played out.
Then again, if we’re talking about musicians getting hurt, Nicks may have had the easy problems. Anyone can shred their vocal cords, but considering this was the same session that left Lindsey Buckingham wanting to strangle one of the engineers, it’s safe to say that no one was safe from a bit of violence between the harmonies.
It’s almost expected to see Alice Cooper do something horrific every time he plays a concert. There are many shock rock acts that have come and gone since him, but rarely has anyone been able to see the same person die numerous times and get resurrected live onstage for the audience’s pleasure. It might all be part of the gag, but there are a few hairy moments where things took a much more deadly turn.
While a lot of Cooper’s stage props look realistic, one of the few genuine torture devices on hand is the hanging gallows. Despite going to classes to make sure that every one of his severed heads looks authentic during the guillotine sequence, Cooper misjudged the wiring when hanging himself during his prime, which led to him nearly getting caught on the hope and suffocating in the middle of an arena.
Even though he manoeuvred his way out of it, he was only left with minor scrapes and bruises despite being knocked out by the time he hit the ground. But the worst part about this fall was that the whole thing was done at a soundcheck. It’s one thing to have a horrific experience like that, but the fact that no one bothered to get the right shot of everything would have been an editor’s worst nightmare.
Sean Kinney – Alice in Chains
When you’re starting out in a band, getting in front of the glass to cut a record means everything. It takes blood, sweat and tears to afford even an hour of studio time, and since most Seattle bands were working on a shoestring budget, they were willing to do everything they could to get the moment right. So when Alice in Chains showed up to record ‘Man in The Box’, Sean Kinney wasn’t about to let broken bones stand in his way.
Despite his arm still being in a cast after breaking his hand earlier that month, Kinney was not going to sit in the middle of the studio and watch a session drummer play his part. The drums are an integral sound of Alice in Chains, and when the track wasn’t turning out right, Kinney figured the next best thing would be for him to take off the cast himself and play for as long as he could to get the right take.
He may have been risking his hand healing properly, but judging by how the rest of Alice in Chains’s songs worked out, he did develop a classic sound no one else had heard. ‘Man in the Box’ may sound a bit softer compared to his usual drumming performances, but it’s easy to appreciate a song like ‘No Excuses’ after having this song under your belt.
Oasis have never been known for having the most animated stage performances. Precious few bands have made their living out of standing in one position like statues while they play, but when the Manchester legends are onstage, the songs are what’s doing the talking half the time. Although Noel Gallagher is more content to add the odd background vocal, things were bound to get hairy when they started going through the seedy areas of England on their first tour.
When tearing through their first tour, the crowds would quickly descend into chaos, and while the band would play on almost every time, Noel took exception to someone who started to mob the stage. Despite doing everything he could to fend off the intruder, Noel walked away from the entire show with a black eye from the melee, with the rest of the band having to keep their heads down as they made their way out of the gig.
Even though that brand of chaos might seem wildly appealing to some punk rockers, Liam was always willing to come back at them with guns blazing if the crowd acted out of order. The penniless band were still making their name as the biggest band in the world, but Noel did get at least one encouraging sign: a complementary guitar from Johnny Marr to ward off any other overeager pissheads.
Pete Townshend – The Who
Pete Townshend always seemed to be prepared for war whenever he got onstage with The Who. Music meant more to him than strictly the catchy pop single, and when locking in with John Entwistle and Keith Moon, he was prepared to manhandle his guitar until the instrument was sweating from the pressure. When being that out of control, self-preservation tends to go out the window half the time.
Even though Townshend was known to batter his guitars by breaking them at the end of the night, his trademark windmill strum is still his main calling card. When there was a whammy bar in Townshend’s line of fire, he didn’t bother trying to change his trajectory, playing every chord he could and letting the tremolo feature go right through his hand in the middle of the show.
While that’s the kind of gross display typically reserved for most metal bands, it never tore any major ligaments, with Townshend continuing to play the show despite having a hole in his strumming hand. There are many times when injuries overpower the show, but if someone like Townshend is able to play an entire set with one of his limbs being impaled, none of us average garage bands have any excuse for calling out sick.
Dave Grohl – Foo Fighters
The last thing that Dave Grohl ever wants to do is disappoint his fans. He has always given everything whenever he gets behind the drum kit, and even when he became the frontman of Foo Fighters, his role as the MC of every show made him feel like everyone’s favourite uncle who happens to have one of the biggest rock bands in the world behind him. Then again, even those crazy uncles can get carried away every now and again.
As the Foos began playing a major stadium gig, Grohl only managed to get two songs into the setlist before falling off the stage and breaking his leg. His entire bone was fractured in two, but given how much he’s given to his fans, did anyone in their right mind think that a few broken bones were going to defeat him? No, he was going to go back out, even if he needed assistance to do it.
While Taylor Hawkins took the microphone for a cover of Queen and David Bowie’s ‘Under Pressure’, Grohl reappeared with a doctor holding his foot in place as he played the rest of the set, with the EMT bobbing his head along to the song as they tore through the rest of the set. Grohl’s fall also ended up giving us one of the funniest thrones in the history of stage design, but if there was one thing that Grohl would never do, it was cancel a gig.
Eddie Vedder – Pearl Jam
When talking about a list like this, the word “hurt” can mean different things to different people. As much as people like the idea of their favourite artists pulling off death-defying acts, the hardest songs to get through tend to be the ones that either hit too close to home or become actual torture for someone to endure for too long. And for a genre that was known for as many dark chapters as grunge, Eddie Vedder was not prepared when writing every song on Ten.
Since a lot of Vedder’s songs dealt with loss, ‘Release’ was the first time that he started confronting the problems he had with his estranged father. Given the fact that he never got to know him, this was bound to be the drone-like piece that would end the record where Vedder could let everything out. But when he opened his mouth to sing it in the rehearsal space for the first time, Jeff Ament remembered the music getting to him too much.
As soon as the final chords rang out, Vedder abandoned the session completely, running out of the studio and being an emotional wreck before Ament came in to check on him. Even though Vedder was going through hell, Ament being there for him was a sign of things to come. This was a band of brothers from the very beginning, and they were going to make sure that everyone had their heads straight if they were going to carry on.
James Hetfield – Metallica
Everyone tends to picture their favourite metal musicians as some towering god among men. Even if they only play guitars, these people seem like the biggest human beings on Earth onstage, and if the world had come to an end that very night, they would look like they could withstand the apocalypse. If you ask James Hetfield, sometimes the artists onstage or as much a danger to themselves as anyone else.
Despite being the ultimate touring act of the 1980s, Metallica’s shows went through the roof the minute they toured with Guns N’ Roses. Though the idea of seeing the two biggest bands in the world on one bill would be fun, Hetfield made one fatal mistake in Montreal when playing ‘Fade to Black’. After struggling to find his footing, the frontman stood right in front of a massive chemical flame, which engulfed him and melted half of his skin off his body.
Although this particular show is also known for Axl Rose having the mother of all hissy fits and storming off the stage after a few songs, Hetfield came out as one of the most grizzled badasses in metal, only cancelling a few shows before returning with a cast on his arm and his guitar tech standing in to play his rhythm guitar parts. There are many different powers that metal music has over people, but not many are able to bring someone back from a stunt that should have killed them.
John Lennon – The Beatles
The Beatles weren’t always the loveable moptops most people took them for. It took a lot to get the band on that Ed Sullivan stage in the early 1960s, and before they even came over to America, they had been through the wringer playing the most exhausting shows anyone had ever played in Hamburg. Since that run of dates taught them to entertain by any means necessary, John Lennon knew no other option but to plough forward when making the band’s debut album.
While Please Please Me does a great job at capturing the Fab Four’s live set, it’s pretty clear that Lennon is suffering from a cold when listening to the record. It’s most noticeable on a track like ‘Anna (Go To Him)’, but by the time they reached the end of the night, Lennon’s voice was completely gone and had one more tune to go, which made ‘Twist and Shout’ sound like it was being sung by a rock and roll version of Bob Dylan years before he even picked up an electric guitar.
Lennon was forever mortified by his performance on the record, but even if he thought he couldn’t sing, that didn’t matter to the fans. This was the start of a new phase of rock and roll, and while it was rough around the edges in many respects, it helped give them character compared to every other soft-rock crooner that had cornered the market since Elvis Presley’s military service.
Corey Taylor – Slipknot
There really should be some sort of waiver for anyone who dares to go onstage with Slipknot. All of them might be perfectly sensible people when talking to them face-to-face, but as soon as those masks come on, their stage shows make them look like savages who would gladly tear anyone in the crowd apart if they had the chance. And while Iowa is the best sonic depiction of that mayhem, having to mutilate one’s self for the right take isn’t really a part of the job description.
When Corey Taylor needed the right inspiration for the title track, though, he knew he needed to take himself to the darkest place he could. Since the whole song is about him having twisted thoughts about a corpse, Taylor stripped naked in the middle of the studio to record the song and broke everything in sight, to the point where he was cutting himself with broken glass towards the end of the recording.
There are countless injuries that people have to go through to do normal jobs, but for a band with a member who’s known for being a killer clown, Taylor still reigns supreme as one of the most twisted people in the band based on this stunt alone. Because when you’ve crossed the line into self-harm for the sake of getting the right take, there’s no one else who can really argue with you.
