Spinal-tap-ish things that really happened

Here's an interesting article by ELO's Bev Bevan. He talks a bit about being on tour with Black Sabbath when they had their disasterous Stonehenge set and midget in 1983.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/elos-bev-bevan-talks-rock-hall-induction-jeff-lynne-rift-w457572

@jeff5102 One of my favorites, from U2's PopMart tour:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PopMart_Tour#Reception

Disrupting a few shows, technical problems also arose throughout the tour. As the band was about to walk out of the giant mechanical lemon for the encore of a show in Oslo, the lemon malfunctioned, trapping the band inside and forcing them to escape through a small hatch at the back. This incident was later listed as one of "Rock 'n' Roll's 15 Most Embarrassing Stage Antics" by AOL's Spinner.com. The lemon malfunctioned again at a show in Sydney, and was not used at all, and also malfunctioned in Osaka, Japan, where the band was again trapped inside, but was unable to escape through the back.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet, Black Sabbath wanted a replica of Stonehenge for a concert. Their bass player Geezer drew up the plans and there was a misinterpretation between feet and metres.

Anyway, the replica was massively huge, as in life size. This was for an American tour and they ended up dumping it somewhere rather than taking it back with them. This story inspired the Stonehenge gag in the movie, although they went the opposite with it being tiny. Black Sabbath also had a dwarf on stage with them as well who would run across the Stonehenge replica. They had to sack him as he was a little egotistical as he was an Ewok apparently and the crew were quite mean//sadistic to him.



Sometimes a movie or tv show plot is so stupid that only the stupid can understand it.

It’s pretty sad, but Keith Relf of the Yardbirds being electrocuted by his own guitar.

One of the best examples of a real-life Spinal Tap moment:

Back in 1997 U2 launched the POP MART tour. Part of that tour consisted of the band members coming out of a giant Lemon (look it up online it was really something -- a giant mirror-ball shaped Lemon!). The Lemon opened midsection and the band members would walk down the steps to a b-stage during the first encore.

Trouble occurred one time however -- the Lemon wouldn't open on cue! The Edge was frantically inside the Lemon working on the mechanism trying to get it to open.

In that moment, he reports all he could think was "I'm Derek Smalls!".

Apparently U2 has a "Top Ten Spinal Tap moment." I am only aware of the one with the Lemon. (but what band on earth wouldn't have several Spinal Tap moments?)

"It happened when they played Valle Hovin stadium in Oslo, Norway. The lemon prop experienced a technical issue which prevented it from opening, and some 40,000 people witnessed four shadowy figures sitting inside while the backing tape of the song started and kept playing throughout the song. The audience was not sure what to make of this and watched in awkward silence. After two hours of cowboy suits, muscle shirts, and an inexplicable karaoke sing-along with Edge, it was unclear to everybody whether shadowy figures pushing and banging at the walls from within a giant piece of fruit was part of the show.

At the end of the song, the stage hands managed to get it open so that the band members were able to climb out of the back of the lemon. Some very warm band members stumbled out on stage, laughed, waved, drank gallons of water, and launched into the next song. That’s show business for you.

U2 superfan Arlin Bartels has no defence for his heroes. “The lemon getting stuck – not once but several times – is definitely one of the more notorious points in U2 history. Even I nearly lost faith. In terms of Spinal Tap moments… yes. The Lemon probably takes 8 of of the top 10 U2 Spinal Tap moments"

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Can't find a reference, but I remember an interview with Eric Clapton about some show he did with Jeff Beck where they actually got lost on their way to the stage; once they finally got there, they looked at each other, laughed & said " Hello Cleveland!!"

CC Deville from Poison played the wrong song while the rest of the band played the right one at a MTV show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5sb93HSh18

Kiss display Australian flag while in Austria as a display of thanks https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/photo_kiss_thank_austrian_fans_with_the_australian_flag.html