Music

NAUGHTY: Summer of the stage collapse

by Nicole Villeneuve

In our annual festive Naughty and Nice feature, AUX compiles the best and worst of the year in music.

Sometimes, when you cram hundreds of thousands of people into one place and ply them with booze or drugs and the visceral power of music, bad things can occur. Usually, what happens is good and memorable and formative. But sometimes, it’s bad.
The history of tragedies at rock concerts is scattered with stories of crowds rushing the stage and getting trampled here, some Hells Angels there, a Woodstock ’99 clusterfuck for the ages, or the odd fire in a tiny unsuspecting nightclub. But this summer, a rash of occurrences at music festivals across the world made for a new entry into the concert tragedy lexicon—the stage collapse.

It started in July at the Ottawa Blues Fest, where Cheap Trick had been on stage for 20 minutes; suddenly, monstrous storm clouds blew in out of nowhere, and the band fled the stage just moments before the structure collapsed around where they stood. Three people were injured, though not fatally.

A month later, in Tulsa, OK, the Flaming Lips were set to play at the Brady District Block Party when a similar freak storm sent their massive lighting rig crashing down, and though frontman Wayne Coyne said he “thought they were gonna die,” they escaped with their lives and $800,000 in equipment damage.

Then the coincidences seemed to turn into a trend. A few days later, just before country act Sugarland was to play at the Indiana State Fair, the stage came down, killing four and injuring over 40. A few days after that, at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium, the stage crumbled, killing five and narrowly missing young Chicago indie rockers Smith Westerns, who were in the middle of their set. The cause of both? Sudden and severe storms.

In the Indiana case, the producers of the show (and the band Sugarland, roped in due to a contract technicality) were sued; just recently, nearly all of the claimants accepted settlements from the state. Not long after Cheap Trick’s near miss, the band and their management started demanding answers, noting that other structures had stayed put during the storm. They questioned whether the stage construction or design was flawed, and even cancelled another show after learning its stage would be built by the same company. Pukkelpop was deemed a natural cause in a government report, and the festival plans to carry on as normal next year (with some added incentives for ticket holders who missed out on the rest of the cancelled fest this year).

Whether it’s a sign of hasty planning and assembly for an increasing number of festivals (which is what the Pukkelpop insurers were getting at, a tangible sign of deep unrest in the world’s climate, or merely a terrible coincidence, for all its other blockbuster festivals, 2011 will be remembered as the summer of the festival stage collapse.

Return to the Naughty and Nice master list.