Musician horror stories

SinisterMinisterX

SinisterMinisterX

Illuminatus
Staff member
Let's get some more life in the Musicians Discussion forum! Give up your horror stories here.

First live performance: my first piano recital at age 10. I think I knew about two chords, because I was spending my time learning Tom Petty, REO Speedwagon and J. Geils songs instead of practicing my lessons. The recital was at the county fair, with all the other students. Time for my turn, I walk out onstage... and see a sea of faces. Hundreds. I'd guess 500, but it seemed like two thousand. Staring at me, silently, waiting. I've rarely been that scared. I'm surprised I didn't soil myself.

I sat down and played. I have no memory of what piece it was or how I did, only the fear. I clearly recall the relief upon finishing, and looking back at all the faces and ... thank H some polite applause. I survived.

Let's hear yours!
 
I was playing a 15th Century recorder at a historical music event, when some radio station turned up and decided they wanted to interview me. All well and good, then they threw in: "Go on then, play something." I started to play.....several bars later I realised I'd never actually played that particular dance before, only heard other people do it a few times. Thank goodness a lot of dances of that period went along the same lines. Never played any instrument in public since!
 
I had one last night: My clarinet quartet was playing and we like to throw in some theatrics/fun stage things to keep it visually interesting and so for this performance we decided to walk on stage from the back of the concert hall while playing and do the first song standing at the front of the stage. We still needed sheet music for the second song so we asked the stage crew to set up our music while we got in our positions. We went over which parts belonged to who and where everyone was sitting and all the details they needed to know. Despite all that, they still put our music in the wrong order. So when we sat in our seats, we were looking at the wrong parts. Luckily I still had my parts at least, but we had to stop after the first song (even though we wanted to play straight into the 2nd) to sort everything out.

Luckily, everybody who talked to me afterwards thought the whole thing was part of the act! So we got lucky there.
 
It's not music, but my first lead role in an elementary school play required me to make a grand walk across the mouth of the stage.
I fell off.
 
Another: bar gig. Standard 3 set, 5 hour show. Broke my E string on the last note of the first song. Thought I had a spare - nope, only spares for all the others. E being the lowest string, I then had to translate all my basslines (for keys like E and G) up an octave on the fly for the next 5 hours. Turns out the metal-type songs were easy enough, but stuff like The Beatles with more active basslines was hard and usually sounded bad.
 
That's including breaks, though. It's usually more like 4.5 hours - 9pm to 1:30pm, as most places want the band shutting down for last call and most bars close at 2am. At this particular show it was more like 5 hours, they had a later closing time.

So really it's 3 sets of about CD length each, not so bad at all. Can be tiring by the end of the night. One old band used to close the night with "Paradise City", and the fast closing section there was always a killer.
 
Let's have some more! My busiest weekend (as a bassist) was back in '92 or so.

Friday afternoon: 2-hour band practice
Friday evening: 3-hour gig at Stony's Still
Friday night: 5-hour gig at The Marina
Saturday morning: 2-hour band practice
Saturday afternoon: 5-hour gig at The Marina
Saturday night: 5-hour gig at Stony's Still

My skin gave out at the end of the second set of the final show. Fortunately, Stony's was right across the street from our guitarist's house. I walked over there and wrapped every bandage he had over my right hand fingers (left hand was sore but holding up). Had about a quarter-inch of bandage all over the first two right hand fingers. It lasted about half of the last set before shredding away, and I couldn't play on those fingers bare... so I spent the final half hour plucking with my ring finger and pinky, a pair of fingers I never use. Weak and slow. But I finished the damn show! :shred:

tl;dr - tried to rock and roll all night, party every day, my flesh only lasted 48 hours.
 
I have lots... Here's two excerpts from my archive of horror stories.

Live. We're playing a song I had written for the first time, and after a buildup after the second chorus I head off into my guitar solo. So long everything went well, and I nailed that damn solo. I play through the interlude to the last chorus, and into the chorus (as do the second guitar)... But suddenly I notice that the bass player/singer isn't singing - and he turns to me, playing the main riff of the song and looks at me like I'm crazy. I have never been so perplexed in my whole life. My first thought is that I have messed up, and I embarassed start soloing again because I have no idea where we are. Looking at a recording of the show later, it was the bass who fucked up. Thanks for that one, I mean fuck-ups happen all the time when you're playing live, but making it look like it was somebody else's fault and putting them out there completely defenseless isn't fair.

In the studio, same band. As we're tracking guitar, bass and drums out in one of the studio rooms we get repeated calls from the control room to check our tuning. I know my guitar is in tune, and I have brought 2 more guitars so I feel confident I will get through the session without causing trouble for the band. The bassist checks his tuning, I ask the engineer to turn up the bass in my monitor headphones, and we're tracking again... As we get to the chorus and I strike a C-chord I hear it clash in horrible dissonance with the bass, and I stop the band. The engineer comes into the room, frustrated, and checks the bass. As it turns out, the intonation on the bass is set so off that the C he played under the chord was about a quarter tone off. The bassplayer hadn't thought of setting up his bass correctly before entering the studio, hadn't thought of bringing a backup, and perhaps most unbelievably hadn't noticed that the intonation was so off that nothing was in tune. It stopped the session dead in its tracks and we ended up with a recording that was far from good, that we then overdubbed vocals and guitar on. I still have it, but I managed to stop if from ever seeing the light of day...
 
My last metal band (probably 7-8 years ago) was playing a show and our second guitarist couldn't make it. He didn't tell us until a week before the show that he could not get the night off work from his shitty retail job. We figured it wouldn't be a huge gig, so we played it with one guitarist. I was playing keyboards at the time, so I decided to switch to a couple songs on guitar to fill out the sound. Halfway through the set, the drummer had had enough. He was really good friends with the guitarist and thought it was wrong of us to play the show. However, he made this decision on stage and then walked out. We said, "I guess that's our last song. Goodnight!" and left the stage.

Turns out it was our last night as a band.
 
MrKnickerbocker said:
Halfway through the set, the drummer had had enough. He was really good friends with the guitarist and thought it was wrong of us to play the show. However, he made this decision on stage and then walked out.
Click to expand...
Ridiculous moment to share this with the rest! Almost as if it was planned.
 
Yeah, insane. We took a vote originally when it became clear that we'd be short a member and it was 4 against 1 to play the show. So he had voiced his disinterest, but still agreed to play and that was the end of the matter. It was some bullshit.

Funny thing is, when the other guitarist heard about it, he also agreed it was bullshit.
 
The band I used to be in organised a couple of gigs in Liverpool one weekend. The first day was great (played the Cavern Club, both stages) and we went down well. The second day we walked out on stage in an outdoor venue in Birkenhead, and not being from down that way, gave it " Hello Liverpool" as we walked on stage (still on a high from the night before) only to be booed and heckled as Birkinhead seems to be nothing to do with Liverpool...... Whoops
 
So in pep band for my school I play the electric guitar.

It was basketball season and we were about to play The Star Spangled Banner. Everyone was really quiet and staring up at the flag. All of a sudden during the silence my amp started getting a ton of feedback. It was very loud. I quickly shut off my amp and I noticed like everyone in the gym was staring at me. The band preceded to play the song and I played with my amp off. That was probably the most embarrassing moment in my life.

However I redeemed myself during halftime with an epic solo on Jimi Hendrix's ''Fire''
 
I love a good horror story.

My old band played a local Alternative night and I was pretty excited that we'd have a decent sized audience to play to. Trouble was that they were selling their own version of a jaegerbomb for £2 a pop. I was designated driver but our drummer went a bit crazy with this offer. Anyway a few hours later we play and he's just awful. I'm already angry when about 3 songs in he drops his drum sticks for the tenth time - but this time as he leans forward to grab them he falls off his stool and through the drum kit. I prayed the stage would collapse and put us out of our misery. It didn't, and no one wanted a CD.

One Saturday we were booked to play an alldayer at a pub in Aylesbury (I think it was the White Swan or something similar). We took 2 cars - I was with our vocalist and we'd left a little late. We'd never been before so googled the pub and popped the post code in the satnav. We turn up and are surprised we're the first ones there. It's a nice looking pub. We stroll in with our guitars and gear and find tables full of OAP's having an early lunch. Right pub name, wrong location! so then we had a mad scramble across the town...


I once went to the toilet before a gig and only realised after I had started doing my business that there was no toilet paper. It was a messy one so I ended up having to use my socks to clean up. I felt ashamed and dirty all through the night.
 
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