Drug busts and wild parties: Adelaide’s weirdest brushes with celebrity
From the day the creator of Star Wars ate noodles at a food court to Jack Black playing frisbee in the city, Adelaide’s had its fair share of bizarre brushes with celebrities. Strap yourself in.
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For a small city, Adelaide has seen more than its fair share of big celebrity scandals and bizarre encounters with the rich and famous.
Or maybe it’s because we’re a relatively small city that when Hollywood comes to town, it’s impossible not to notice!
Over the years, SA has been at the centre of sordid drug busts, wild brawls and secret parties featuring some of the biggest names in music, film and the arts.
We’re taking a look at some of Adelaide’s most memorable brushes with fame, such as …
That time Joe Cocker got kicked out of Australia after being busted for marijuana possession in Adelaide
We know, famously, that he got by with a little help from his friends. But Joe Cocker also had a little medicinal assistance when he was busted in Adelaide for possession of marijuana on a tour of Australia in 1972.
As Patrick McDonald writes, Cocker was reportedly busted after a senior Canberra bureaucrat stayed in the same hotel as the raspy-voiced English singer. The bureaucrat was having trouble sleeping due to the noise and distinct odour of cannabis wafting down the corridor, and called down to reception and dobbed him in.
The drug squad wasn’t far behind and Cocker and six others were hauled down to police headquarters where they were each charged and fined $200.
But the story didn’t end there for the hard-drinking, hard-smoking musician.
Australia’s Immigration Minister, the SA MP Dr Jim Forbes, ordered Cocker to leave the country within 48 hours, which he did after playing two drunken shows in Melbourne and getting involved in a violent brawl with police and security staff at his hotel.
As McDonald reported, Cocker was able to see the lighter side of the whole affair in the years that followed, particularly SA’s progressive decriminalisation of marijuana.
“Talk about a turnaround,” he said during a visit to Adelaide in 2002.
That time Jack Black played frisbee with fans in Vic Square
The gregarious movie star was in town in 2011 with his band Tenacious D to support the Foo Fighters at Adelaide Oval when he decided to warm up with a spot of frisbee in Victoria Square.
As The Advertiser reported at the time, Black shocked onlookers when he spent about half an hour tossing the frisbee on the grass outside the Hilton a few hours before the show.
Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl didn’t join in on the frisbee frivolity but generously signed autographs and posed for photos with fans outside the hotel.
That time Mick Jagger popped into a Hills winery for lunch
The Rolling Stones’ 2014 gig at the all-new Adelaide Oval was a highly anticipated event, all the more so because it was delayed by seven months by the sudden death of Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, fashion designer L’Wren Scott.
But one thing that wasn’t anticipated, at least not by the late Adelaide Hills winemaker Taras Ochota, was that Sir Mick himself would pop in for an impromptu lunch one afternoon before the gig.
According to reports, Ochota was expecting some of the Stones’ production crew to visit his cellar door at Basket Range, with the mere hint of a chance Sir Mick might turn up with them.
Sure enough, when the two blacked-out Audis stopped at the end of the Ochotas’ long dirt driveway that afternoon, out hopped Mick, Keith Richards’ wife Patti Hansen and Charlie Watts’ granddaughter, Charlotte.
According to a report by Indaily, Taras and wife Amber served coq au vin, salad, preserved lemons, cured meats and homegrown potatoes and enjoyed a gloriously private lunch with one of the most famous people in the world.
“We strolled around the garden and sat outside under the old hazelnut tree where we had all our wines open with lunch,” Ochota, who tragically died in 2020, said.
Afterwards, Sir Mick played with the Ochotas’ two-year-old son Sage, who eventually led Jagger to an old piano where he sang and played.
That time George Lucas was snapped eating noodles in a city food court
Sometimes, when you live in Adelaide, great stretches of time can go by in which well, let’s face it, not much happens.
Then one day, George Lucas will turn up in town and eat noodles in a food court in jeans and sneakers. It really happened!
that moment u realise Jar Jar Binks was an abomination, and your noodles have gone cold #GeorgeLucas#Adelaidepic.twitter.com/VQmNnlXmEf
— Gabs 🌿 (@GAFAtape) March 16, 2016
It was 2016 and Lucas was in town with wife Mellody Hobson, a businesswoman and then-chair of Dreamworks Animation, who was speaking at a conference at the Convention Centre.
Lucas was snapped waiting outside his hotel with a copy of The Advertiser under his arm, and signing autographs and posing for photos with starstruck fans.
Later, the Star Wars creator was snapped by himself eating lunch in the David Jones food court, presumably with some of his fellow diners blissfully unaware the unassuming white-haired gentleman eating noodles and drinking a diet coke just metres away was not only one of the fathers of modern cinema but one of the world’s wealthiest people.
They must have been good noodles.
And we can’t confirm reports Mr Lucas was encouraged to “use the fork, George!”
That time The Advertiser’s Simon Cross partied with Guns N’ Roses
In 2007, the young photographer was hanging around outside the Hyatt at 1.30am, hoping to snap a photo of Guns N Roses frontman Axl Rose, who’d just stepped off the stage after the band’s gig at the Entertainment Centre.
Just then a car rolled up, the singer stepped out, and Cross fired off a few quick frames, exhausting what he figured was more than his fair share of good luck for one night.
“Little was I to know, my luck was only just beginning,” he said in an account of the night published in the Sunday Mail.
As Cross explains, after the band had retreated upstairs, their publicist appeared and asked him if he wanted to get some better shot of Axl and the crew.
About 30 minutes later, he was whisked from the hotel bar up to the penthouse where he spent a surreal evening mingling with the band and chatting with Axl as he casually played a piano in the room.
When he entered the room, Rose was in the shower but emerged as the other members of the band started filing in.
“They were really quite nice, coming up and saying hello. And they were turning down the lights, trying to get the right ambience, to set the mood.”
There were three trolleys of spirits on hand, two large eskys of beer, including SA’s own Coopers and a tray of Red Bulls.
Cross was then introduced to Rose.
“I’ve got to admit, I was pretty nervous. But he was very easygoing,” Cross recalled. “He talked about how he loves wallabies.
“He was also discussing wombats and seemed to like all Australian animals. Axl always had a drink in his hand but he wasn’t out of control.
“He had a lot of energy and just seemed happy. The band said they have never seen Axl this happy after a concert before”.
Cross stayed about four hours and managed a snap off a few more photos before the band left for the airport. And they left one photographer with memories of a night to remember and a bloody good story to tell his mates the next morning.
That time a young driver crashed into Bon Scott
Some have gone as far to suggest it was the road accident that changed the course of rock ‘n roll forever. It was May, 1974.
A teenage Lee Morgan and some mates were driving home from Port Adelaide in his prized FC Holden after going to the Findon Hotel without a worry in the world.
“As we were turning right into Rosetta St,” Mr Morgan told a recent episode of Australian Story, “a motorcycle came out from nowhere.”
“The motorcycle hit the car, the rider came half through the windscreen and his helmet hit the roof of the vehicle,” he recalled.
“It was a shocking set of injuries. He had blood coming down from his helmet.”
But the biggest shock was yet to come.
“It was 36 hours later on the Sunday morning, we opened up the Sunday Mail and we learnt then that Bon Scott from (Scott’s ex band) Fraternity was the victim of the accident.”
Victor Marshall, author of the book “Fraternity” told Australian Story Bon, then 27, had roared off that fateful night “against all advice” after having an argument and “a bit to drink”.
He suffered serious injuries in the crash – a slashed neck, broken teeth, a fractured skull, crushed ribs. His family was told he might not make it.
But some say Bon’s terrible accident may been a blessing not just for him, but for music.
“Although the crash was tragic, it was also serendipitous,” Mr Marshall told the ABC.
“But for the crash, Bon mightn’t have been in town when a new young hotshot band called AC/DC came to Adelaide, couple of months later.”
Adelaide music journalist Vince Lovegrove introduced Bon to the still-teenage members of the band, who thought Bon was too old and remained unconvinced.
Until the saw what he could do with a microphone and a stage and the rest is history.
That’s what you call a happy accident.
That time Marlene Dietrich slapped a TV reporter in the face
Adelaide TV reporter Brian Haill already had a story to tell the grandkids. He’d come face-to-face with one of the biggest movie stars in the world.
But Haill’s encounter Dietrich will be remembered for one unfortunate moment in particular.
She slapped him – not just once, but three times, across the face.
The acclaimed singer and actor had just arrived in Adelaide for the 1968 Adelaide Festival and, naturally, was mobbed by reporters as she headed for her waiting limousine.
As the Canberra Times reported, Dietrich was sitting in the car with the window down when Haill leaned in to ask one final question.
“Are we going to see anything of you apart from what we will see on the stage?,” he asked.
“She leaned forward and gave me at least three really firm slaps across the left cheek,” Haill said.
“Then she said ‘of course you will – I am here to work’ or something to that effect.
“My cheek was still stinging for some time afterwards.”
He said Dietrich’s rebuke “may have started as a playful slap, but there was some real power in it, believe me”.
As the article noted, Dietrich was already “tired and angry” after being searched by Customs officers for drugs in Sydney – an indignity she said was “very rude”.
For his part, Brian Haill said he knew nothing of Dietrich’s troubles in Sydney.
“If I had I would have gone a bit easier on her,” he said.
And, perhaps, she would have gone a bit easier on him.
Did we miss a weird Adelaide celebrity moment? Let us know in the comments
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