Forget rock stars behaving badly, now it’s the fans

It used to be rock stars who behaved badly. Now it’s their audiences, writes Kerry Parnell.

It used to be rock stars who behaved badly. Now it’s their audiences.

Pop stars are being pelted with everything from mobile phones to human ashes.

This week, Adele took action on stage in Las Vegas, arming herself with a T-shirt cannon and telling the crowd, “Have you noticed how people are forgetting show etiquette at the moment and throwing shit on stage? These people have lost it.”

Brandishing the T-shirt gun, she added, “I f-ing dare you … If you throw anything at me I’ll f-ing kill you. Stop throwing things at artists.”

It comes on the back of singer Bebe Rexha getting a black eye when a man lobbed a mobile phone in her face while on stage in New York. “I’m good,” she posted on social media. After being arrested, the fan said he did it because he “thought it would be funny”.

It is not funny. Even less amusing, was the audience member who bunged a bag of their mum’s ashes on stage when Pink was performing in London’s Hyde Park, recently.

Singing star Adele said: “Stop throwing things at the artist when [we] can shoot things at the audience” . Picture: Getty

“This is your mom? I don’t know how I feel about this,” she said, gingerly putting the bag down again and looking freaked out. A bit queasy, I assume.

Seriously, what is wrong with everyone? Once upon a time, people would hurl things like their knickers (at Tom Jones), shoes (at Harry Styles), mud (Green Day’s Woodstock performance in 1994 ended in a giant mud fight), or a good old bottle of pee (every band at a festival since time began). Panic at the Disco’s Brendon Urie was knocked out by one wee-weapon at Reading Festival in 2006, before getting up and shouting, “You can’t take me out. Let’s see how well you guys do with my left side.” Oasis were not so brave in Glasgow in 1997. “A bottle has been thrown. We’re not standing for it. Good night,” Liam Gallagher said, before walking off.

Bebe Rexha got a black eye when a man lobbed a mobile phone in her face while on stage.

Admittedly, most of those are worse than phones, but probably best you don’t try to injure the person you’ve paid squillions of dollars to watch.

It’s been suggested people have lost their social conduct filter, post-pandemic, but I don’t think it’s as simple as that. Theatre audiences are misbehaving too – singing along so loudly, karaoke-style, the actors can’t hear themselves. Two ladies in Manchester, England, were thrown out of The Bodyguard earlier this year, for singing and screaming over the performers. “Out, out, out,” the audience chanted, as the show was stopped and the theatre called the police.

Of course, you should be able to enjoy yourself at the theatre, or a concert, as long as you don’t enjoy yourself so much nobody else can. I went to the theatre this week and even in a very sedate audience (i.e. average age, 65), one lady’s phone rang loudly and lengthily mid-performance, (you know it’s an older person, because nobody under 40 rings anyone). That was irritating enough, until … she answered it.

She conducted her loud conversation in her seat – “I’m at the theatre” – while the stars valiantly tried to sing over her. I mean, come on.

If only I’d had a bottle of pee …