From Professor of Rock.
Today, the name of the game is “Sabotage!” And it’s sabotage in every sense of the word. And on this episode, we’ve got stories of self-destruction, tales of bands mutilating their songs in concert, and even undercutting rival bands onstage. We’ll tell the story of Liam Gallagher, who refused to perform Oasis’s MTV Unplugged gig. And instead, he actually heckled his bandmates from the balcony throughout the show. Then there’s the off-beat pop star Cyndi Lauper, who loathed her headline hit The Goonies R Good Enough. She hated it so much that she badmouthed it in the press and refused to perform it live for over a decade. Could her fans ever change her mind? And finally, there’s the Replacements, who were determined to flush their career down the toilet. When they were given the opportunity of a lifetime to open for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the guys took the stage dressed in the other band’s wives’ clothing. They gave such an awful performance that it went down in history. But why? Find out next as we count down my Top 6 Sabotage Stories in rock. Let’s go.
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Executive Producer
Brandon Fugal
Honorary Producers
Jaimee Hammack, Dan Tierney, Sarge, Byrdman, Duff Gordon
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Hey Music Junkies Professor of Rock Always here to celebrate the greatest songs and the Greatest artists of all time. Make sure that you are subscribed because I’m getting a lot of feedback that people who were once subscribed were unsubbed by YouTube, so make sure you are.
Jumping into this sabotage countdown, at #6, I’ve got an onstage rivalry between Aerosmith and Kansas. By 1975, Aerosmith was starting to kick up some momentum with a few Gold albums, their self-titled debut, Get Your Wings, and Toys in the Attic. And with songs like Dream On, Sweet Emotion, Walk This Way… Aerosmith’s early catalog was fire, even if the charts didn’t reflect it yet. And the band knew it; they were already rock royalty in their own minds. As Boston’s Bad Boys were making their climb, frontman Steven Tyler was already developing something of a reputation. Word had gotten around that Steven had a nasty habit of pulling the plug on his openers if their performance was a little too good… literally. Tyler had no problem with yanking the power cables mid-set and without warning. Nobody was going to upstage Aerosmith on their own tour.
But Kansas, who was touring with Aerosmith on their 1975 Toys in the Attic Tour, wasn’t about to let it happen to them. At this point, the band out of Topeka had only two albums to their names, but they could rock with the best of them. So before playing to a home crowd in Wichita, Kansas, the boys from Kansas took some preemptive measures to ensure their slot didn’t run into any unexpected power outages. The band had their crew rig the stage with a set of highly visible “dummy” power lines. Meanwhile, the actual live power cables were discreetly routed across a hidden path on the other side of the stage. To anyone who didn’t know better, the dummy lines looked like the real thing.
When Kansas took the stage, they absolutely tore the roof off. The crowd was going wild. And just as predicted, Steven Tyler made a beeline straight for the dummy cables, and began ripping them out. Only the music didn’t stop. Tyler stood there with a fistful of dead rubber cables, staring at a band perplexed as they still continued to crank out the music at full volume. Said Kansas guitarist Rich Williams, “He came out there to stop our show, and it didn’t work. I guess he got quite upset about it.” Yeah, no kidding. But Kansas’s bassist Dave Hope was pretty mad himself. As the story goes, he dropped his bass and went after Tyler directly. And what began as a confrontation between the two quickly escalated into a roadie backstage brawl. Meanwhile, out front, the house lights suddenly flooded the venue — someone had flipped them on mid-song, trying to blind the band. But Kansas kept playing right through the chaos. When all was said and done, the crowd gave Kansas a massive ovation. Despite some dirty tricks, Kanas was able to completely side-step this act of sabotage.
Okay for #5 we’re rewinding back to 1983 and then fast-forwarding to 1985. And this sabotage story is an artist vs her own song.
