5 Concerts That Ended in Disaster

5 Great White at The Station Nightclub

As you might be able to guess, the fact that the picture above is a memorial isn’t because the concert went great. The Great White concert at The Station nightclub is one of the worst disasters in live music history, thanks to far less than perfect fire safety. 

Getting everyone into and out of a concert venue even in ideal conditions is a nightmare, so when orderly exit is a matter of life and death? Things get bad quickly. It would be nice to say that it was pure bad luck, but that’s not the truth. Great White’s tour manager decided to set off some fireworks that shot 15 feet into the air in a club with 12 foot ceilings, which were covered with soundproofing foam. 

You can use logic to predict the results, and in the end, more than 100 people died in the blaze.

4 The Who’ s Cincinnati Disaster

The fact is, you don’t need ill-advised fireworks to turn a concert into a death trap. At big events, the pure volume of attendees can be the cause of death itself. Read about one or two “crowd crushes,” and you’ll understand why venues take (ideally) a lot of care planning entrance and exit plans for large shows — something the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati could have put more time into. 

The Who were a massively popular band, and the seats meant to house those thousands of fans were, idiotically, first-come, first-serve. To add to that, when it was time to enter, all they did was throw open the doors, creating a stampede that would leave 11 people dead.

3 The Rolling Stones at Altamont

Speaking of poor planning decisions, that extends to security. Their job might be to keep people in line, but that shouldn’t be their only qualification. A lesson learned at the cost of fans’ lives by the Rolling Stones when the band hired the Hells Angels biker gang to do security at a quasi-festival serving as the last stop on their tour in Altamont, California. 

If you want to experiment with off-kilter security solutions, the time to do it isn’t at a festival with a star-studded lineup and free admission. As the Hells Angels aren’t especially versed in de-escalation tactics, things turned nasty quickly. Standoffs turned to skirmishes turned to brawls, and it culminated in the murder of an 18-year-old man named Meredith Hunter. 

If your security guards ever start using pool cues on the crowd, it’s time to stop the show.

2 Pukkelpop 2011

Sometimes, even when best efforts are made, you can end up with a grim reminder that you can’t plan for everything. This was the case at Belgian music festival Pukkelpop in the summer of 2011. The festival had years of experience and issue-free occurrences, but, being outdoors, they were at the mercy of nature should freak weather occur. In 2011, that’s exactly what happened, when an unexpected severe thunderstorm hit the festival in the middle of the performances. 

The inclement weather alone at an outdoor festival where many were planning to camp overnight would have resulted in emergency, but the winds and storm went further. Scaffolding on the stages, not built with such adverse weather in mind, were knocked down, injuring concertgoers. In the end, five people died, and the rest of the festival was understandably canceled.

1 Woodstock ’99

It’s hard to say what exactly went wrong at Woodstock ‘99, because there wasn’t really anything that went right. 

To go into detail on every awful occurrence would be nigh-impossible, not to mention that some of the events are genuinely horrifying. Here are some overarching numbers to give you an idea of just how much of an unmitigated horror it was: over 500 medical cases, including three deaths. Over 40 arrests, and, let me tell you, for much worse things than storming the stage or streaking. 

Woodstock ‘99 is a bit of a reminder that, even without unexpected hardships, humans are capable of turning something into a disaster all on their own.