... & OTHER ODDBALL STORIES |
WOUNDED ELBOW AT THE WHISKEY-A-GO-GO
We only played the Whiskey-A-Go-Go once, but I remember it well. The thing I remember the most about it however is splitting my arm open with my microphone. I was swinging it, and when I pulled it back it hit me square on my elbow. When I went back to my hotel room that night it was still bleeding hours after the show, so I wrapped a towel around it and went to bed. When I woke up in the morning there was blood everywhere. On the bed, the carpet, the bathroom floor. I guess my arm had bled for most of the night. The problem was that every time I would bend my arm, it would open up the wound. This went on for months! I'd get a scab on it, and then when I would bend my arm, the scab would pop right off. Eventually, after many months of entertaining everyone in the band with my "popping scab" routine, the cut healed.
It was around this time that we travelled to Europe to tour with Ian Gillan. We broke down in Prescara, Italy and had to wait a week for parts to come from England before we could carry on with the tour. Denny Balicki and I went to the local grocery store and picked up the biggest bottle of red wine you ever did see for about $1.80. Everybody in the place was looking at these long hairs in the grocery store buying wine. We got the hell out of there and went back to our hotel and sat around drinking this delicious Italian wine and we wrote a song called "All Roads Lead To Rome". The next morning I got up and I could feel something wrong with my elbow. I looked down and where the cut used to be was my elbow, only it didn't look like my elbow, it looked like a grapefruit! We had to go down to the hospital where they checked me out and gave me some pills which I had to take to bring the swelling down.
THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT
We used to have weekly band meetings where we would discuss ways to improve the show. Drummer Brian Doerner had just joined the band at this time. He was an excellent drummer, but we thought he needed a little more "pizazz". We wanted him to be more of a showman on stage, so at our next high school gig Brian decided to show us what he could do. First of all, he had his drum sticks soaked in lighter fluid so when he did his drum solo he would have flames coming off them. He did this and set the curtains on fire behind him, and if it weren't for the roadie running up and putting it out, we probably would have burnt the damn school down. When we reached the "big finale" at the end of the last song of the night, Brian decided to do something he had never done before. He stood up with one foot on his drum stool and one foot on his floor tom, all the while hammering on the cymbals, the band holding that final power chord while the crowd went crazy. Suddenly one leg of Brian's floor tom collapsed and Brian fell forward onto his drum kit. Drums and cymbals went flying everywhere and Brian landed hard, bruising and scraping himself as he went down. The band stopped playing and the whole gynasium went deathly silent as Brian was writhing in agony on stage. Then a lone voice shouted from the back of the room, "ATTA GO A#%!HOLE!" Needless to say, that was the end of that routine.
SOMERSAULTS
I used to do somersaults on stage that became a trademark of the band. It all came about one night when nobody showed up for a gig we were playing at the Waterloo Motor Inn. We had these big wedge shaped monitors, so out of boredom more than anything I decided to do a flip off one. From that moment on they became part of the show.
When we toured Germany with Motorhead I used to jump off the top of the P.A. and do a somersault when I hit the stage. One particular night we were playing this concert and I did the flip off the P.A. stacks, only when I hit the stage I went right through and into the scaffolding below! They had made the stage with chipboard, and when I went through, it almost punched out a perfect round hole. It took all the skin off my underarms, but luckily I had a cordless microphone and I popped right back out of my hole without missing one word, much to the chagrin of Lemmy of Motorhead, who had watched the whole sordid thing from the side of the stage.
AN ELECTRIFYING EXPERIENCE
Keith (Bert) Zurbrigg had an "electrifying" experience on one of the first dates we ever played at the Silver Dollar Lounge in Hespler, Canada when his microphone short-ciruited through his face. All I remember was hearing the bass at the end of the song sort of go bong-bong-bonggg! I turned around just in time to see Bert fall backwards unconscious into his bass amp. One of the waitresses was a part-time RN, and she rushed to the stage to give Bert mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She was a fairly large woman, about 200 lbs. Anyway, we're all grouped around Bert on the floor, the waitress is giving him mouth-to-mouth, and suddenly Bert wakes up and says, "You're Beautiful!" The waitress says, "He's alright!" I said, "I don't know about that..."
About this time I hear someone laughing so I yell out to the audience "It's not funny, HE'S BEEN SHOCKED!" Well, that's the wrong thing to say in a biker bar, for sure. Everybody thought I had said HE'S BEEN SHOT, so people were diving for cover everwhere and running into the street. Bert was in a daze, but after a ride up to the hospital to get checked out he returned to play the last set sitting on a stool.
MICELLANEOUS
Brent once had an appendicitus attack on stage and had to be rushed to the hospital while performing at Lucky's in Sebringville, Ontario. Paul ripped the ligements in his leg jumping onstage and spent most of the Accept / Keel / Helix tour sitting on a stool on stage with his foot in a cast. I stabbed myself beside my eye with a drumstick on the first date we ever played with Wasp / Krokus in Winnipeg. Fritz has had a disc removed in his back because of damage caused to his spine by drumming, and I've screwed up my C6 vertebrae by doing those stupid somersaults.
