I had previously talked about concert riots or fans behaving badly at rock
shows including the time Led Zeppelin fans got the group blacklisted from
the city of boston or the time Alice Cooper fans rioted at a Canadian show
after the shock rocker failed to turn up. The links to those videos are down below.in the
description box. In today’s video we’re going to discuss the time heavy metal band Judas Priest
received a life-time ban from one of the most prestigious venues in America.
Back in June of 1984 Judas Priest was on tour in support of their album Defenders of the Faith.
Kind of sounds like a stryper album, doesn’t it? By the way i’ve done a video on stryper link is
down below. Part of the tour saw the band play one of the most prestigious venues in America,
Madison Square Garden in New York City. Unfortunately, that night didn’t go as
planned. I do want to warn you guys here’s been several versions of this story floating around.
And the official story I’ve read in many places claims that a local DJ named Perry Stone would
take the stage before Judas Priest started their show and announced a list of upcoming
concerts to the waiting audience. The largely accepted story goes that the announcement
allegedly seemed to iagitate or infuriate the crowd, maybe because the acts that Stone announced
had nothing to do with metal. They would include artists including Neil Diamond and Helen Reddy.
Stone would recall "Naturally, the crowd of 20,000-plus booed me when I introduced
myself,""but began to get truly unruly when I read that list of uncool acts." Stone would
then hurl insults at the crowd but then things got ugly pretty quickly He would recall. "The
crowd," he said, "proceeded to throw firecrackers, M-80s, Cherry Bombs and assorted beer bottles at
me.” But a photographer who was working the pit that night, named bob leafe would dispute Stone’s
claims. He would claim Stone was exaggerating the importance of his announcement the night of the
riot & things didn’t exactly get out of control until Judas Priest hit the stage He would claim
on his website he has no recollection of flying beer bottles, m80’s or firecrackers during Stone’s
speech as the photographers in the pit would have likely raised a stink about it to the venue.
Judas Priest would end up taking the stage and playing through a roaring 20 song-set that was
pretty similar to other shows on the tour. Something was off that night though. Many
fans would sneak fireworks and other explosives into the venue and bootleg tapes of the concert,
you could hear a barrage of explosions, none of which came from the band’s stage show, but rather
the audience. I’ve read the reviews from several fans who attended the show who claimed they didn’t
know how the show was allowed to continue given the amount of explosives in the audience as well
as the fist fights that broke out. All hell seemed to break loose when the band came back
for their encore. One fan cut the foam out of his seat cushion while other fans soon followed
hurling their seat cushions on stage. Soon enough fist fights broke out into
the crowd and chairs would be damaged in the venue. The band’s encore consisted of 3 songs
including “Living After Midnight”, Hell Bent for leather and you’ve got another thing coming.
To start the encore as he did every night frontman Rob Halford drove his harley davidson on stage
for living after midnight and would recall in his book Confess: The Autobiography.
It was a great, regular gig until the encore….By the time I rode it onstage, it was like trying to
motorbike through a floor-level soft-furnishings jumble sale. There were more seat cushions on
the stage than in the arena. What the fuck? Two thoughts filled my head: a) This is fantastic!
Our own riot! And b) They’re never gonna let us play this place again! ”Glenn Tipton,
Ken [Downing] and Ian Hill were by now bouncing on foam to play, as there was no bare stage left. Ken
later said that it had been like playing guitar on a trampoline. After a quick “You’ve Got Another
Thing Coming,” we scarpered offstage and hid. When it was all said and done 250,000 in damage
was done to Madison Square Garden and the new york police would show up in
riot gear and arrest numerous individuals. The photographer Leaf for his part would recall
on his website “Afterwards, Priest had a party at the Limelight," "When I finally walked in,
Kenny who had seen me half-buried by cushions in the pit, yelled out, 'You've survived!'"
The band would receive a lifetime ban from madison square garden following the concert
in addition to DJ Perry Stone according to ultimate classic rock
Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford was later quoted by Loudwire as saying… “The horrible thing is
that if we did play Madison Square Garden, there would be some enthusiast who was there from the
original riot with his pen knife out. It would start all over again! So, it’s probably best.”
Things didn’t end there though as members of judas Priest would head back to Madison Square garden
about a year later to watch a charity tennis match as they would reveal here on Loudwire. Oh
very metal. There's actually a pretty funny ending to that. Me and Ken went there to watch
McEnroe play tennis at some indoor tennis championship and we went in there with hoodies
because we had been banned from Madison Square and halfway through the tennis match one of the
ushers came down and he went thanks for the new seats. So at the time you wouldn't have
new seats without Priest. I should have said thanks for the new seats. That does it for
today's video guys thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button and subscribe. Take care.