A lethal crowd crush at Travis Scott's Astroworld has left the world looking for answers -- and
to the past for more examples of concerts that turned deadly. But who's to blame for
the Who concert disaster in Cincinnati that left 11 dead?
In December of 1979, The Who were certified rock royalty. The group was on the second
U.S. leg of a tour promoting their album "Who Are You," released the year before.
The band's performance in Cincinnati was among the first handful of dates on that leg. According
to Rolling Stone, several thousand "reserved" seat tickets had been sold and nearly 15,000
festival-seating tickets had been sold for the concert at Riverfront Coliseum.
"Festival seating" refers to general admission events that allow any ticket holder to stake
their claim on whatever square foot of space they desire in a large, open area. The practice,
in place at The Who concert in Cincinnati, was not unusual, but we know now that it is
dangerous, encouraging people to force their way into small areas or choke points, causing
the conditions that can lead to a crowd crush.
While many venues had eliminated the controversial practice by 1979, Riverfront Coliseum had
not. The reason why was likely simple: it made money.
Despite a similar incident at a 1977 Led Zeppelin concert at the same venue, in which dozens
were injured during a crush against the entrance doors, the warning went unheeded.
Festival seating was a good deal for promoters. Rolling Stone recounted the story of a concertgoer
named Richard Klopp, who noted his concerns about dire crowd crush concert experiences
he'd had, in a letter to the media and municipal authorities. Criticizing the festival seating
practice, he wrote,
"What this means for the promoter is more money; for the concertgoer ... this means
that he'll probably have to sit in the aisles or on the floor ... jeopardizing his safety
and the safety of others. If a fire or general panic were to break out, many, many people
would be trampled to death."
Three years later, he was proven right in the worst possible way as he and his wife
were swept up in the cruel events of that December night.
"The stampede began when thousands of fans burst through the doors to get unreserved
seats. A youth outside said they were ready to kill to get a good view of the concert."
Around 7:00 p.m., a police lieutenant noted how many people were pressing forward to get
close to just a few soon-to-be-open doors. When he approached the promoters with the
solution of readying more entrances to better distribute the crowd, he was told by promoters
that not enough ticket takers were working to enable them to open more sets of doors.
It was too late anyway. Around 7:20, the crowd surged and one set of doors shattered. Others
were pushed open. With no visible security and too few police, those trying to control
the situation were simply overpowered. Concertgoers streamed through the entry en masse [ahn MASS].
It would be nearly half an hour before police could make their way through the crowd.
As attendee Mark Helmkamp later described the scene to Rolling Stone,
"It was a slow squeeze, not a stampede. I was stuck in it for 45 minutes. I went down
twice and wasn't sure that I would make it. I saw guys with blue lips – they couldn't
get oxygen."
Phil Sheridan went on to describe the crush of people trying to get through turnstiles
— some three at a time as ticket takers tried in vain to ask for their tickets. He
went on to describe feeling a tug on his arm amid the crush of bodies, only to look down
and see a young woman asking for his help. He told Rolling Stone,
"It's this girl, and her head was at my waist and she said, 'Excuse me, my feet are back
there somewhere.' She was horizontal."
Another concertgoer looking back at the incident decades later described surviving similar
circumstances:
"There was two or three times my feet weren't even on the ground. I was just moving forward."
11 people were killed by asphyxiation in the crush and dozens were injured. Despite the
horrifying scene, fire officials told the promoters to go on with the show because they
feared cancelling the show would cause a riot. As a result, The Who played their entire show
before being taken backstage and informed of the tragedy that had occurred.
"I'm a parent as well. I've got a boy of 15 and two little girls, and I… I can just
say I'm sorry for what's happened."
Some might be surprised to learn that the majority of those killed in crowd incidents
like these are actually squeezed to death rather than trampled. A crowd surge can cause
forces powerful enough to bend steel, making human bodies especially vulnerable to asphyxiation
or other injury when they're caught up in one.
A U.K. inquiry into a similar crowd crush scenario, the Hillsborough disaster that took
the lives of 97 people, issued a report that was terrifying in its clinical simplicity:
"Survivors described being gradually compressed, unable to move, their heads locked between
arms and shoulders ... faces gasping in panic. They were aware that people were dying and
they were helpless to save themselves."
Crowd control experts shy away from using words like "stampede" or condemning the panic
of those caught up in a crowd crush situation because it implies the people in the crowd
themselves are to blame. In reality, individual people are rarely to blame for crowd crush
incidents. Instead, experts look to those who are supposed to be keeping the fans safe,
such as the organizers, hosting venue, promoters, and security.
In the aftermath of the event, Cincinnati banned festival seating, though it lifted
the ban some 24 years after the disaster, citing improvements in crowd-control procedures.
Given recent events, though, cities may once again be reassessing how they handle concert
crowds. Cincinnatian Paul Wertheimer, who watched the news of that day in 1979 unfold
and was moved to become an expert in crowd control, told the Los Angeles Times that the
Houston incident was "preventable."
As the Cincinnati Enquirer noted, disasters such as these inevitably bring up painful
memories for survivors of The Who concert disaster. That night, several of the victims
had been just teenagers, three attending the same high school.
In 2019, The Who's Roger Daltrey made a visit to that high school to meet with organizers
of a scholarship fund in memory of those students. The visit represented a real moment of healing
for many. Daltrey's bandmate Pete Townshend also announced that year that The Who would
soon be returning to play Cincinnati for the first time in four decades.