Image via Complex Original
From the flower-power celebrations of the ’60s to the big-budget throw downs that dominate the concert landscape in 2015, music festivals have always enjoyed an air of spontaneity. You simply can’t get dozens of artists and thousands of fans together out in a desert or a field and not end up with a few surprises. But there are certain wild moments that become etched in the memory of everyone who was there—or claimed they were there—that live on in festival lore. Unannounced guests, stunts by audience members, memorable covers, and logistical disasters are all among The 10 Craziest Things That Ever Went Down at Music Festivals.
Queen Goes to 11
Year: 1985
Festival: Live Aid
Live Aid was one of the first major festivals with a philanthropic aim, but for some of the artists, rising to the occasion also meant ratcheting up performance standards. Queen, whose sound man famously removed the limiters on Wembley Stadium’s sound system to let the band play louder than the other acts on the bill, had the audience on their feet with a flawless run through their greatest hits. And when the transatlantic broadcast reached America, where Queen hadn’t had a top 10 single or album in five years, the U.S. got to see that they were still one of the biggest bands in the world, and were not to be taken for granted.
Marriage Proposal During Flaming Lips Set
Year: 2014
Festival: Life Is Beautiful
The Flaming Lips are known for surreal spectacles and colorful props to match their psychedelic sounds in concert. But their shows evidently strike many fans as romantic, given the number of marriage proposals that have happened onstage at Lips shows over the years, most recently at the 2014 Life Is Beautiful festival in Las Vegas. “She had no idea,” frontman Wayne Coyne announced to the crowd, after a young woman got up onstage as a girlfriend and left the stage as a fiancée.
Drake’s Kiss With Madonna
Year: 2015
Festival: Coachella
Madonna making titillating appearances with younger pop stars has been a tradition for decades now. And when she showed up onstage during Drake’s performance at the first weekend of this year’s Coachella, it seemed that history was simply repeating once again. But when Madonna’s strut around the stage culminated in her planting a kiss on an unbeknownst Drake, the pained expression on his face made the moment so much more memorable. For what it’s worth, Drake made his feelings about the experience clear on Instagram the following day.
Arcade Fire’s Balloon Drop
Year: 2011
Festival: Coachella
In February 2011, Arcade Fire’s surprise Grammy win for Album of the Year was broadcast into millions of homes that had previously never heard of the Canadian indie heroes. But the band’s defining live performance came a couple months later, when they shocked the Coachella audience during a climactic encore of “Wake Up.” Suddenly hundreds of giant, illuminated balls dropped from the sky onto the audience, an unexpected interactive experience provided by the Creators Project that created a beautiful, surreal moment for the band’s fans.
Jimi Hendrix Remixes the National Anthem
Year: 1969
Festival: Woodstock
Jimi Hendrix was the highest-paid performer at Woodstock, but his planned appearance spilled onto the fourth day of the three-day festival. He finally took the stage at 9 a.m. on Monday morning. The festival audience was half of what it had been that weekend, but thanks in part to the cameras capturing the performance for the Woodstock documentary, Hendrix still managed to create one of the festival’s most enduring moments. He had been performing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at various shows that summer, but his rendition at Woodstock became a controversial, iconic moment in Hendrix’s career. His modern interpretation of our national anthem helped cement Woodstock as a landmark of American culture.
Kanye West Goes Onstage at 4:45 a.m.
Year: 2008
Festival: Bonnaroo
Jimi Hendrix may have been a hero for making his way onstage at Woodstock well into the morning. But a few decades later, Kanye West had a very different experience when he chose to delay his headlining Bonnaroo set in order to meet the exacting technical standards of his Glow in the Dark Tour. When he finally took the stage at 4:45 a.m., many fans had been waiting for him for eight hours straight, and felt less than honored by his lateness. After the 2008 fiasco, West eventually made nice with Bonnaroo and headlined again in 2014 with a performance that ran a little more on schedule.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs Get Beastie
Year: 2009
Festival: Lollapalooza
The Beastie Boys are an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind group. But when a festival headliner has to pull out at the last minute, the show must go on, and organizers have to make the best of the situation. So when the Beasties had to cancel shows in 2009 due to Adam Yauch’s cancer, which would sadly take his life only a few years later, Lollapalooza organizers drafted the Yeah Yeah Yeahs to fill their place on the bill. And though they were a very different band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs still managed to pay appropriate tribute to their New York forebears, working a brief cover of “So What’cha Want” into their set.
Jay Z Brings Michael Jackson Out
Year: 2011
Festival: Summer Jam
For years, HOT 97’s annual Summer Jam has been a place for hip-hop fans to see their favorite rappers perform, and surprise guest appearances are a staple of the concert. But Jay Z set a new standard for star cameos that will never be topped when he brought the biggest star in pop music onstage. Michael Jackson had recently befriended Hov, doing a couple of remixes with the rapper whose then-current hit “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” sampled the Jackson 5. But it was still a total shock to see him at a hip-hop show, even for a moment. As a superstar who hadn’t toured in years, Jackson’s public appearance gave the audience a glimpse at a live set that was becoming increasingly rare.
Bob Marley Performs Two Days After Assassination Attempt
Year: 1976
Festival: Smile Jamaica
Two days before he was due to appear at the Smile Jamaica concert in Kingston, Bob Marley and his wife were wounded by a would-be assassin—at the height of political tensions in Jamaica. Though nobody would have faulted the injured Marley for calling off his performance, he soldiered on, famously commenting, “The people who are trying to make this world worse aren’t taking a day off, how can I?” The heroic performance, in front of 80,000 Jamaicans in National Heroes Park, became a pivotal moment in Marley’s incredible career as a musician and activist.
The Tupac Hologram
Year: 2012
Festival: Coachella
Dr. Dre had a long, long list of friends to draw on when bringing out guests for his performance at Coachella in 2012. But there was one Dre collaborator that nobody could’ve expected to see onstage that night, and that’s exactly who they got: Tupac Shakur, walking onto the stage and rapping two songs as an eerie apparition from beyond the grave. The hologram technology used to project Tupac had never been seen before, and Dre premiered it in the most memorable way possible. Soon, concert promoters began scheming to take countless other deceased superstars onstage with hologram tours, but none could ever replicate the element of surprise that Dr. Dre enjoyed at Coachella.
