The worst gig we ever played: musicians on their on-stage lows

[Jahfin]

Dodgy sound, dodgy bass players, hostile crowds, no crowds, flying bottles – every band has had bad gigs. Paul Lester asks musicians about the worst gigs they ever played

• What's the most hilariously bad gig you've ever seen? Tell us in the comments below

Paul Lester

guardian.co.uk,

'Incomiiiiiing' … Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull spots a projectile heading his way. Photograph: James Fortune/Capital Pictures

Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull

Shea Stadium, New York, 1976

I stood with the rest of the band at the top of the ramp leading down to the field of Shea Stadium. As with the Beatles' Shea show 10 years earlier, this was not to be an artistic success, to say the least. Commercial jets on final approach to the adjacent La Guardia airport drowned out the sound, when it wasn't being drowned out by the firecrackers, whistles, hoots and hollers of the crowd. In those final moments before walking out on to the field, I was suddenly drenched with warm, sticky liquid from high above, where some of the rowdy, 50,000-strong audience looked down on to the players' access ramp. Only as I began the inaudible first verse of Thick as a Brick on acoustic guitar, did I realise with resigned horror that the liquid I assumed to be beer, was not, in fact, beer at all. It was urine. The unmistakable pong wafting from my then-ample head of damp hair and freshly laundered stage-clothing would remain for the duration of the show. An unholy baptism from above.

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