Have you ever been embarrassed for an artist?

By far the most cringe worthy live is late era Vince Neal, he couldn't even Get out 25% of his vocals the last two times i saw them.
Luckily for me the last time i saw Motley Crue the Scorpions open for them and killed it. Three songs into Motley i decided id'e heard enough.

Vince Neil owes me $22!! He came in to Houston to do a club gig with his 1st band after Motley Crue. There were a couple of announcements that his bus had been held up at various DWI checkpoints. He showed up at 1am (club closes at 2am), hammered. Announced that he couldn't get torn away from the Men's Club (strip club) and butchered two songs before someone doused him with a beer. He jumps offstage to fight the guy and the guy smokes him. That was great! He storms off-stage and comes back to chants of 'Neal, Neal...'. Tried one more song and stormed off.

Come to think of it, I got my $22 out of that memory. Who wouldn't pay $22 to see Neal get his ass kicked?
 
A couple times I embarrassed myself.

80’s playing Longtime by Boston. Had my acoustic guitar on a stand and wearing my electric.

Time for big solo so I ducked under neck of acoustic to stand in front of it to play. I ducked down and backed up after solo, but not low enough. Ended up with 80’s big hair hopelessly tangled in 12 string tuners.

I just kind of hung under the guitar and kept playing in a total Spinal Tap moment.

Singer came over and grabbed my hair and guitar and just kind of pried me free. Finished set with a scalp hanging from my acoustic.

Once I missed my guitar with my picking hand and hit myself in the balls so hard I threw up on stage.

This is hilarious. 😁
 
This thread is definitely making me feel good about myself. I am not the only one with an absolutely regrettable musical past. I can stop sitting up at night cringing about the old old OLD videos some a-hole put up on YouTube.
 
I remember at a Battle of the Bands thing a million years ago I decided that I’d be just fine getting onstage drunk as hell.

What a moron.

When I moved to the front of the stage for a solo and adopted a stereotypical “Rock God 101” pose I jerked the cable out of my rack and had no sound in front of a bunch of people. Because I was wasted as hell it took me forever (well it felt like forever - when you are onstage and there is equipment failure one second might as well be ten minutes) to figure it out.

That was literally the last time I ever went on stage drunk.

I‘m cringing as I wrote this remembering it....
 
Jake E Lee played at namm for his big comeback a few years ago- a lot of fractal people were there... I was outside most of the time- but I heard he couldn't tune his guitar, didn't have a backup, and I don't think had an allen wrench to fix it? and it was just a drunken mess.

Also a year or two before same place, same namm party Collective Soul's singer 'lost his voice' which means was black out drunk on stage not able to sing or stand up- and stopped after a song.

The Cult- who is amazing, toured with Against Me- who if you know is nothing like them musically, and have a completely different fan base- so it was like full, against me played- 50% of the people left, then new/different people filled in for the Cult and played-- it wasn't bad- it was just weird.

I saw Chuck Berry- so happy I did- but his guitar playing made that Betts video look great

Saw Motley Crue in 2004- most amazing concert- fairwell tour- vince didn't bother to bring his voice to the show

I got like a 'guitarist of the year' award at the la music awards- and my main guitar failed, backup guitar got tied up on the stand and I embarrassed myself like an asshole for a good 2 minutes of hell of a 5 min song. I threw one off stage in anger then threw the second one at the end. One had broken tuners- easy fix the other has a nice gash on the back side.

I did see one guitarist in concert-super successful/notably famous- not everyone but a lot would know who it is. 4-5 people showed up- and 2-3 of them were friends and only I and the person I was with paid admission. And I bought $40-50 in merch because I felt bad.
 
Ace Frehely for sure, now days, bloated can barely move his hands, soo sloppy. Agree with DL roth, Def Leppard Elliot cant sing at all, cant hit any high notes, voice was never strong now its destroyed. I think Jake E. Lee has lost it as well. G. Lynch in some recent vids, hands just dont move the way they used to.
 
This thread is definitely making me feel good about myself. I am not the only one with an absolutely regrettable musical past. I can stop sitting up at night cringing about the old old OLD videos some a-hole put up on YouTube.

Me too - it's nice to know I'm not the only one who has had a few embarrassing moments on stage.

My band plays everything 1/2 step below standard, and I had a new strat that I wanted to play for an Audioslave song we cover, but it was set up so nicely for standard that I didn't want to tune it down (first bad idea). So my genius idea is to have a 2nd copy of my Audioslave preset that includes the pitch shifter set to tune me down 1/2 step so I'm in tune with the bassist. I have the non-pitch-shfited preset and the pitch-shifted preset right next to each other in the order in case, for whatever reason, I don't play the strat for that song. So we start the song, and I can tell immediately that something is wrong. I realize that I'm using the copy of the preset that doesn't pitch shift, so the singer is singing it in tune with me, but the bassist is 1/2 step down. I ended up stopping the band to start over with the right preset...pretty cringe-worthy moment.
 
By far the most cringe worthy live is late era Vince Neal, he couldn't even Get out 25% of his vocals the last two times i saw them.
Luckily for me the last time i saw Motley Crue the Scorpions open for them and killed it. Three songs into Motley i decided id'e heard enough.

My most embarrassing moment was when our drummer lined us up to play our high school dance. We told him that it was not a good idea, he insisted. We played Slayer (seasons of the Abyss) and Pantera (Cowboys from hell).
Lets just say the crowd were the Furthest thing from metal heads that you could get. I have never seen a group of people move in unison so fast in effort to get away from the noise we were making. By the 2nd song there were maybe 10 people out of 300 left in the hall.
Last Time i played with that drummer!!!


Vince is petty bad
But i have to give him some kudos
Nikki said he went onstage in AU
With a kidney stone
And did half the set before the ambulance took him
 
BB King. I saw him in 2012 a couple of years before his death. He'd almost totally lost the ability to play guitar. He mostly just sat and told stories, maybe did a couple of bends on his guitar. But if you were expecting the magical BB of old, that was long gone. His band was phenomenal, though.
 
Me too - it's nice to know I'm not the only one who has had a few embarrassing moments on stage.

My band plays everything 1/2 step below standard, and I had a new strat that I wanted to play for an Audioslave song we cover, but it was set up so nicely for standard that I didn't want to tune it down (first bad idea). So my genius idea is to have a 2nd copy of my Audioslave preset that includes the pitch shifter set to tune me down 1/2 step so I'm in tune with the bassist. I have the non-pitch-shfited preset and the pitch-shifted preset right next to each other in the order in case, for whatever reason, I don't play the strat for that song. So we start the song, and I can tell immediately that something is wrong. I realize that I'm using the copy of the preset that doesn't pitch shift, so the singer is singing it in tune with me, but the bassist is 1/2 step down. I ended up stopping the band to start over with the right preset...pretty cringe-worthy moment.

Well, at least you had the good grace to stop it and restart. There's a Van Halen vid on youtube where they do what you did, being out of tune with their own backing track. And they kept going.

Another cringe moment I remember was during U2's Elevation tour. It was very shortly after 9-11, so kinda understandable. Bono would wear a leather jacket and would at the moment supreme open it and show it to have the stars and stripes on the inside. The guy who during the 80's would wave a white flag on stage, saying that it was the only flag for him, now draping himself in the stars and stripes. And let the crowd shout USA during Sunday Bloody Sunday. Granted, it was shortly after 9-11, but its sounds so massively cringe whenever I hear the bootlegs of that period. 80's Bono with his mullet is not exactly free from cringe himself, but I reckon he'd kill himself if he would learn what 2001 Bono was doing.
 
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