Bizarre Things Musicians Did To Keep Fans Watching

For performers and fans alike, there's nothing like the experience of a live performance. For a time, they might have been tame concerts coming out of COVID quarantine, but they've exploded back up into events that can draw many thousands. No matter how pricey tickets are or how much it costs to maintain a tour, fans flock to the shows and musicians keep putting them on. And social media platforms like TikTok have reshaped the concertgoing experience in the 21st century, shifting it into the realm of streaming. But whether integrated with social media or kept to a traditional performance, live shows aren't just about the music. Solo artists and bands often need to bring more to a concert, whether "more" be a costume, a dance routine, special effects, or something more outrageous.

 Over the years, musicians have done some awfully strange and outlandish things during their shows. Some of these stunts were done to hook in audiences, some were to call attention to an issue, and some were impromptu moments gone awry. Here's just a small sampling of the wacky things musical acts have done for or in front of their fans.

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour was the biggest thing in pop music throughout 2023 and 2024. Fans not only flocked to see her concerts and watched its movie streamed on Disney+, but the tour itself, its viral moments, and the mechanics behind them, became popular points of discussion on fan sites and social media. It also may have inspired Swift's minor beef with Dave Grohl, but the fan commentary was often more positive and curious.

Among the viral moments was a particular stunt Swift performed on the tour. She seemingly dove into a stage at one end and emerged on the other, despite the stage not being tall enough for her to walk under the platforms. A projection of her swimming played along those platforms, giving the audience something to see, but it didn't explain to intrigued fans just how Swift made her way around underneath the stage. Footage of the stunt made the rounds on social media platforms, and many were completely flummoxed by it.

While there hasn't been a detailed behind-the-scenes explainer for the dive, the basics of how it works were part of the footage used in a video shared on Swift's official YouTube channel. Swift had an airbag waiting for her below the trap door she dove into (some fan videos taken at certain angles even showed the bag inflating). There was also a track with a long seat running under the stage that she could ride to get from one end to the other.

Even casual fans of rock and roll are familiar with the story of Ozzy Osbourne and the bat. Osbourne had already established his reputation for shocking theatrics by 1982. His tour that year, "Diary of a Madman," was promoted with fliers depicting Osbourne as the self-styled Prince of Darkness. Word of mouth held that he'd bit the head off a live dove to terrify record executives, and his shows included staged executions. Shock was the name of the game, and fans began getting in on the act by throwing meat and toy animals on the stage for Osbourne to savage.

In that spirit, a 17-year-old Mark Neal was convinced by his friends to bring the remains of a bat to Osbourne's January 20 show at the Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Des Moines, Iowa. He'd found and preserved it weeks earlier, but by the time he smuggled it into the show, it was starting to rot. When Neal threw it on the stage, bassist Rudy Sarzo indicated it to Osbourne, who then pulled one of his craziest stunts by scooping it up and biting the bat's head off. Despite it being dead, Osbourne still insists that he felt the head twitching on top of the rancid taste.

Once the show was over, Osbourne was rushed to the hospital for three weeks' worth of rabies shots. He vowed (with limited success) to pull back on his shock theatrics. The venue prohibited the use of live animals without permission after the show, yet the story spread far and wide, becoming a rock legend that Osbourne has come to lament being asked about so often.

Before smartphones and social media, many shocking and "viral" moments from concerts spread through word of mouth alone. Unless you were there, there was no hope that you'd see whatever blew everyone's mind, but every now and then, something special was captured on film or video. Such was the case in June 1967 when, on the third and final day of the Monterey International Pop Festival, Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire (pictured). Not only that, he straddled and gyrated over his guitar before lighting it up, and smashed it to pieces after it burned.

The stunt was, in part, the latest volley in the feud between Jimi Hendrix and The Who's Pete Townshend, who had a similarly destructive stage act as Hendrix. They had zeroed in on Monterey as a chance to make it big on the American music scene, and neither wanted to follow the other. When The Who went first and let loose their explosives, it left Hendrix with the very real chance that he would come off as a stale repetition. The flaming guitar was an impromptu replacement, one Hendrix later framed as a sacrifice. "You sacrifice things you love," Hendrix said (via Far Out Magazine). "I love my guitar."

The stunt did its part to blow up Hendrix's career, though he and his band's often chaotic relationship began complicating that success soon after, and the stunt also helped cement the electric guitar as the instrument of a generation.

Provocation might be something a musical act uses once they're well-established as a way to keep fans turning out. It might also be something an act uses early on, as a way of garnering a name for themselves and making it into the big leagues. For the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it was the latter. The band was still finding its identity in the early 1980s, going through name changes before settling on Red Hot Chili Peppers, while finding its sound. But even once it settled those details, it still needed to break into the pop consciousness.

Enter lead vocalist Anthony Kiedis and his girl troubles. Kiedis told GQ (via Louder) that a woman with an obsessive crush on him kept sending rather forward messages and gifts to his address. Specifically, she "[sent] me greeting cards with foldout rulers to measure the size of your d***," Kiedis said. In response, he greeted her at the door once wearing nothing but a sock — and not on his feet. Kiedis brought the idea into the band for its July 1983 performance at a strip club, where all four Chili Peppers appeared in nothing but socks around their privates.

The look not only helped the Chili Peppers gain notoriety, it also became a signature of the group. It was the look it chose for an album cover in 1988, and "The Simpsons" latched onto it when they spoofed the band. It's still part of the band's image, but once the guys all reached their 40s, they decided it was time to retire the socks.

The pyrotechnic competition between Jimi Hendrix and The Who birthed an iconic moment for Hendrix, but it came back to bite his rival band a few months after the Monterey International Pop Festival. It was September 1967, and The Who was set to appear on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. By the heavily curated standards of '60s American TV, the CBS show was edgy, and The Who's lyrics and literally explosive performances seemed a good fit.

A key part of The Who's live performances was in the drum kit of its percussionist, Keith Moon. When Pete Townshend smashed his guitar, that was Moon's cue to set off an explosive hidden in one of his bass drums. But for the Smothers Brothers show, Moon decided to step up his game. He allegedly bribed (and inebriated) a stagehand to load up his drum with far more gunpowder than was legal to use on a stage. When the guitar came down and Moon set off his charge, the resulting explosion disrupted the CBS broadcast, scattered the band, and sent a cymbal into Moon's arm so fast that it sliced it open.

Townshend has claimed the blast set his hair on fire and permanently damaged his hearing. He and Moon often clashed over the years, including the time the bandmates got into a fight in front of fans while on stage, temporarily breaking up The Who. But for the Smothers Brothers, they kept it together. Once the explosion cleared, Townshend played it off by taking one of their hosts' prop guitars and smashing it.

To call Rage Against the Machine's Lollapalooza '93 exhibitionist appearance a "performance" is to stretch the term, because it didn't actually play that day. At the time, Rage Against the Machine had already started to make its impact felt, and when it took to the stage that day, the band members were totally naked.

The band described their nude appearance as a protest against Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), a cultural watchdog group that helped force the "parental advisory" warning label on music albums. Rage Against the Machine considered such advocacy censorship and strongly opposed it, and with the Clinton administration's ascent to the White House that year, the band felt that Lollapalooza offered the perfect opportunity to protest. Each one of the artist's naked bodies was marked by a letter that together formed "PMRC," while their instruments remained against the amplifiers on stage. The protest went on for 15 minutes, despite the sometimes hostile reaction of the crowd.

But beyond the principle of freedom of expression, there was another reason for the stunt. Touring can take a toll on vocalists, and by the time Rage Against the Machine reached Lollapalooza, lead singer Zack de la Rocha's voice was shredded. Even if the band had wanted to perform a normal set, it may literally have not been able to.

Halloween is a great occasion to break out strange and eye-catching performances, and Phish has been taking advantage of the occasion for years. Starting in 1994, when it performed covers of every last song from "The Beatles (White Album)," the funk rock group offered up a unique experience for fans and concertgoers every October 31 (excepting, of course, long stretches when the band was on hiatus or broken up). Dressing up and covering other artists has been a common theme for its Halloween shows, but things got a little more elaborate in 2018.

That year, for its second set, Phish donned the guise of Kasvot Växt, which it said was a Scandinavian progressive rock band. That group supposedly had a single album, "í rokk," and Phish played the whole thing. The programs issued to concertgoers that night included in-depth analysis of Kasvot Växt, and members of Phish were quoted as being longtime admirers who'd long wanted to pay tribute to the group through their Halloween shows. But Kasvot Växt and "í rokk" do not exist; the whole thing was an elaborate Halloween trick. The songs Phish sang that night were its own, done in the style of 1980s prog rock.

Fans took the stunt in good humor, even getting in on the fun afterward through fake interviews and fan accounts, and Phish ended up staging a similar Halloween show three years later. For 2021, Phish invented Sci-Fi Soldier, a band from the year 4680, and played yet another complete — and fictitious — album.

The KLF has had an interesting history. Formed in 1987 by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, the avant-garde group has changed its name a few times. Before KLF, it was The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu and then the Timelords. With the name changes came shifts in sound; the move to the KLF saw Drummond and Cauty switch from pop and hip-hop to acid.

But consistently part of the group's image was Drummond's wild behavior, whether that be using unlicensed music from other artists or chucking his own records into the ocean. Still, the KLF's nomination for Best British Band at the British Record Industry Trusts Show (BRITS) in 1992 was a major breakthrough for the group, and it was asked to perform at the awards ceremony. One might have expected its performance to be shocking but within a certain realm of decorum.

Instead, Drummond seemed to go out of his way to provoke his audience that night. He brought in metal band Extreme Noise Terror to collaborate on the show, a group with a very different sensibility than what usually featured at the BRITS. Early plans for a stunt included Drummond cutting off his own hand or slaughtering sheep on stage, an idea his partners nixed. Instead, he smuggled in a machine gun and fired blanks into an unsuspecting audience. The KLF ended up winning (in a tie with Simply Red), but the ceremony doubled as an ostentatious way to announce they were leaving the music business altogether.

Whether or not their fans welcome it, some artists are not shy about their politics. In the wake of Donald Trump's unexpected victory in the 2016 presidential election, plenty of American artists hurried to voice their displeasure with the new commander-in-chief, but Rapper YG took things beyond statements or complaining in interviews.

Loathing and rejection of the racism and xenophobia fueled by Trump's rise animated YG's collaboration with Nipsey Hussle on a protest song. Even before the election was finished, the artists were working on the song, titled "F*** Donald Trump" (FDT for the censors), which certainly didn't leave room for ambiguity. YG initially intended Hussle to be the vocalist, but his partner convinced him otherwise. Their producer had no expectations that "FDT" would be popular, but it became a perhaps not-so-surprising surprise hit that year.

For a live performance of "FDT" in Los Angeles on November 19, 2019 (per Billboard), YG worked in an extra dig at the president. He brought out adult film star Stormy Daniels, the woman from Trump's past who kept haunting him throughout his first term. Daniels introduced herself as "the reason Donald Trump is f*****" and joined YG for the opening lines of the song.

There have been many fine rock bands over the years, but the Rolling Stones still stand apart for how completely it embodied a generational fascination with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Many of its songs have endured, the key relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards survived several rough patches, and the Stones have quite literally outlived many of its peers. Age, along with retirements and deaths in the group, have slowed it down, but the stone keeps rolling along.

That increasingly gentrified pace means that Rolling Stones concerts might not have the same level of theatricality as its live shows once did. In earlier years, the Stones was famous for the energy and showmanship it put into concerts, such as innovating the use of hydraulics and pyrotechnics to enhance the live music experience. The band also made use of a certain prop, one not quite as iconic as their tongue logo, but memorable in its own way. It was a giant inflatable tube, painted on one side to look like a finger but undeniably phallic (pictured).

The phallic connotations were latched onto by the press, fans, and the Stones themselves. In East Germany, the prop went limp, which may have motivated the Stones' nickname for it: "tired grandfather."