Fun DEF LEPPARD & MOLLY HATCHET stories

Administrator Number of posts : 19452 Age : 57

From Blackfoot guitarist Charlie Hargrett:

Quote :: Oct. 18-Nov. 22, 1981: A fun little tour, with Def Leppard (Pete Willis on guitar) opening for us. The bands get along real well, but as happens on some tours, the threats of "just wait until the last night" began to come, initially from the Leppard camp. The last night of the tour finally came, in San Antonio, Texas. Since Blackfoot was the headliner and was to play last, Def Leppard would get the parting shot, so we decided to make our first shot a good one (with Ted Nugent a few tours earlier, it had been raw egg fights in Detroit's Cobo Hall).
When Leppard hit the stage in the San Antonio Convention Center at 7:45 PM on Nov. 22, all Hell broke loose. A large "DIK LIKKER" backdrop unfurled behind the band. Riggers in the lighting trusses dropped ping pong balls to the stage, first 2 or 3 at a time, then handfuls, then bushel baskets full, followed by flaming streamers of flash paper. Fumes from stink bomb fluid on a towel thrown in front of drummer Rick Allen's electric fan filled the stage. When lead singer Joe Elliott exhorted the crowd to "put your hands in the air", our band and crew were hidden behind the amp stacks, with only our arms and waving hands sticking out. When Joe yelled to the crowd "we were in Houston last night, and they made a lot more noise than you're making", a stagehand on an offstage microphone boomed "oh nooo they didn't!".
The audience had no idea what to make of all this mayhem. After all that, it turns out that Def Leppard had been bluffing, and really had nothing planned for our set. While we were playing, Leppard bass player Rick Savage dribbled a basketball across the stage, and then someone tried to shove a big commercial-size laundry basket across the stage, with one of their girlfriends inside. The basket makes it about half way across, and there the poor embarrassed girl is, sitting in the center of the stage, stuck with her ass in the in the basket and her legs hanging out from the knees down, for probably a minute, until someone came out and wheeled her and the basket offstage.
We had a great time with these guys, and I'm real happy for their success.

Quote :: Kansas City, Kansas: We're touring with Molly Hatchet when, with no warning, Hatchet's singer Danny Joe Brown, and guitarists Steve Holland and Duane Roland, fly home one night after a show, right in the middle of the tour. Only lead guitarist Dave Hlubek, drummer B.B. Borden and bassist Riff West show up in Kansas City the next day.
That night, after a real quick "rehearsal" in the backstage dressing room, Medlocke and I sit in with Molly Hatchet for their set. Medlocke took Danny Joe Brown's place as frontman, and I played rhythm guitar behind Hlubek's lead, with rhythm section B.B. and Riff. It wasn't pretty, but we pulled it off. The rest of Hatchet re-joined the tour the next day.

Taken from www.siogo.com

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