ASK MOJO
Who got busted on-stage?
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Further to ‘Rock Meets The Underworld’ (Ask MOJO 345). I’ve read that The Doors’ Jim Morrison was the first musician to be arrested on-stage, for abusing the police and public obscenity, at a gig in Connecticut on December 9, 1967 (it’s available to view on YouTube). Did anyone get there before him? And who else got their collar felt mid-riff?
Andrew Richards, via e-mail
MOJO says: A few memorable examples of on-stage arrest include Mac DeMarco being apprehended at a 2014 show in Santa Barbara after crowd surfing and climbing on the ceiling, Bobby Brown being gripped for lewdness in Georgia (he paid his fine and was back in time to finish the gig), and Donnie Van Zant of 38 Special, who was taken into custody for drinking booze on-stage in Tulsa, a dry town, in 1982. More common is musicians being arrested immediately after playing, such as free speech crusaders 2 Live Crew (who were taped being freaky by plain-clothed cops in Florida), Janis Joplin (who spent a night in the cells for between-song swearing in Tampa), Plasmatics singer Wendy O. Williams (who simulated sex with a sledgehammer in Milwaukee) and Little Willie John, who was booked for homicide in the hours following a date in Seattle. But back to earlier examples than Jim Morrison: Korean artist Nam June Paik’s February 1967 piece Opera Sextronique involved cellist Charlotte Moorman being detained mid-concert for performing topless, PJ Proby was arrested by Whispering Bob Harris’s policeman father after deliberately splitting his pants in Northampton in February 1965, and, most torrid of all, scandalous chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit Thaw was escorted to court in Virginia for risqué dancing way back in