Fact #156945
When:
Short story:
The Ejekt Festival at The Olympic Training Ground, Athens, Greece, Europe, starring The Beastie Boys and Madness, has to be abandoned because of violent anarchist riots. Rick Smith from British electronic outfit Underworld is hospitalized after reportedly being hit with a brick.
Full article:
Hugh Gadson (manager, Madness) : Very soon after we had appointed David Levy as Madness' agent, he booked the guys to play a festival in Athens and flew out to hang with the band and get to know them a bit.
While the festival was in full swing, the music suddenly stopped in the middle of the Beastie Boys set and they were rushed off stage into waiting vehicles. I was with Madness in our Portacabin dressing room, when a petrol bomb exploded outside the door and 30 or 40 youths wearing crash helmets and wielding baseball bats and machetes rampaged through the back stage area, smashing and slashing anything and anyone in their path.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
David Levy (agent, WME) : There was a riot at that show or, rather, the show was in the way of a maurauding gang who were rioting through Athens. As far as we could tell it was anti-Capitalism stuff, not so unusual in Greece. The show was The Beastie Boys, Madness and Underworld. About 60 helmeted, chain and stick wielding anarchists tore through the backstage, the stage, the front of house and laid waste to the place.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
Hugh Gadson : We had to get the band, their wives and in one case daughters, out of the dressing room, past the motionless body of our security guard, who was lying outside the door and hijack a van to take us off site through all the mayhem and firebombs
David had headed back to the hotel about ten mins before it had all kicked off, totally unaware of what had happened and was sitting in the bar with a drink as the first band members arrived, understandably very shook up. He got the full brunt, broadside, as the band descended on the bar berating their new agent for booking them into a riot.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
David Levy : As I recall Karl from Underworld was hospitalized after being hit by something. Both that evening, spending time with all the band and their families plus in the weeks and months that followed ( where we were told someone died but then found out they didn’t ), it was about as testing a first-show to do with any band ever …!
It was certainly a Madness baptism of fire and then some !
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
Hugh Gadson : Watching David deal with this very stressful situation was when I first saw both the steel and compassion that I have since witnessed many times on our various trips and scrapes around the world. He is a tough, razor sharp, visionary agent.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
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While the festival was in full swing, the music suddenly stopped in the middle of the Beastie Boys set and they were rushed off stage into waiting vehicles. I was with Madness in our Portacabin dressing room, when a petrol bomb exploded outside the door and 30 or 40 youths wearing crash helmets and wielding baseball bats and machetes rampaged through the back stage area, smashing and slashing anything and anyone in their path.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
David Levy (agent, WME) : There was a riot at that show or, rather, the show was in the way of a maurauding gang who were rioting through Athens. As far as we could tell it was anti-Capitalism stuff, not so unusual in Greece. The show was The Beastie Boys, Madness and Underworld. About 60 helmeted, chain and stick wielding anarchists tore through the backstage, the stage, the front of house and laid waste to the place.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
Hugh Gadson : We had to get the band, their wives and in one case daughters, out of the dressing room, past the motionless body of our security guard, who was lying outside the door and hijack a van to take us off site through all the mayhem and firebombs
David had headed back to the hotel about ten mins before it had all kicked off, totally unaware of what had happened and was sitting in the bar with a drink as the first band members arrived, understandably very shook up. He got the full brunt, broadside, as the band descended on the bar berating their new agent for booking them into a riot.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
David Levy : As I recall Karl from Underworld was hospitalized after being hit by something. Both that evening, spending time with all the band and their families plus in the weeks and months that followed ( where we were told someone died but then found out they didn’t ), it was about as testing a first-show to do with any band ever …!
It was certainly a Madness baptism of fire and then some !
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)
Hugh Gadson : Watching David deal with this very stressful situation was when I first saw both the steel and compassion that I have since witnessed many times on our various trips and scrapes around the world. He is a tough, razor sharp, visionary agent.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black for Audience magazine, October 2017)