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Fact #117386

When:

Short story:

When Black Sabbath play at Anaheim Stadium, Anaheim, California, USA, support band Van Halen is seen to parachute down to the venue from a plane flying overhead. It is, however, a publicity gimmick using stunt men instead of the band. Also on the bill are Richie Lecea, Sammy Hagar and Boston.

Full article:

Eddie Van Halen : That was one of Roth's big ideas. I'm not even sure why, but he said, 'Let's parachute into the stadium.' Of course, we couldn't do it ourselves, so we hired four professional sky divers to jump out of an airplane before our set.

The idea was that we would wear identical gear and run on stage and pretend it was us that jumped out of the plane. So there we were, wearing these crazy, heavy outfits, sweating our balls off, waiting for the sky divers to come down so we could jump on stage.

It was silly, and it almost turned into a complete catastrophy, because while we were trying to get out of the gear, Al severely twisted his ankle and had to play the show with practically a broken foot.