The Wildhearts Pulled Offstage At Download Festival
THE WILDHEARTS PULLED OFFSTAGE AT DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL:
June 15, 2008
The Wildhearts were dramatically pulled offstage at Download Festival today (June 15).
The veteran British rockers’ set was cut short after an apparently good-natured festival bottling got out of hand.
Towards the end of a rowdy show which saw frontman Ginger bantering with the crowd throughout, the rocker began to complain about the lack of objects being thrown forward, chastising the crowd by saying, “is that all you’ve got to throw?”
However, the audience took this as encouragement, and a torrent of objects began to come forward. When a sharp object landed at the barrier, the song ’29 x The Pain’ was stopped in its tracks and the band were removed from the stage.
Earlier on, Ginger kept banter up with the crowd, judging the “things on sticks,” in the crowd. Spotting one with the face of KISS star Gene Simmons, he quipped: “That actually looks thinner than Gene Simmons did the other day!”
Clearly enjoying working the crowd up, he then called for “a Nickelback fan on a stick!”
However, earlier on today, Ginger told was not expecting such a dramatic show. He told NME.COM: “We’ve played Donington surprisingly few times. We played as The Wildhearts in 1994, and then a couple of years ago as Ginger and the Sonic Circus, when I got my arms impaled a bunch of times by the psycho cyborgs. They’re a body modification performance outfit that specialise in sticking things in bodies. So I hope this time will be a little less eventful.
“This time we’re actually going to try and play well! I’m quite confident that our audience are going to make us proud to say because they’re a very loud, vociferous bunch.”
With two decades behind them, the band have relinquished control of their setlist. Ginger said: We can’t choose the setlist in 40 minutes, so we got one of our friends to pick it. It’s one of our friends called Gav – he knows them all. And our soundman had a hand in it as well. I like doing the long songs, we’ve got songs that are 13 minutes long – if you play two of them then you’re done!”
The Wildhearts played:
‘I Wanna Go Where The People Go’
‘Suckerpunch’
‘Caffeine Bomb’
‘Vanilla Radio’
‘My Baby Is A Headfuck’
‘This Revolution Will Be Televised’
‘Sick Of Drugs’
’29 x The Pain’
Keep up with this weekend’s (June 13-15) festival action as it happens on NME.COM.
Courtesy of www.nme.com