Brian Jonestown Massacre London Gig Ends In Chaos
7/17/2008 By Brock Thiessen

You never quite know what you are going to get at a Brian Jonestown Massacre gig. Drunken rants? Violence? Crying band members? Total chaos? The band’s Wednesday show in London contained hefty doses of all three, so much so the British police were called in to diffuse the situation.

According to the folks at NME, a backstage altercation erupted between band members after they played a massive two-hour set, forcing the fuzz to intervene when one of the BJM was reportedly injured.

It all started early in the night when an obviously drunken Frankie Emerson took a break from his guitar playing to swing around a mic, which he quickly broke. Apparently, this didn’t sit well with head honcho/total control freak Anton Newcombe, who verbally came down on Emerson and told him the cost of a replacement would be coming out of the guitarist’s pay cheque.

Eventually the testy Newcombe calmed down and the band reportedly continued on with the set, however not without the singer launching into expletive-laced rants about the NME and urging fans to put a stop to the recent knife violence in the UK. (And this coming from the same man who once coaxed a heckler to the front of the stage before kicking him square in the face.)

Later, when the group headed backstage to take the prerequisite break before the encore, Emerson stayed in front of the audience, saying, “Testing, one two, one two,” into the busted-up microphone, a move that further irritated Newcombe.

Percussionist and proud Amoeba Records employee Joel Gion tried to diffuse the situation by saying goodnight to the crowd before Emerson stepped his antics up a notch and shouted: "Don't shut front of house man, you fucker."

Then, after the band finally returned to play their encore and left the stage, the backstage ruckus broke out, NME states, forcing the club to call the police to calm things down. No arrests were made.

A spokesman from the band's label tried to downplay the incident, telling NME, "These things do happen on tour when the band are tired and been away from home too long." He said the BJM have no plans to call off their remaining UK dates.

The Anton Newcombe face-kicking incident
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