Outrageous things people have actually done on stage

There’s a whole bunch of crazy people in the world and a lot of them are musicians. But only a few of them deserve to be put in a list for their outrageous lifestyle and insane behavior on stage. Here are a few of the most messed up people who ever ruled over the music industry:

The Genitorturers: piercing the bodies and souls of S&M audiences worldwide

With a name like The Genitorturers you’re destined to rock the stage with outrageous deeds. The American industrial-alternative metal band (with influences extending into the 90’s hardcore punk and electronic music) have proclaimed themselves to be “The World’s Sexiest Rock Band”. They’re famous for their S&M/bondage style and are pretty popular among the members of the fetish community. Real-life dominatrix Gen, perhaps best suited for the job of lead singer, gives herself “play piercings” while performing.

The Genitorturers

The Genitorturers’ live shows include whippings, spankings, piercings and all various sorts of kinky activities. Volunteers from the audience are called to the stage to get any part of their body pierced. The term “genitorture” refers to sadomasochistic acts performed on a person’s genitals. A lot of bands like to shock the public with big statements but this one actually stays true to its name. Critics have called them “shock” rock, but their label clearly states: “This is real, not an act. This is their lifestyle, not a calculated act to garner attention.” Probably the best part is Gen’s day job – she’s working at a transplant organ clinic. Her job description includes removing eyes from dead bodies. Yes, these guys are the real deal.

Ozzy Osbourne: munching on a bat’s head on stage

There are bad boys and there are MAD boys. And then there is Ozzy. The infamously rebellious rock legend has a long history of drug abuse and all the messed up stuff that goes with it. His most famous deed of on-stage outrageousness is probably the time when he bit a bat’s head clear off. What most people don’t know is that, even though Ozzy’s level of cray-cray is well beyond 9000, the revolting scene was actually an accident.

During a show in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1982, a member of the audience decided to express his affection for the singer by throwing a living bat at him. Drugs. Drugs are the explanation. And again, drugs were the reason Ozzy was in bad enough condition at the time to think the bat was a toy. Of course, as any utterly insane person would do, he decided that the right course of action was to bite the animal’s head off. This, of course, forced him to be treated for rabies.

Just Ozzy…

The bat incident was quite influential for Ozzy’s following career. One time, later on, he consciously bit the head off a dove. Of course, he also got arrested for public urination and at some point in his life he actually snorted a line of live ants. But that’s just Ozzy.

Jimi Hendrix: setting his guitar on fire

Just as Ozzy learned not to play with live animals on stage (but then somehow forgot the lesson), the guitar God Jimi Hendrix learned it wasn’t completely safe to ritually burn your musical instrument in front of a live audience.  In 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience played at the Monterey Pop Festival and then something happened, that basically introduced one of the best guitar players that ever lived to the world. Jimi was supposed to perform before The Who – already a British sensation at the time, and who can blame them for being concerned about playing after Hendrix who was just as famous for dramatically wrecking his gear as they were. A coin toss decided that The Who would go first but it didn’t really make any difference. Jimi put on a phenomenal show and managed to upstage them effortlessly. During a performance of “Wild Thing”, he kneeled in front of his guitar, poured lighter fluid on it and lit the thing on fire. He then smashed his burning instrument into the stage and threw the pieces into the audience. Aw, man, the 60’s!

Just Jimi doing his thing…

Surely enough, Jimi got hurt and his burns had to be treated right away. But still, it was one of those moments when the thin line between genius and insanity was crossed and history was made!

Lady Gaga: been vomited on and liking it

When we say ‘utterly insane’, we rarely think of someone from this generation and often refer to people who lived in the peak years of drug abuse, sex rebellions and wild rock. However, there’s a special someone who manages to be genuinely messed up even today and that’s Lady Gaga. After her careful “Poker Face” beginning she’s shown us numerous times that she’s not the spoiled product of the demanding entertainment industry but an actual insane person.

Lady Gaga dressed as weird as it gets 🙂

At one of her shows, she had a young woman put her fingers in her throat to induce vomiting and actually puke on her. The whole thing turned out to be part of the act and the woman who did the barfing was identified as Millie Brown – a London-based “vomit painter” and friend of Gaga. Still, the fluorescent green stuff that came out of Brown’s stomach and used the pop star as a canvas was an epitome of outrageous on-stage behavior, pushing further the limitations of today’s society. Have we gone too far? Your call. In any case, it takes guts (literally) to fight the last remaining taboos of pop culture in the 21^st century and we believe Lady Gaga’s doing an amazing job.

Iggy Pop: doing everything you’re not supposed to do оn stage (or anywhere)

One of our favorite picks for this list is the legendary Iggy Pop. It’s hard to say what the most messed up thing he did was but we can easily say he’s done basically everything. From covering his whole body in peanut butter, puking on his audience to wearing shocking outfits on stage and cutting himself with broken glass. Iggy shot heroin, waved his penis everywhere, crashed cars into random things and begged outraged record-label executives for drug money. He passed out with the spike still sticking off his arm in every place imaginable, frequented in a mental institution and, while there, score coke off David Bowie.

You gotta Love Iggy 😀

In terms of record selling, Iggy Pop was always famous but never as huge as Ozzy for example. There’s also a big difference in the way the two are aging. Ozzy is still a VERY crazy person. While Iggy has been living a quiet life, for а long time now. Nevertheless, Iggy Pop deserves our recognition for jumpstarting the angry punk music-related revolution by doing nearly everything you would consider wrong.

Rockbitch: destigmatizing female sexuality the hard way

Thanks to society’s double standards and inherent sexism, female sexuality is taboo in many ways male sexuality is not. Full genital exposure, for example, is usually a male thing. Rockbitch was a band that bashed taboos into little pieces. The British hard rock group arose from the corpse of another band called Red Abyss which embodied many of the same principles associated with Rockbitch: female members, strong sex-positive attitude. But their lyrics and stage show were somewhat tame, compared to what later came to existence.  “We were hiding our lifestyle behind a facade,” reads the band’s official bio, written by guitarist Lisa “Babe” Wills, “self-censoring our natural behaviour.”  The ladies had to deal with sexism everywhere they turned – from crowds to promoters, to fellow musicians. So they decided to take off their nice faces and become Rockbitch –  the heavier, darker, unholy satanic incarnation of female sexuality.

For a few years, up until they parted ways in 2002, Rockbitch was THE most outrageous band on the face of the planet. Most of the group members performed naked. Songs like “Fistfuck” would be acted out on stage. During every show, the girls would toss a “Golden Condom” into the audience. Whoever caught it, male or female, was invited to come backstage and have actual sex with several members of the band. Rockbitch’s in-your-face attitude and aggressive female sexuality were probably one of the most male-intimidating things to ever happen to music. Our favorite thing about it is that it was genuinely not a just a show but a lifestyle. Their mission both on stage and in real life was to destigmatize sex and female sexuality, in particular, using the marvelous vehicle of rock music. The following is a quote from the band’s official website and is anything but an exaggeration of their shows:

“When a woman can’t even strip to the waist and play a bitching, head-down guitar riff, have her lead singer f*** her with a strap-on whilst a stage surfer licks her feet without authorities wanting to ban over 18’s from coming to see it — well, what has the world of rock and rebellion come to!?”