By Brad Gallagher:
“Bottling”?? What’s a bottling? Well, it was once described this way: “Bottling is an action where a concert audience throws various objects at the performers onstage. This generally happens at festivals when one act in the lineup is of a different genre or audience from the rest of the bands, especially festivals where the majority of bands are related to heavy metal and punk rock music styles.”1
The practice is said to have begun back in the 1970’s. One famous bottling occurred in 1974 when “The Stooges” were performing at The Michigan Palace for an audience comprised mostly of bikers. Apparently the biker audience was not particularly fond of The Stooges’ style of music, and began throwing beer bottles, ice, eggs, and anything else they could get their hands on at led singer “Iggy Pop” as he sang. The Stooges continued to play, however, amidst the barrage of incoming projectiles and a lot of verbal heckling. But eventually Iggy snapped and singled out one of the rather loud hecklers. He ran down into the audience and started a fight with the guy, but, since the guy was bigger, Iggy ended up getting the tar beaten out of him. The concert ended and Iggy wound up back in his hotel room being attended to by a doctor. The concert that night was recorded and published on their live album titled “Metallic K.O.”, and if you listen carefully to it you can even hear the sound of bear bottles hitting guitar strings.
The practice of bottling continued through the 1970’s with acts such as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Ramones, and Jethro Tull all getting bottled on different occasions. And on October 10, 1977, someone in the audience at the beginning of the encore at the Aerosmith concert in Philadelphia, threw a Cherry Bomb up on stage and injured lead singer Steven Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry. I remember this because I had a ticket to the October 11, 1977 Aerosmith concert in Philadelphia that was cancelled due to these injuries. I never had another opportunity to see them in concert again. #notbitter
In the 80’s and 90’s the tradition went on with the bottling of artists such as Bonnie Tyler, The B-52’s, Meatloaf, Joan Jett, The Sex Pistols, and even Pearl Jam. In the 2000’s, The Strokes and The Plain White T’s were both bottled at different concerts, each while opening for Metallica, Iron Maiden had eggs thrown at them, and Guns and Roses were bottled just because they arrived late to their show. Even Lady Gaga, as recently as last July, had something thrown at her while on stage.
But there was one band who, after getting bottled on stage decided to make something of the experience.
As The Story Goes:
Back on January 27, 1973, a group of young men by the names of Brian Connolly, Steve Priest, Andy Scott, and Mick Tucker were performing at the Grand Hall in Kilmarnock Scotland when they were bottled right off the stage. Priest said that he thought they were bottled because of their edgy appearance which included lipstick and eye shadow. Others thought it was just because the audience was unfamiliar with their style of music. The incident happened a year or so before the Iggy Pop incident, and well before heavy metal and punk rock were even a thing. But it did occur, and the band made a fortune off of the experience.
You see, this particular bottling inspired a hit song that reached #5 on the US Billboard Top 100 Chart in September of 1973, and #2 on the UK Singles chart. I am sure that at some point in time you have heard it. It start out with Mick Tucker slamming the cymbals with his drum sticks and then leading into a drum solo: tuck-a-tuck-a, tuck-a-tuck-a, tuck-a-tuck-a, tuck-a-tuck-a, followed by:
Brian: “Are you ready Steve?”
Steve: “U-huh”
Brian: “Andy?”
Andy: “Yeah”
Brian: “Mick”
Mick: “Okay”
Brian: “All right fellas……let’s goooooooo!”
That’s right, it was “Ballroom Blitz” by a band that was originally known as “The Sweetshop”, but changed their name to “The Sweet” in the early 70’s. Today, we just know them as “Sweet”, a band who learned early on how to turn an uncomfortable experience into a gold mine.
Sweet became one of the biggest British glam rock bands of the 1970’s. They scored 13 top 20 hits during the 70’s on the UK charts, and 4 top 10 hits on the US Billboard charts before Connolly left the group in 1979. Their US hits included “Ballroom Blitz”, “Fox On The Run”, “Little Willy”, and “Love Is Like Oxygen”. Over the years, Sweet has sold over 35 million albums worldwide, and the hit song “Ballroom Blitz” has been streamed more than 144 million times on Spotify alone. As of today, Andy Scott is the only surviving member of the original group, but he is still active with his version of the band “Sweet”.
So now you know a little bit about a bottling. Please don’t try it at home. But DO come back and see me really soon right here on As The Story Goes.
Ballroom Blitz video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8pYpii2Atg
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[1] Jonze, Tim (2007-08-25). “Hitting rock bottom”. The Guardian. London. Retrieved 2008-06-19.
AS THE STORY GOES 