Mama Cass Carpenter died after tripping on a ham sandwich and falling into the wardrobe.

Oh goody! I get to do a HORA.

Caveat lector: This story was told to me in a couple of different versions, by a few people who weren’t actually there. The one person I know that was there advised he had only a vague recollection, as he was completely drunk at the time. A few people on this site may have been there, and have more of a clue than me. With that in mind...

The Sunbury Pop Festival was held for a few years in the early seventies, about thirty miles north of Melbourne. In 1974, one of the headliners was Queen, who had just released Queen II and were in no way a massive group. However at that time very few international bands toured Australia, so Queen got an excellent slot on the bill.

Queen were late in going on, so some bright spark at the sound desk decided to put on a record. And the throng of 25,000 drunken Australians weren’t too happy when Led Zeppelin IV was taken off and an unknown, flamboyant rock band took the stage to perform songs the crowd had never heard before. They wanted more Led Zeppelin. And let the dilettantes on stage know of their displeasure in no uncertain terms. For the entire set.

The story does have a happy ending: when Queen left the stage Lord Frederick said, “We’ll be back. And we’ll be the biggest band in the world.” The next time they toured Australia was on the back of A Night At The Opera and A Day At The Races, so it would seem he had a point.

In one of the inkies, the lead singer of a grunge-y band that was around at the same time as Tad was wondering around backstage at somewhere like Knebworth angrily complaining about the size of his own knob. He wandered around shouting "It's too f***ing small!". Who was it? Anyone remember?

... is actually dead.

The very touchstone of the artiste's relationship with the help is probably best summarised by the (possibly apocryphal) tale of Ry Cooder who, when asked by the festival engineer how he wanted his sound out front, allegedly handed the unfortunate fader monkey a single jack lead. "Plug that in" he said "And try not to fuck it up".

http://skirky.blogspot.com/2011/11/things-we-learned-about-sound-checks....

I've heard this one a few times but this guy tells it better than I could (from http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-578352.html). In fact the link mentions a few more HORAs on the same theme.

"In the 1980s Nick Lowe did an interview in "Musician" magazine about the time he was electrocuted on stage while a member of the group Brinsley Schwarz. After the opening song, Lowe grabbed an ungrounded microphone and received a severe shock. The way he told the story his heart stopped, he fell to the ground and had this near death experience with a conversation about "shame to die so young but at least it was on stage". He was revived when a band member tried to kick the microphone away but instead kicked Lowe in the chest and started his heart. Lowe's hands were badly burned but after briefly sitting out, he felt so good to be still alive he rejoined his band mates."