10 Worst Music Festival DISASTERS 

Nothing can be worse than the time The Midnight Riders had to cancel a show because of a zombie infection

What an absolute tragedy of having your last earthly sounds be the auto-tuned lyrics of Travis Scott.

Props to Pearl Jam for stopping. Fuck Travis Scott for continuing.

-> Death metal = safe -> Hippie stuff = multiple casualties

Travis aint traumatized, he knew, he ddnt care, they died and he felt sorry he got blame and hate for it.

You know you’re at a bad festival if you can buy more drugs than fucking water

I saw limp bizkit last year in Australia at good things and they were the only band to tell the crowd to look after each other and the whole crowd cheered for them

The author is a closeted hippie.

Honestly the main reason you see singers/bands make silly demands like a bowl full of only green M&Ms is because it's a way to easily check that the venue actually read their requirements and followed the safety procedures for their equipment. If a venue didn't follow the relatively simple demand for green M&Ms, they likely didn't follow the safety procedures for installing their very dangerous equipment.

Eddy Vedder is such a kind soul. Ive seen footage of that show time and again and his reaction always breaks my heart

No one ever dies at metal concerts because they are inherently more violent from the pits and such so people are more careful and take care of one another, you fall in the pit, someone will grab you, put you on your feet and ask if you want out, almost every time

This guy just blamed hippies when he said hells angels were stabbing and beating people 😂

Metal crowds are actually super lovely and look out for each other.

How could you forget the mass shooting of people like they were fish in a barrel at the Las Vegas music festival at the Mandalay Bay!!? Surely that many people shot dead would make your list.

The plywood during limp bizkits set was actually their own idea, the band was trying to create their own "moment" similar to Green Day's mud-fight; but yeah, as time progressed, the audience lost their minds!

My kid almost died at Astroworld. He witnessed most of the deaths, and was on the ground/trampled and begging for his life. I don’t really want to watch the rest of this video because they don’t address it properly

Altamont Festival was not organized by the Stones, they were just the headline act. The last minute arrangements was due to the original venue being cancelled by local authorities.

I don't consider Fyre Fest a Festival. And spoiled kids getting scammed I consider a great success.

These all were NOT “hippies”. Love parade was ELECTRONIC MUSIC. I have YET to meet a hippie who even LIKES electronic music. This was fun to watch but it has lots of inaccuracies.

Props to you for making a half hour video feel like 10 minutes, great work.

Back when the love parade incident happened, our bass player was there... we couldn't reach him for 2 days and really thought he might have died. Even his parents didn't know where he was. We eventually found out that he was doing too many drugs and never entered the festival ground.

Kinda surprised Electric Zoo 2023 wasn’t mentioned. EZoo was an EDM festival that took place during Labor Day weekend on Randalls Island in NYC. In 2022, the festival was acquired by the owners of a popular EDM venue in NYC that had a pretty shady history that included overselling shows at said venue. The 2023 festival was the first where they were on their own for organizing the festival, and they were hyping it up real hard. However, things began to turn for the worst when the first day of the festival was cancelled mere hours before the gates were set to open due to construction delays. The organizers tried to blame the delays on “global supply chain issues”, but it turned out that there were a bunch of permit issues, as well as a lack of workers who wanted to work for the festival as the new owners did not pay the contractors who worked for the 2022 festival. While the rest of the festival did happen, it ended up being marred by underwhelming stage designs that were still being worked on even as the festival happened, long lines at Will Call as a bunch of people did not receive their wristbands in advance, and a security guard attacking a festival goer. The climax of all this was on the last day of the festival, when the festival reached capacity and resulted in no one else being allowed in for the rest of the day, which ended up with everyone who was on the island waiting to get in to storm the gates. And while the organizers did promise that everyone would receive refunds for Friday and Sunday, people have still not gotten their money back, with attempts at chargebacks receiving mixed results.

And exactly a month and a half before the release of this video, the one that trumps them all, the October 7 music festival disaster / massacre where hundreds died in a terrorist attack

Billy McFarland is out now. He's current hosting Fyre Festival 2 for 12/4/24. First wave of tickets are already sold out. There is currenlty no line up listed on the website. Get ready to update your list next year.

While i dont have any sympathi for the influencers in fyre festival ,i feel so sorry for the woman who hada restaurant on the island before the influencers were shuttelled to the venue. She worked herself almost to death and lost her entire pension ,she went from quie rich too dirt poor because of all the fires she had to put out with her own money. Hopefully she got some of it back with her engagement in the documentary . And dont forget about the workers on the festival,they did not get payed at all ,so they went full pirates and kidnapped responsible people ,holding them for ransom 😅

if you're gonna make a second part of this video, an incident definitely worth mentioning is argentina's 2004 cromañón incident (spelled cruh-mah-nee-on) it was mostly caused by bad event organization in a closed space, where all emergency exits were closed and locked. the incident began when the band "callejeros" started their show, in which someone lit up a flare and threw it on-stage, causing the huge flag behind them to burn and emit toxic gasses. 194 people died and 1432 were injured, and (in my opinion) holds up as the worst rock music incident of all time. i'm honestly surprised i don't see that many people talking about it "historias innecesarias" has a very good detailed video on it if you wanna check it out, even though it's in spanish!

I am from Germany and the aftermath from Loveparade Duisburg was a mess. The lawsuit was a joke, dragged over multiple years. I was at a Festival near Duisburg at the same weekend and remember the massive amount of cars on the road to Duisburg and the hours we were stuck in traffic on our way to Cologne. Had a bad feeling from the start and was not the only one. I remember speaking with my friends in our car about how bad the idea sounds to hold an event like Loveparade at a closed area instead of open streets like the years before. At Amphi Festival, a smaller Goth/Rock/EBM Event in a beautiful venue we met many people who were already worried about the situation at Loveparade. Way too many people at a location thats definitely not able to handle a crowd like this. I spoke to some friends who are festival staff and artists and all of them were like "that is unsafe as hell, hope nothing goes wrong". And as it happened we all were shocked. A host who usually announces the bands at main stage informed the audience and regularly kept us informed. Many medical staff from Amphi were sent to Duisburg to help out. I tried to contact a childhood friend who was at the Loveparade, the day after she called and told me what she had been through. She was so scared of the packed crowd that she decided to leave the center early, watch the event from a distance and it was the best decision ever, but she had seen everything and has to deal with ptsd since. Lost a friend and like so many other people she is unable to understand how poorly the whole ordeal was handled by authority after the tragic event. Nobody has faced real justice or was sentenced in an acceptable way. Loveparade should have never been moved away from Berlin without a proper safety concept or venue. Greed and ignorance influenced bad decisions and took the life of too many people who just wanted to enjoy an event and not one actually admitted the wrongdoing in the first place. Official statements and excuses came to late and only after public demand.

The world owes fred durst an apology. I'm not even a limp bizkit fan and i still think it was rediculous he got any blame for what happened at woodstock 99. He was being paid to perform not to do security. The organizers are the ones who are responsible for how things went down.

1:04 "headbang the like-button, stagedive on the subscribe-button and windmill the video to your friends" brooooo i love it

its crazy how these things happen so often. everyone preaches crowd safety but things like this still happen. its heartbreaking for those who died or were injured at some of these. but then theres the shit fests *cough cough* blue ridge *COUGH* ... that just arent organized correctly. its insane how pretty much anyone with big money can just host a festival, causing people to either lose their life, be injured, or walk away traumatized and down thousands of dollars.

Donnington 88 is also worth a mention for the kids that got crushed in the crowd surge during GnR’s set . My guitar teacher said they announced it over the PA after Iron Maiden finished . He said it was one of the most depressing endings to what until that point had been an amazing day

I know it’s common to hate on people who went to Fyre Fest but I can imagine a couple or someone saving up for a splurge type vacation and then being stranded with barely any money left because they thought their food and accommodations and transportation were taken care of. It was mostly insufferable influencers and rich kids buying private jets to get back home but I’m sure there were some people who were truly scared and screwed over.

1749 was The first music festival disaster fire. The festival organizers expected 12,000 at the festival to celebrate the end of the war. During one of the rehearsals, the hall erupted into flames and burned to the ground. The music by Handel they were rehearsing has always been known as "The Fireworks" or "music for the Royal Fireworks".

The Altamont Free concert: the Tanacon of the 60s. Also, in regards to the Hell's Angels, The Stones were led to believe they were like a similarly named nonviolent group that provided security at one of their shows in London in the past.

RIP Nathan Bird. He was a stagehand for IATSE Local 30 that was killed at the Indiana State Fair. He was a loving father, brother and friend and I knew him personally. He loved his job and loved making sure the crowd got as good a show as possible. He had gotten the call the get down about 2 mins before the storm hit and was half way down when the collapse happened. He left behind 3 beautiful babies and a heart broken city. May he and the people in the audience rest in eternal peace.

When you're so early 720p isn't available yet

you didn't mention the pukkelpop festival of 2011, where a severe thunderstorm with 100 mph winds tore through it and ended up killing 5 people when a large tent collapsed. thers a ton of videos of the winds tearing the hell out of the place

I still find it so funny that the shit head that ran Blue Ridge’s last name was Sly.

I remember wanting to go to Woodstock, having to settle watching it play out on MTV and becoming quite happy I wasn't there.

Damn and I was debating between tickets for Blue Ridge or Aftershock in Sacramento. Good thing I made the right choice.

The most shocking piece of footage from AstroWorld - when paramedics were finally able to get to victims, there was about eight paramedics on top of about eight dead people doing CPR at the same time next to each other. As an emergency dispatcher, it is the side of Rescue services that I will never face. I can't imagine how to process that situation later.

The new age travellers did not smell. They were mostly peaceful and mostly had jobs but chose just not to live in houses to leave a free life and avoid extortionate mortgages and rent costs. They were also part of one of the biggest music/ youth movements in the late 80s and early 90s. The rave and free party scene. They were berated by the Thatcher government and police because they did not conform. Van life youtubers of today are not that different, they just don't have a whole mini-society a comradeship that existed during that era.

Great compilation. Many of your examples are one-time events, which are prone to becoming a desaster. Long time successful metal festivals like Wacken, Summerbreeze or Hellfest had humble beginnings, where local bands were looking for an opportunity to perform and therefore started a small festival. Over the time they grew organically and learned how to master the ever growing number of fans. They are also regarded as very safe.

Im so glad i have no idea who tf Travis Scott is

The backstory on Woodstock the original Woodstock was actually pretty bad. The concert promoters barely broke even after having released both a double album of music from Woodstock and releasing a feature film.

Woodstock ‘99 was to Generation X, as Charlottesville was to the Alt-Right. As in, the PR Debacle that made them basically disappear from the Public Consciousness. If you’re ever wondering why you don’t hear much about Gen-X, it’s because their Public Image was irreparably tarnished in 1999, to the Tune of a Limp Bizkit Song, and the Most Ill-Advised Hendrix Cover in Music History, and they were forced to pretend like “Gen-X” was actually just a Myth. 😉

Happy to be here while this channel is growing. This, Nick, Tank, and Blegh are my go to metal channels 🤘🏾 keep up the great work Wyatt!

Putting on a music festival is no picnic but any time a person complains about a music fest, usually for sound issues or delays, I am thankful none of them have been as chaotic and disastrous as this. That said, the scariest incident I witnessed at a music fest was at Riot Fest 2015 when System of a Down headlined and they had to stop the show twice as people almost got trampled to death in the middle of a pit. Fortunately, me and my friends were so far away and had lots of space where it didn't affect us, but I had some friends that were near it or knew others that literally got trampled on. Fortunately no one died, but it was still scary af. Also, I guess after Riot Fest 2021, the night Smashing Pumpkins played, someone got pushed onto the tracks and died immediately due to electrocution as people were pushing to get on the pink line train in Chicago. Sure it wasn't at the fest itself but it was the crowd from the fest.

Ive been in a really tight crowd, once. It's not only claustrophobic it's also (as this video proves) hard to breathe. There was a point where i got LIFTED off of the ground, and I'm not tall at all. I did get the air pushed out of my lungs more than once. Scary as hell when you think you're going to die just because you wanted to see someone perform live and you got crushed by people wanting to do the same thing.

You got the Stones concert wrong, the town is Altamont, not Alamont. It's on the newspaper you flashed on the video. Also you missed the footage of the person that was stabbed. It was a young black man dressed in a lime green suit with matching hat.

I'm surprised Route 91 Harvest Festival didn't make the list

Fyre Fest 2 is already on sale and scheduled for December 2024. One ticket type is priced at over $1 million. Can't wait to watch your next video on that one 😂

To be fair to the 'hippie-dippies', most of the issues stem from festival organisers rather than attendees... making a half-arsed plan, then washing their hands of responsibility as soon as the shit hits the porta-potty wall & blaming attendees for the chaos after being left to fend for themselves has been standard practice since the 60's. The irony is, metal & hard music festivals tend to be less of a shit-show because organisers & venues actually _plan_ (novel concept!) for what they assume to be a bunch of wasted, aggressive guys the size of trucks... more security, medical services, better crowd control infrastructure, etc. So when the attendees turn out to be fairly well-behaved & limit their "aggression" to mosh pits & dance spaces, you end up with a more balanced festival with the resources to cope with issues & unforeseen events. It also helps that metal festivals tend to be in Europe. With the complete lack of legal liability and non-existent worker & consumer protections in the States, Americans will get to enjoy the 'hippie-dippy festival experience' for years to come... paying a small fortune to relive the safety, security & sanitary nightmares of yester-year. How lucky!

Having spent 25 years of my life as a musician, stage manager and audio engineer and having worked on many, many festivals large and small, I can honestly say I wouldn’t attend any festival on Earth as a paying punter. Horrific in every single respect.

you'd think after the Who incident where people got trampled, people would learn by now about concert safety & security

I was expecting either "Knotfest meets ForceFest" or "Hell & heaven Open air 2023", or both (both in México, both by the same organizers), to be mentioned, they may not have been AS bad as most of these, which I wasn't expecting and was surprised to learn about, but they were bad enough to still be worth being mentioned, check them out.

As a Hoosier the state fair collapse was horrifying. I went to the fair grounds to see an offraod four wheel show and to see everything all taped off and knowing that theres where several people passed away was a very eerie feeling.

RU-vidr seems to be a bit incompetent and ignorant. You can't call Love Parade 2010 a hippie event when most of the crowd were pretty average mainstream kids and the event was owned by a big brand and you would see brand names everywhere. Usually Love Parade was broadcast on TV like an Olympics opening ceremony. Percentage of hippies at Love Parade 2010 probably less than 0.1% Woodstock 99 a great example for an event with massive problems and zero hippies around. Don't get me wrong some hippies are truly problematic. But the main factor for the success of an event is how competent organisers are. Fyre Fest probably was sure one of the worst festivals but not the worst disaster. Nobody died, just some rich kids suffered experiences a not that great weekend

The difference between Woodstock '94 and '99 is amazing. Donington Monsters of Rock 1988 also had 2 fans die during Guns n Roses set. I believe the official cause was a crowd surge and the deep mud due to rainy weather. As an aside, all bootlegs of that GnR set sound bad, and this is because (according to Axl) Iron Maiden (who were headlining that year) took so long doing their sound check that GnR couldn't do one at all. It led to years of animosity between Axl and Maiden, and explains the backhanded quote Axl had in a TV interview conducted that day about Maiden.

"Gypsies" (Romani) are a race of people. Please respect us.

10:20 just so yall know, the man who got stabbed pulled his gun out to fire on stage. you can see the silver of his revolver moments before an HA stabs him in the shoulder. just gotta correct that ;)

I love how you shit on hippies the whole video and then you get to Woodstock '99, the most disastrous festival ever, and all of a sudden you talk about how good original woodstock was and how you would have actually enjoyed the lineup to the worst festival ever. Maybe its not hippies that are the problem, maybe it is having bad organization and infrastructure with thousands of people in one area.

Our old band covered limp bizkit breakstuff .. every time we played it , fights started . A couple of times right up front ..its just one of those song for one of those days .

Woodstock 1969 / Woodstock 1999 / 30 years. Narrator says "thirteenth anniversary." You excel at math. Bravo.

This was incredibly entertaining, subbed my man.

My friends dad was one of the ones who died in the Indiana state fair one. It's so weird to hear about it all these years later. I remember it so vividly learning about it. We were both so young and just couldn't comprehend it. I hope everyone who lost loved ones are doing good and okay. It's tough to lose someone due to something like this.

Im starting to think you have something against hippies 😅

I gotta say, this video sounds like it was made by someone who rides a Road King and cries whenever Free Bird plays.

“This has been your free survival tip for the day” 🤣🤣 I mean you’re not wrong but so funny!

My personal Music festival disaster was Hultsfred 99 when Hole performed Courtney Love wanted 200 girls come up on stage showing their tits and a couple got trampled to death

I have been to 100's of shows, but never a festival. I'm worn out seeing 3 bands at a single stadium show. I couldn't handle 20 bands over a weekend or on multiple stages. Now tickets for cheap seats are $150 and if, you want to meet and greet the band an extra $250 to get a wave... Damn, you can meet The Tiger Lillies for free after being blown away for 2 hours... Crack of Doom

Dude did an unemployed hippie touch you in a no no spot when u was at a festival? I've never heard someone so hung up on those of the jobless and tree hugger persuasion LMFAO.

The stories my dad tells me about when he went to woodstock 99 never fail to shock me.

14:09 “the worst tragedy is that people had to listen to Travis Scott’s music” 🤓🤓🤓☝️☝️☝️ bet old mate felt like a genius writing that one

Dying at a Pearl Jam concert has to be one of the worst ways to go ever.

Fun Fact: One of the heads of the film crew for the Free Concert in 1969. Was a guy you might have heard of named George Lucas. Look it up.

Ottawa's Bluesfest, heavy winds knocks down one of the stage, the good news, no one got hurt

rock listener try not to hate on other genres challenge (impossible))

That Bull Island cow murder is the worst thing I've ever heard. Can you imagine the terror that cow suffered when set upon by dirty unemployed hippies crazed on drugs. Nightmare fuel. I'm serious. I'm effing angry.

Really bad take on Glastonbury. You've picked one incident in nearly 50 years of a festival that anybody thats actually been will tell you virtually never has any trouble.

You missed the recent nova festival in Israel and also route 91 in Vegas.

The speaker system dropping on you that quick isn't a nice experience! Those things are heavy and require crane lifting! Wishing the greatest peace and health to the families who lost loved ones that evening!

Not gonna lie - the continuous hippie jokes were on point. 😜

@11:00 you call it the "Allamont" Raceway festival when actually it's the Altamont (with a "T") festival. Besides being written in black and white with a "T", the Altamont festival is a stand-out festival event often thought to be the one event that brought an end to hippy music festivals forever. What an eff up, both by you for being too lazy to freaking read and by the organizers who probably couldn't even give a party in their own back yards.

i am a new age traveller & definately not a gypsy or a bum & the riot was cos the security beat too many peaceful travellers up for no reason

youre wrong about the lovparade. It was held first in Berlin but in 2007 it was moved because of permits etc. 2007 was Essen and 2009 was Dortmund. 2010 was the disaster year. Was there but we where there in the city centre. tried to go to place where all the trucks where but you had to go through 2 tunnels and we where half way and it took ages. So we decided to turn around and go back to city centre. And we had no idea till the whole pfone network came down and we saw helo's coming and going over our head's that there was something going on. Finally got a taxi back and then we saw the massive line of emergency cars and ambulances on the highway. Will never forget that day

11:18 I was coming from Downtown with my cousin when the storm hit. As soon as we were at a stop light by the state fair, we saw a hell.. and I mean A HELL OF PEOPLE running out… Not knowing what was going on till we got back to his house. Got a text from a buddy who was there working security told me that it was chaos all over. Then my cousin turned on the tv and went to the news station and to our surprise… it was devastating 😔 As a fellow Hoosier, my heart still goes out to the people who got hurt and passed away… 🙏

I have never heard a more conservative metal head than this guy. What a joke.

The Stones weren't taking acid by 1969, but I see your point. haha The weird thing is that they did a free festival months before that in England and it was a massive success, but they didn't plan everything, Sam Cutler was there to help them organise the festival. I guess the lesson with Altamont is: Don't let the young Stones plan a festival by themselves.

This was a much more annoying video to watch than it needed to be.

You are right about the Frye band list.. WHO??? Maybe he just made names up like he did the festival……

Not all people who listens to mainstream or alternative bands are there because we like "hippie shit". Some of us just like to listen to all kind of music. Why limit ourselve to one thing and be an asshole about it? Maybe that kind of behavior is one of the reasons stuff like this happens...

The part about the hells angels is completely misleading. It was normal for them to be security at festivals at that time and not the "obvious" reason things went so bad

Also I will always remember Carson Daly standing up on top of a platform of some sort watching everything burn literally like crying and fearing for his life and he had to rescued by helicopter. Crazy shit.

Another great vid. Another one worth mentioning was Donington 1988, not a disaster but two metal fans died when the crowd surged foward to see GnR. My bro was there, I always remember it on the news and the panic trying to find out if he was okay…no mobiles remember.

I've never been to a violent concert. I 'did' once go to an outdoor concert one rainy day when I was about eight years old, it was supposed to be an all classic rock concert, headlined by REO Speedwagon, but the opener cancelled for some reason, and promoters made the last minute call to a local band who only played the most popular Rock at the time, (Creed, Alice In Chains, etc. It was the 90s). Long story short, younger people were there, and kinda rowdy from the 90s hard Rock and the rain, and I found myself getting dragged into a huge mud pit by some teens, who wrestled me into the mud, smeared it all over me, threw it on me, by the time they were done, every inch of me was a greyish brown shade of earth! It was at a beach, thankfully I was planning to take a dip, so I only had my swimming trunks on, not good clothes! Shortly after, I was back with my parents, who were close to the stage, REO Speedwagon was performing, and frontman Kevin Cronin apparently saw me in my muddy glory, and threw his COLD cup of water right on me... I stood there frozen, mouth wide open dripping with his water and that mud, it was a sight!😅

everytime wyatt posts, my day gets better

Altamont. Not allamon. Considering it was one of the first well known festival tragedies and well known I’m surprised you don’t know that.

ofc when you talk about rap its "shit" bro ur rock/metal bands aint selling even close to what travis is...

Brutal Assault is the most gorgeous I've attended, had a very nice setup in general (although not being a beer drinker made keeping hydrated a bit complicated). It also had the best line up of any festival I've been to. The worst festivals I've been to have been generic pop/rock festivals where no one really gave a shit about the music.