Last drinks for Noll
Singer vows to change ways after club arrest
SHANNON Noll has banned after-show drinks at the local pub on his national tour to launch his latest single Southern Sky.
The Aussie rocker learned his lesson the hard way after being king hit and then kicked on the ground outside an Adelaide strip club in January.
Noll was relieved when a charge relating to assaulting a bouncer was dropped last month and now reveals what happened on that night.
The What About Me singer and his band went to the club to relax after playing a Red Hot Summer concert with John Farnham, James Reyne and Daryl Braithwaite at Mannum, 84km outside of Adelaide, on the afternoon of January 15.
As Noll and his bandmates walked along Hindley St in Adelaide, he was mobbed by drunk supporters and hecklers. Some wanted photos, others sledged him.
To escape the attention, the group decided to go to the strip club.
“Those places can be a bit of a sanctuary for bands. You get left alone,” he said.
After a few hours, his bandmates left and Noll decided to call it a night.
But he had put money on his card to spend at the club and when he asked for the unused money to be refunded, he got into a dispute with the manager.
They stepped outside and the situation escalated, resulting in him being hit on the temple by a stranger he doesn’t think was connected to the club. SHANNON NOLL
He fell to the ground and as video footage shows, was repeatedly kicked as he lay there. Police attended and it was alleged Noll had assaulted a security guard, which he has strenuously denied.
“I wasn’t kicked out. The manager wanted to talk to me out the front. I got exasperated because I was dirty as we had spent enough money at that point,” he said.
“I put some on the card and asked for it back and probably had no right to do that. I didn’t assault anyone, I didn’t punch anyone, I didn’t push anyone. I did get up in their grill. I can’t say the same thing for what happened to me though. The police took me straight to hospital.
“An allegation was made that I assaulted someone so they come and arrest me and that’s it. I recovered pretty quick ... but I had a fair bit of blood running out of me. I got a fingernail through my tattoo on my arm, took colour out of it.”
Noll admits he was in the “doghouse for a while” with his wife Rochelle and believes the incident was a “much-needed wake-up call” to change his behaviour.
After embarking on a fitness campaign with his wife, he is determined to stay out of trouble on the tour.
The singer, who was runner-up in the first season of Australian Idol in 2003, said he has always thought of himself as a “normal bloke” who could enjoy a schooner at the local. But no more.
“After a gig, you might feel like going out and having a beer but the rule of thumb now will be if I’m going to have a couple of beers, I’ll have them in the hotel room,” he said.