STAGE FRIGHTS
Adele is one of many stars faced with awkward — or downright dangerous — prop malfunctions in the name of entertainment
Amuddle over a puddle is reported to have contributed to Adele’s decision to defer her Las Vegas residency at less than 24 hours’ notice. COVID outbreaks and “delivery delays” were the reasons Adele provided in a tearful Instagram post. It has since been claimed the 33-year-old also clashed with set designer Es Devlin over an artificial lake that was to have been the centrepiece at 4,100-capacity Caesars Palace Coliseum.
“When she saw the finished design, she refused to take part,” a source said. “Adele described the pool as a ‘baggy old pond’ and refused, point blank, to stand in the middle of it. The intention was to fill it with water on the set as she was lifted up on a crane-type mechanism, creating the illusion she was floating on water.”
Adele is no stranger to water features. Her 2016 world tour saw her sing from beneath a waterfall. However, Adele could now be gone for good amid reports Caesars Palace may not be able to accommodate her rescheduled run of gigs until 2023 — or beyond.
The singer has long suffered from stage fright. Indeed, the set Devlin created for Adele’s 2016 tour was designed explicitly to put the star at ease. The strippeddown affair celebrated Adele’s smoky diva image whilst creating a “safe space” in which she could natter like the audience’s best mate.
Adele isn’t the first A-lister for whom a stage prop has failed. Here are some of the more glaring examples.
1 U2 in a pickle over a lemon
U2’s Pop-mart tour had the impossible task of trumping their zeitgeist-swallowing Zoo TV show — a cyberpunk extravaganza that skewered the information age and the sensory overload that the internet was soon to inflict on all our brains. Pop-mart, by contrast, took a potshot at the entire edifice of consumer capitalism.
U2 became stuck in a moment they couldn’t get out of when the giant mechanical lemon from which they were supposed to emerge during the Pop-mart encore proved less than reliable. As the tour kicked off in 1997, guitarist The Edge realized they were in trouble when the lemon became clogged with dry ice. With his vision obscured, he could not locate the pedal required to open the contraption. In Norway, the members of the biggest rock band in the world were able to crawl out the back. In Japan, they had to sit there as crew came to the rescue.
2 Katy Perry’s rogue bra
Touring the world in 2012, Katy Perry honoured her music’s candy-cane exuberance by donning a bra with rotating peppermint wheels. Alas, long tresses and rotating brassieres are not the smoothest match: “My hair got caught in the wheels of my spinning peppermint bra and began to coil around and around,” she said. “I’m forced to just go with it ... What a girl does for her art.”
Her insurers banned the bra for the rest of the tour for fear a repeat could put Perry out of action.
3 AC/DC’S cop caper
The Australian heavy rockers tried to embellish their bad-boy reputation by hiring actors to dress as police officers and “arrest” them on stage in Sydney. Alas, the crowd assumed the police were real, and rioted. The real police then showed up and when a constable approached singer Bon Scott, he received a punch to the jaw for his troubles.
4 ZZ Tops’s buffalo stance
Touring their 1976 album, Tejas, the whiskery Texas blues warriors proved they were born to be wild by shepherding a menagerie of animals onto the stage, which included a backdrop of real rattlesnakes and buffalo. What could possibly go wrong? ZZ Top found out when one of the buffalo cut loose and smashed into the tank holding the snakes. Mayhem ensued.
5 Yes’s tunnel troubles
Seventies prog pioneers Yes were famed for their over-the-top productions. But the crew required to lug around their heavy sci-fi props wasn’t always so appreciative. On tour in America, the roadies decided to play a joke and diverted the giant “Slinky” that was supposed to convey Yes on stage.
“We had this immense tunnel based on a giant Slinky that we would march out of on to the stage,” said keyboardist Rick Wakeman. “The crew hated it. It was impossible to cart around. One show, they took revenge. We strode along it, half noticing the sound of the audience was getting further away. Finally, we came to a halt by a large green exit sign. The crew had directed the tunnel away from the stage.”
6 Alice Cooper and the putrid python
Decades before Britney Spears’ notorious snake dance, horror show rocker Cooper’s favourite stage prop was a live python, which he would carefully dangle around his neck. Or at least he did until the night the snake emptied its bowels everywhere. Cooper’s dancers — dressed as clowns — dashed on to clean the mess, Alas, the stench made them throw up. Through it all, Cooper kept singing
7 Black Sabbath’s monumental miscalculation
The famous Spinal Tap scene in which a miniature Stonehenge is lowered to the stage was inspired by a real muck-up by Black Sabbath, when their prop designer confused feet with metres.
“We had Sharon Osbourne’s dad, Don Arden, managing us. He came up with having the stage set be Stonehenge. He wrote the dimensions down and gave it to our tour manager,” said bassist Geezer Butler. “He wrote it down in metres, but meant to write it in feet. The people who made it saw 15 metres instead of 15 feet. It was 45-feet high and we just had to leave it in the storage area. It cost a fortune to make, but there was not a building on Earth that you could fit it into.”
8 Tommy Lee’s inverted world
Soon to be seen fictionalized in Disney+’s Pam & Tommy, Pamela Anderson’s ex-husband has long been renowned for his pyrotechnic drumming. But in 2015, a deafening set piece at Motley Crue’s last show went south as Lee was soaring over the crowd. The roller-coaster to which his drum kit was attached shuddered to a standstill, leaving the unfortunate percussionist hanging over the former Staples Centre in L.A., and forced to awkwardly banter with fans upside-down as roadies clambered to the rescue.
9 Britney Spears’ frond farewell
Long before Adele and her pool, Britney Spears was the big star lighting up Vegas. But she had her setbacks, too. Performing in January 2016, she became entangled in a plastic tree when her harness stuck in the faux foliage. A stagehand scaled the structure and set her free, and Britney walked carefully down the steps — all while belting out Toxic.