Monsters Of Rock . Castle Donington 1990.

This page dedicated to the memory of ALAN DICK (18yrs) and LANDON PETER SIGGERS (20yrs) who died at the festival..

" don't fuckin' kill each other "

Axel Rose addresses the audience during the Guns N' Roses set.....

" We don't want anybody to get hurt at this festival we want everybody to go away and say they had a great time "

Bruce Dickinson at the start of Iron Maiden's set.

It was bound to happen eventually, it was odds on that audience members would be killed in the mosh during a UK festival .

During the 80s crowd behaviour had become more and more " intense " , especially during hard rock events .That it happened at Donington and not at Glastonbury or Nostell Priory was probably due to the nature of the beast . Metal crowds tended to leap around a hell of lot more than other audiences, the numbers attending were greater than most festivals, the audience was probably younger, had a higher percentage of males and ( probably the most telling aspect of the day ) they drank far more than most other crowds .

Unfortunately, 1988 was the biggest ever Donington ,107,000 turned up . Given dry conditions that would not have been a problem , however, the festival was marred by bad weather in the week previous to the event which turned the front of stage area into a treacherous slime bowl, it was hard to keep ones footing and once lost , the unprecedented crush of the crowd made it almost impossible to get up again . There were several collapses when Guns N' Roses began to play, due to surges within the crowd and tragically , by the end of their set, two fans were dead, suffocated in the mud under the weight of other bodies that had collapsed ( and in some cases, jumped ) on top of them.

According to the head of security, the density of the crowd at the front was not considered serious, the problems were twofold.

One of the video screens had been blown down by high winds early in Helloween's set. People would not move from under the screen as it was still broadcasting images and was being partially held up by a fence. This distracted security during the band changeover and at the start of Guns N' Roses set as the debris was still not cleared when they took to the stage.

During the first Guns N' Roses numbers there were crowd surges that flowed across the front of the audience and which led to a collapse in the crowd affecting about 15 people , Guns N' Roses were asked to stop and did so immediately, but unfortunately they begAn playing again before the problem was dealt with . Once the band began playing, the audience once again erupted into serious movement which led to a worse crowd collapse, this time involving around 35 or so people.

Black and white images taken from Gun's N' Roses set.

Security attempted to clear the pile of bodies but were hampered by some people climbing onto their backs and jumping onto the pile of bodies apparently in an attempt to crowd surf closer to the band. More security people moved in, the band once again stopped playing , which allowed the area to be cordoned off and the situation was resolved, but not before two people had suffocated in the mud, which was four inches deep near the stage .

The police initially wanted to call the event off but it was decided that may have caused more problems than it solved . Things were relatively calm until later on in the day, when, during David Lee Roths act , a security member flipped on seeing a girl in the audience faint . He climbed onstage and pleaded with the singer to stop the show, however , Roth was not aware that he was a security person and two of his bodyguards chucked the hapless guard back into the pit , which caused some anger in the crowd.

After 1988 the following measures were taken

My name is Stuart Knowles,I designed and supervised the construction of the stage for this event, also 1986 and 1987 for Stagehire Concert Staging (which I owned) so I have a great deal of knowledge of this event.The arena was indeed altered and levelled which meant that the back of the stage was 6m high from the original ground level and was constructed on a steep slope with the stage height at arena level appx 3m high.This was all filled ground (to level off the area in front of the stage) so large aluminium trackway pads were placed under areas of high loading (under the system supporting the roof structure)..there are some interesting photos of this system under construction in the first HMSO guide to health safety and welfare at pop concerts and similar events, which I assisted in developing.The stage by the way was always broadly in the same position and if my memory serves me right was aligned with the third tree to the left of the (now removed) Dunlop Bridge. I hope this info is of some use, I have constructional drawings etc which may be of interest and various other items probably the site schedules and rigging plots etc.

Cheers

Stuart Knowles

"British crowds tend to be more hectic, more insane."

Slash

Duff McKagan : Well, eh, I think our performance is kind of secondary to what's happening in the crowd. They have casualties here. Were you out there at all? I think I saw a casualty happen. It was really weird. It was really strange. We had to stop the show. The P.A. system is kind of screwed up and you don't get time to have a good sound check so we couldn't really hear ourselves but we pulled it off. I think we did a good show. But I'm still stunned at the size of the audience and what was happening up front. It was real scary. We all went like, "woah!"

MS: What was actually happening up there? I couldn't see.

DM: It was kids piled on kids horizontal on the ground. They were unconscious. And more people kept on falling on them. I saw them!

It took about 20 minutes to get everybody out. We stopped the show and they finally pulled the last couple of people out and I think they were dead. It was really weird. I saw no life in those bodies at all.

Megadeath © Dave Ingham

Of course there was more music ,Megadeath and David Lee Roth went down well, as did Kiss, but it was Iron Maiden, (perhaps energised by the events earlier on in the day ), who stole the day by delivering one of their best ever shows, This was an interesting period for Maiden, perhaps their most fertile , as they attempted to break their stereotypical sound when they released their 1986 album "Somewhere in Time". Although not a concept album, most of the songs used the subject as their theme. More importantly, the band sound changed, as they introduced synthesized guitars in the mix .The new sound was generally accepted by fans and the album sold well.

The band followed this album in 1988 with "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son". This WAS a concept album featuring a story about a mythical child who possessed supernatural powers. Synths were used in this release. Much of the Donington set featured material from this and the previous album , accompanied by impressive projections that visualised the narrative of the songs.

The only video that seems to be circulating of Maiden's set is that which was projected on the remaining screen and is not of great quality , but it does show the band on more than solid form .

Fireworks close off the event © Dave Ingham

Recollections .

We start off our recollections of this festival with a rather harrowing account from a close friend of one of the deceased....

Hi guys my name is Mark Bradshaw and I was there!!!!

We were looked upon as "antisocial", outcast from the general population of our village, the three of us were heavily into the metal scene and dressed accordingly.
I was a long haired ruff looking 16 year old, Joe didn’t have the hair but had the leather with denim cut-off, Allan had this awesome leather with a hand painted grim reaper on the back (he always said death was never off his back) he also had a pair of dm’s with blue toe caps the same colour as his ford Capri.

For all of us it was our first concert and if we had known what was going to happen we would never have gone.

We caught the train from helensburugh central that morning totally buzzing about the gig we then travel from Glasgow to donnington,
We got our tickets from the portacabin outside the main gate and went in to the grounds.

I don’t remember much of the gig other than maiden kicked ass and g 'n' r were amazing however I remember plenty about after the gig.

When I got back to the coach the first thing I noticed was no one was buzzing or talking about the gig , it was then I saw Joe and he told me what had happened, the arse fell out of my world I didn’t believe him at first and thought yeah right shit joke mate, but when the 2 cid officers boarded the coach and took us to the local hospital to identify Allan’s body it hit me like a fucking train.

The guy that had been the first to show me friendship when I moved to rhu ( the village we stayed in) and he was the guy who introduced me to guns n roses was lying on a morticians slab covered in mud and shit and a colour that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

Three of us went to donington and two came back, dicky (Allan) was the salt of the earth, he was a good mate and a really nice guy in general, his funeral was mobbed there was a 100 plus attended it. I wasn’t there as I couldn’t bring myself to watch my best mate being cremated.
One thing is for sure he will always be remembered. His full name was Allan Dick , he was from the village of Rhu near Helensburgh in Scotland .

I haven’t been to another gig since and do get pretty nervous in crowds but for me Donington 88 was my first and last concert.

Regards...........

Mark Bradshaw.

i too was there...right in the middle during guns n roses,its like one of the other posters said you really did have to fight your way out. As i did there were loads of people in shock and crying...men and women......sad day ..Alan and Landen i think they were called.

Ian Thompson

Hi
I am loving your site, it is bringing back so many memories that havebeen fogged with time.
For GnR I was caught in the crush at the front. I don't remember beingscared at the time, but in retrospect, especially reading other peoples accounts, I am feeling lucky that I got out alive. I wasn't too far from the stage, and remember collapsing on top of a pile of bodies. It saddens me to think that I may have contributed to the death of one of those poor souls.

I think one of the problems was that in the time from the line up beingfixed, and the event taking place, GnR had become massive and it isobvious the organisers weren't prepared for the ensuing rush of people to see a band so far down the line-up.
The only three bands I explicitly remember from that day were GnR, David Lee Roth - only because of his "I forgot the fucking words" act - and Maiden, who blew me away.

My only other memory from that day, and it is a bizarre one, is after Maiden we were all making our way to the exit when they announced overthe PA about the tragedy during GnR. I remember a deathly silenceamongst the crowd, then, for whatever reason, they decided to play Monty Python's "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life". I remember shaking my head in disbelief.
Mark Wittenberg

At long last British Heavy Metal heroes Iron Maiden finally got their shot at headlining Britain’s top rock festival.
Their show was based around the ‘Seventh Son’ album. And with an impressive stage set and song selection they wowed the crowd with an excellent performance worthy of their position at the top of the bill.
However there was an impressive line up beneath them……

"You are my people,
you are my crowd,
this is our music,
we love it loud...."- KISS

The first (29 and counting) of my festival experiences.
16 yrs old, still only 5' 4" tall, 9 stone (wet through in my denims) and shit scared of life in general, i came to donington with eyes as wide as saucers ("is this what heaven's like?").
After Megadeth, i think Helloween had sold the most t-shirts that day, they were everywhere you looked but i can't say they got more than a polite roar.

That the sound wasn't great and it was drizzling is about all i remember. That and the fact that the singer had black canvas pants and huge white basketball trainers on "Hey, look, german rock stars dress just like us!"

Like all the truly great gigs you ever see, he didn't beam down from another planet, he beamed you to his.
I was a fan of Kiss and i enjoyed their set but they were never a support band. Its easy to say now but without the make up and gimmicks it was a bit like a blowjob after the nightclub has shut in a public toilet off a girlfriend you dumped a couple of months previous, still great but it really is time you both moved on and you both know it.

My first Donington, ( the others being 91 and 95 ) and the most memorable for a variety of reasons.

The 3 of us got the coach up from Norwich, 16 years old and no idea what to expect.

My memories are

Being amazed at how close we got to the stage during Helloween’s set
Laughing at some stupid cow setting up a picnic, complete with wicker basket in the middle of the crowd just before Guns N Roses came on and seeing the thing obliterated as the crowd surged forward and then trying to tell 107,000 people to move back!
Being seriously shit scared during the first song, the crush was unreal
Trying to get my mate out of the crush, he was only small and was in serious danger of falling. We managed to get to the area in front of the lighting tower and could see everything unfold.

Dave Mustaine was and still is an arrogant sod but he was damn good
Dave Lee Roth – the only guy who could get away with playing California Girls in the freezing cold and rain and pull it off.
Kiss – were truly awful
Maiden were on top form as always

It wasn’t until the bus trip home that we heard that those 2 kids had died! Everyone just stopped talking!

Festivals were different back then, you went with the purpose of having a laugh with your mates and seeing the Bands, I don’t go to festivals any more, too much other shit going on. The Big Day Out in Australia for example! I now live here and would never go again, 30 different bands, 5 stages, Ferris Wheels, markets WTF!!

The camaraderie was also one of the main attractions. Everyone got on!

I’ve met so many people in Australia who talk about wishing they could have gone to some of these Donington Festivals ! I’m lucky to have seen 3 of the best

Great site – brings back lots of memories
David Miller

There was no festival in 1989 ( although one was planned) and when the event resumed the stage was resited ,security beefed up and crowd numbers restricted to 80,000.