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Former Stone Roses Singer's On-Stage Brawl... SAN FRANCISCO/Singer won't face charges after onstage brawl at club
Jaxon Van Derbeken, Aidin Vaziri, Chronicle Staff Writers The former singer for the British rock group the Stone Roses was detained after a wild brawl at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in which he pummeled a fan who jumped on stage and then beat a bouncer who intervened, police said Wednesday. Ian Brown, 42, was released after being questioned and won't be charged, police said. Investigators said they were having difficulty sorting out the conflicting versions of what happened after the fan tackled the singer during an already chaotic concert Tuesday night. Things went bad almost immediately after Brown and his six-member band went on the O'Farrell Street club's stage in front of 600 people around 10 p.m. , witnesses said. The singer, who went solo after the Stone Roses broke up in 1996, started and abruptly stopped his old band's hit "Made of Stone" three times. He threw one microphone at a sound engineer and another into the balcony, then declared, "What do you say we finish the show and then smash the place up?" witnesses said. An unidentified man climbed onto the stage and attacked Brown, who joined his bandmates in beating and kicking the man, witnesses said. Security guards dragged the man from the stage, but the singer and band members continued hitting him, according to witness accounts and club management. When another guard, Gavin Baskett, tried to stop Brown, the singer pushed him away, and the band attacked him, witnesses said. Several told police that Brown had taken part in the attack and might have jabbed the guard with a microphone stand. Other guards finally hauled the bloodied bouncer away. Baskett, 25, of San Francisco was treated and released at St. Francis Medical Center. Brown told police he thought the bouncer was another berserk fan tugging on him. Sioux Zimmerman, a publicist for Brown, said the performer had no way of knowing of who the man was because he had come from behind. Baskett said Wednesday night that he had simply grabbed Brown and told him to "chill." "It is possible that at first he didn't realize who I was," Baskett said. "But I have a blood-stained jacket that has 'security' on the front and the back of it, and he must have known who I was when he was bashing my skull in with the blunt end of a microphone. "This guy was trying to kill me," Baskett said. After leaving the stage for about 15 minutes following the fracas, Brown returned and finished his performance. "Anyone want to fight me?" he shouted, picking people in the crowd and challenging them. "It was a very unprofessional way to act," said Leah Matanky, a publicist for the Great American Music Hall. She said the whole blowup was Brown's fault. The singer "attacked our security guard for no reason," Matanky said. "He was just trying to do his job." Police Lt. Leroy Lindo said it was hopeless to try to sort out the conflicting stories. "This will all end up in civil litigation between the Great American Music club, the band and the security guard," he said. Lindo said the problem for investigators was figuring out whether there was any criminal intent. "All hell's breaking loose," he said. "It's a mess -- there is no way we can determine any set of circumstances to make us believe that Mr. Brown was the instigator or the security guard was the instigator." Brown's original band, the Stone Roses, made a splash in 1989 with an eponymous debut album that one review said conveyed "the colorful, neo- psychedelic world of acid house." The band broke up seven years later. In 1998, Brown was sentenced to jail in Britain for menacing a British Airways flight captain and attendant. Authorities said he had told the flight attendant he would chop off her hands if she continued to wave at him. a psychotic is someone who just figured out what's going on | |
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