Incident at Madison Square Garden

During the Blind Faith concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City on July 12, 1969, there were a series of events that stirred controversy about the group and the gathering of nearly fifteen thousand music fans. Toward the end of the performance, it is said that there was an incident when one of Ginger Baker's drum sticks shattered and flew over the edge of the stage. An energetic young fan leaped to grab the drum stick piece, and was roughly treated by the security men surrounding the stage. Perhaps a bit of nastiness ensued, because, Ginger seeing the fan being roughed by security, jumped from his drumkit, and quickly whacked the security man on the back of his head or shoulder to try halting the beating. Well, that started something, and that led to the concert being abruptly ended, with the boys being escorted off the stage. You will see a series of photos below that documents a portion of the incident. It being so many years ago, those who were at the concert performance have only some vague recollections about the incident and details about the end of the performance. In this case, we can only believe what we see. Enjoy what you can view from these extraordinary photos taken by a concert goer who was a teenager at the time.

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For whatever reason, the security is beginning to hover around the stage. MSG lighting is coming on full. Clapton and Baker appear to be distracted by something, since they're both looking to the left edge of the stage as they still perform.

Even more security is hovering around the stage, full MSG maximum lighting is on. Notice that the stage has revolved 180 degrees (Ginger's drums face away, he's turned on his seat looking behind), with everyone's attention on whatever is happening at the left edge of the stage from where the camera holder is standing. Also notice that several in the audience are holding two fingered "peace brother" signs above their heads. Something is definately happening.

Ginger Baker is escorted off stage by security, as Stevie Winwood amazingly watches.

Unknown time sequence between these photos. From what is portrayed in the last photo, it appears that things have been clamped down by security. It could have been an abrupt stopping of the performance. With the security standing closely to Baker and Winwood, without Clapton or Grech, this is probably an abrupt ending of the performance, and when Baker is down on the main floor, who knows what happened? Perhaps as he describes in his recollections.

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Email: kjbleus@charter.net

Created 15 May 2003

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