The History of Throwing bottles of Piss at Gigs

Music concerts have been around forever.

Well, okay, concerts have existed since the mid-17th Century. 
And if you want to get technical, ancient Greeks did open-air performances to crowds, which isn’t a million miles away from a gig.

But whatever.

The modern ‘gig’ has been around for less than a century. 

Since the early 20th century, there has been a lot of changes when it comes to live music performances.

• Technological changes, as the quality of the instruments and equipment have improved. 
  
• The sound of the music has changed dramatically, splitting into dozens, then hundreds of new music genres.
  
• Even the response from the audience has changed too. 

Audience Act

Back when the Beatles played live shows, young people often just screamed, as a way of letting out their energy and emotions. 

Later on, as metal music evolved, the screaming evolved into head banging and windmilling. They are ways to express the energy and excitement you feel, without ripping your vocal cords to shreds.

Another thing to have changed over the last century is the rise, and fall, of bottle throwing at gigs.

This is something that we all are aware of, but doesn’t get talked about much.

Even the wikipedia article for Bottling (Concert Abuse) is less than 150 words long.

Origins

Reading the Wikipedia article of notable bottling incidents by year (yes, that’s a real page), the first few entries are from the 1970’s, so presumably bottling wasn’t a very common occurrence before this point.

To be fair, plastic bottles weren’t invented until the 1973. Any time before that would have meant throwing glass bottles, which a whole other level.

However, there is famous incident that pre-dates this those on the Wikipedia article, and can be seen as proto-bottling.

Going back to the Beatles briefly, in an interview in the early 1960s, they said their favourite sweet/candy was Jelly Beans. 

This then led to several concerts where audience members brought bags of Jelly Beans with them, just to throw at the band.

This wasn’t a malicious act, but just the audience connecting with something that band had said and trying to engage with the band.

However, Jelly Beans are small and hard.

Having them hurled at you in their hundreds got to be a big problem for the band, and they had to actually ask people to stop.

Now, this isn’t exactly the same as bottling, but it shows that throwing stuff at people on stage has been going on for a long time, and may not always be a wholly negative thing.

Some notable events:

Looking through that Wikipedia article again, here are a few standout incidents of bottling:

• The earliest incident recorded on the page is The Stooges, with their gig (and live album) Metallic K.O, recorded in 1974.
  
  Iggy pop baited the audience and insulting them, causing them to throw things constantly through the gig.
  
• The spoof metal band, Bad News, were heavily bottled during their set at the Monsters of Rock festival in 1983.
  
  (I wrote an entire blog post on this incident, which you can read here)
  
• At Download Festival 2012, Black Veil Brides were heavily bottled (that band gets a lot of hate for existing).
  
  However, the band played to the crowd with the lead singer, Andy Biersack, mooning them in response.

For those of you who are interested, I did make a video about this very topic!

Why Bottles of Piss?

Okay, so bottling emerged as a way to interact with the band, and to show displeasure at the band playing.

That makes sense, sort of.

But that doesn’t explain the emergence of filling the bottles with urine first…

Now, my answer to this is pretty much just my own opinion, mixed in with some things I’ve read online, but it’s not like concrete facts or anything.

Music Festivals became more popular around the 70s and 80s. The thing about festivals is that they’re all-day events, full of crowds of people, with the toilets usually very far away.

If you are near the front of the stage and you need to use the toilet, you’ll need to leave your spot, and are unlikely to get as good a view when you return.

So instead of traipsing all the way to the bogs for a cheeky piss, why not just whizz in a bottle?

It’s quicker and with people allowed to bring in their own booze back then, most people had bottles on them anyway.

Plus with the state of festival toilets at the time, pissing in a bottle in a crowd probably wasn’t a much worse experience.

So, you are left with a crowd of people who partake in bottling, and a lot of bottles of piss around.

It doesn’t take much to mix those two things together.

Widespread Issue?

Throwing bottles of piss doesn’t just happen at the ‘grungier’ festivals.

While Download Festival and Bloodstock have both had this problem, so have the more general-audience festivals, like Leeds and Reading.

Here’s an article about this practice at Reading Festival, from back in 2015.

That article includes some interviews with people who admit they do it (anonymously, of course).

It also includes the most incredible quote, from a woman who admitted to doing it.

“I do it all the time… You just gotta do what you gotta do. It’s just a bit of pee, no harm done.”

Rando woman at Reading Festival

By the way, if you are interested in pissing in a bottle but aren’t sure how, there’s a WikiHow article for you!

Not a thing any more

Thankfully the trend of throwing bottles has started to wane in recent years. 

Thats not to say that some younger people don’t do it as well. When everyone else is doing it, it’s easy for the trend to briefly catch on again and the atmosphere to ‘go down the toilet’.

For example, in 2013 when Download Festival set up a zip-line…

But the scale of the throwing definitely seems to have dropped from its peak in the 80s and 90s.

It seems that the people who do it now are mostly the older crowd trying to relive their youth.

Plus nowadays the act of it will generally garner bad press from the people around you. The dangers of it are more widely known, and doing it will bring some bad karma.

Family Friendly

I think the rise in parents bringing their young children to festivals has also halted the bottle-throwing except for the ‘designated’ areas, like the front few rows or mosh pit area.

In general, I think that Music Festivals have become more civilised and less of the anarchist wastelands they were back in the day.

Maybe not ‘tea-and-scones’ civilised, but at least no-one is throwing bottles of piss at toddlers.