From Toronto's 102.1 The Edge Blog, The Music Geek
(by Allan Cross)

Now Here's What I Know

Up until about 9pm Sunday night, I had unrestricted all-access wandering of the backstage area at the Virgin Festival. On Saturday, for example, I stood sidestage during the Foo Fighters performance right next to Richard Branson and (I think) Kate Hudson. No hassles whatsoever.

This is one of the defining characteristics of the Toronto Virgin Festivals: an easy-going backstage vibe where people mingle with little or no pretention. Almost all the acts had all their dressing room trailers in an L-shape back behind the stage in the trees. There were places to eat, drink, hang out, play Guitar Hero and even a bonfire to sit around (BTW, the MGMT guys were the BEST at building a roaring bonfire on Saturday night. Who knew they knew so much about lighting things on fire?).

It was cool just walking up to Paul Weller or the Stereophonics dudes or Moby or whomever and just striking up a conversation. (Weller was walking around on his cell phone, talking with people and posing for pictures. Great guy.)

However, there was a compound-within-the-compound that was guarded. This is where the Foo Fighters had their entourage--and it's where Oasis holed up before their show. Noel, however, went on a few backstage walkabouts. He was completely cool about things and was unmolested and unpreturbed by anything. Again, it was brilliant.

But then around 8:45, security began to get extra-tight. In fact, it got tighter than it had been all weekend. Suddenly, my purple all-access pass was null and void; true access-all-areas-access required an orange "mainstage" pass or a semi-mythical black all-access wristband. I was hoping to see Oasis' set from the same spot I watched the Foo Fighters. Suddenly, though, all bets were off. Even a big cheese from Oasis' record company was told to shove off and move on.

But then it got weirder. The whole ground level area around stage left (the left side of the stage as you faced it from the audience) was swept completely clear. Security made sure that it was as empty as a mine field. Us purple pass holders were rounded up and hearded out like cattle.

Rumours started to fly. One was that Brad Pitt was on site (he was in town for the Toronto International Film Festival) and was going to introduce Oasis. That didn't happen, but stories kept flying that he was watching the show from that special VIP section on stage level on the left-hand side.

Whatever. I've been thrown out of a lot of places in my life, so I wasn't going to get stressed about this. I found a spot in the crowd and began to get into the music. Then, a few minutes into "(What's the Story) Morning Glory," some weirdo shoots out from stage right and pushes Noel over from behind. Then he makes for Liam before he's tackled.

Personally, I would have liked to see Liam take care of things. Our Kid can take care of himself. The thrashing would have been spectacular.

The show stopped for what seemed like forever. Elliott Lefko, the main promoter of the festival (and the dude in the hat), came out and asked for patience. Finally, the show resumed, but momentum was lost. Did this screw up a rumoured Oasis/Paul Weller jam? (That would have been cool, especially since the rumoured Foo Fighters/The Edge thing never happened on Saturday night). No encore, either.

Whilst all this was going on, I took advantage of the confusion and circled back around into the backstage area. Taking the long way, I ended up stage right where the production office trailers were. Stage right is also where the artists' entrance ramp was. Vans brought them from their dressing room trailers right up to the ramp, on to the stage and in front of the crowd.

This area was a very, very tight squeeze: trailers, generators, road cases, vans, festival personnel--and some very, very large security people. How this a**hole managed to get up on stage from this area to sucker punch Noel is beyond me.

Was he hiding under the stage? That's what a spokesman for Virgin said. But how long was he there? How did he get under the stage? And what were this guy's motivations?

A source tells me that he couldn't have been hiding there because there was a small city of technicians constantly working on various aspects of the show. There was no room for him to hide down there. However, those technicians were not in place for the Oasis set as they weren't needed for that part of the show.

I spoke with Elliott first thing on Monday morning and he has no idea how it happened. You can bet, though, that there are some very, very unhappy people within the Oasis, Virgin and promoter camps.

Noel suffered some strained tendons when he fell over and was examined for a cracked rib. It's made news all over the world.

This--and you might find this surprising--is only the second time Oasis has been physically attacked on stage by an assailment.. The only other time was in Glasgow in 1994 when a guy threw a punch at Liam. That gig ended in a riot. Yes, they've been asaulted with objects before (Bonehead was hit in the head with a bottle once which ended a show and there was also an incident in Vancouver with a running shoe) but this no one has thrown a punch at the boys on stage this century.

Meanwhile, the jerk who ruined the weekend for so many of us was arrested and charged with assault.

Canada--and Toronto in particular--has always been very, very good to Oasis. This has really screwed things up.

I say give this a**hole to Liam. He probably knows how to waterboard.

Follow things along on the official Oasis site. One of the British papers covered it this way.

And yeah, tonight's show in London, Ontario, has been postponed. The new date at the John Labatt Centre is Dec 15

Here's another video of it :




Oh, and by the way, the dude has been identified: 47 year-old Daniel Sullivan of Pickering. According to the National Post, he had some kind of official backstage accreditation.

Awesome. That means the cool, loose backstage vibe that's marked the Virgin Festival for the past three years has been ruined forever. Way to go.

He'll be in court October 24. Wanna bet that half the British media is gonna be there?

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