Dealing with hecklers is just the order of the day for most musicians around the world. For every person who paid for a ticket, there’s always going to be that one guy who shows up to cause trouble, and musicians have always had their own unique ways of dealing with their haters.
No one expected literal fascism to become part of everything, but Alice In Chains‘ Layne Staley knew exactly how to deal with the situation when he was faced with it in Sweden in the early 90’s.
Halfway through Alice In Chains’ tour in between changing bass players, the band were playing a concert in Sweden when someone started to get a little too out of hand in the mosh pit, roughing up people trying to enjoy the show and making Nazi salutes.
After saying his thanks to the crowd, Layne saw what was going on in front of him after the song “It Ain’t Like That” and motioned that the audience get the bigot up onstage.
After helping the man to his feet up on stage, Layne managed to land a couple of punches on the guy before pushing him back off the stage, saying “F*cking Nazis die” after he was taken care of.
If you look at the video footage though, it’s hilarious how well the band go along with the situation, as Layne goes through this entire thing with Mike Inez just playing bass right behind him, providing the perfect soundtrack for this guy getting his ass handed to him just a few seconds later.
Although there was an initial investigation as to what happened later in the day, the Nazi didn’t seem to have that much of a defense for what he did, with his brother actually siding with the rest of the band for what he had done.
If anything, it just shows admirably how much Layne and Alice In Chains kept their ethos as top priority as they skyrocketed to fame.
You can watch the incident below thanks to Metal Injection: