Coming on stage with intention to entertain their fans, Rage Against the Machine ended facing chaos instead.
The political band was performing on the stage as part of the headliner of Melbourne's Big Day Out event on Monday, January 28, 2008 when the set got marred by the crowd unrest after dozens of fans among the 46,000-strong audience scaled nearby marquees and speaker stands in their bid to get to the front of the stage.
Things turned ugly when two men fell off the top of the beer marquee and one was pulled over the barrier unconscious as crowds pushed forward to see the rock group in the finale.
Ambulances were called to then carry 11 people to hospital while 413 others were treated for minor injury.
Rage Against the Machine, in the meantime, was pulled off-stage by show organizers, who then threatened to cut short the troupe's set altogether unless fans calmed down and stopped the violence.
In spite of the awful incident, the festival organizers, however, have defended security measures during the Monday gig, held at the Flemington racecourse carpark, insisting "everything went well" considering it was the venue's hosting debut.
"Like any first-time event, we'll take stock and improvements will be made for the following year," Big Day Out spokeswoman Miranda Brown remarked, adding the packed crowd for Rage Against the Machine was inevitable.
"It's a fairly extraordinary situation where there's one band that is so popular, but there's nothing else we can do," she said.
Meanwhile, Metropolitan Ambulance Service operations manager Paul Holman commented the event was actually well managed, saying "I've seen festivals a hundred times worse, and in the context of having 46,000 there, I thought they did well."
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