10 Most Rock N' Roll Things That Have Ever Happened

4. Eddie Vedder's Stage Dives

Pearl Jam are often celebrated as one of the greatest alternative rock bands of all time. Their particular brand of melodic rock and their biting lyrics earned them fans across the globe when their debut album Ten landed in 1991. Off the back of their meteoric rise to stardom the band also gained a reputation for their incendiary live shows and frontman Eddie Vedder's dominating stage personality. His notoriety took to new levels when he got into the habit of stage diving. This is nothing new for most bands, stage diving is part and parcel of the experience for some musicians, but Vedder took it to an absolute extreme; climbing lighting rigs, speaker supports and even venue architecture to get as high as he possibly could. In some cases he would stay up there and carry on singing from an extreme altitude but eventually he took the concept further and started leaping hundreds of feet into the audience with no regard to his or anyone else's safety. It's an impressive sight to behold, but even Vedder holds his hands up these days and says he can't bear to watch his old performances as a result. The craze for this kind of extreme stage diving has carried on, with some success and a lot of injuries; famously in 2013 the Warped Tour show at Alexandra Palace was halted when rapper George Watsky attempted a similar stage dive from the rigging and the audience parted, letting him hit the deck and break several bones. Clearly the lesson here is to trust your audience. Or y'know, just don't do it...