Moshing Injuries Becoming Liability Headache For Concert Promoters

At each stop on last year’s Lollapalooza tour, the show opened with a troupe of Tibetan monks chanting traditional prayers. “Kids were moshing to that,” says Lollapalooza on-site producer Stuart Ross, a few days before last week’s Lollapalooza stop at Charles Town Raceway in West Virginia.

“And believe me, that’s not rhythmic moshing music.”

In fact, it’s all getting to be a bit too mosh. And perhaps too dangerous: According to the annual Rock Concert Safety Survey, there were three deaths and more than 1,800 moshing-related injuries in 1994, with 1,000 injuries at Woodstock ‘94 alone.

“Moshing has been allowed to grow out of control,” says Paul Wertheimer, whose Chicago-based Crowd Management Strategies consulting firm prepares the survey. “When moshing started in the late ‘80s they called it ‘dancing,’ and by the early ‘90s it was evident there were dangers brewing. But the concert industry has not set up any guidelines on what is or isn’t acceptable behavior, and now it’s faced with trying to get things back in line. The litigation is rolling in, so the industry is taking a new look at it.”

“It’s a major problem,” says Dave Williams, co-president of Cellar Door Productions, the nation’s biggest concert promoter. “We discourage it, more and more acts are discouraging it, and more and more acts are asking for reserved seats because of the injuries involved. But it’s hard to go in and fight kids to make ‘em not do it. It’s the bands that have to discourage it.”

A number of bands have also spoken out during their performances to discourage moshing. Unfortunately, it’s the promoters, not the bands or the venues, who are held liable for injuries at concerts and are therefore the prime targets for lawsuits. “It’s a myth that fans are responsible for their own safety,” says Wertheimer. “The ones primarily responsible are those who hold that public event.” But Liss acknowledges that “whenever audience members’ feet leave the floor, that’s where injuries have been reported.” Indeed, the major problems seem to be the results of stage-diving (which can be easily controlled) and the phenomenon known as “crowd surfing,” in which bodies are passed above a sea of hands (which can’t). As a result, many concert promoters have started videotaping mosh pits to protect themselves from lawsuits by showing contributory negligence.Still, the promoters’ insurance rates are likely to rise much higher next year and several major insurance carriers have instituted “moshing exclusions” in their policies.