Beck was rushed to a private hospital with suspected ruptured organs last night after a rehearsed stage stunt went horribly wrong.
During ‘Devil’s Haircut’, the last song of his show at the London Wembley Arena, Beck and his band started to smash up the stage in a pre-arranged freak-out.
But when bassist Justin picked up Beck in the ensuing mayhem to pretend to throw him, Beck fell heavily onto the neck of his bass.
A spokesperson for Beck told nme.com: “The song, which was meant to be the last one anyway, always goes completely apocalyptic, and it was just complete mayhem. Justin picked up Beck, as he often does, but Beck got impaled on the top of Justin’s bass.”
“Beck though he’d ruptured an organ or something really major, he really thought he’d busted himself badly, so as soon as he came off he was taken straight to a private hospital. He was there ’til 3.30am while they checked him out, but luckily, they said he just had deep internal bruising.”
The spokesman concluded that the rest of Beck’s UK dates – Manchester Apollo tonight and Glasgow Clyde tomorrow – would still go ahead, though Beck had cancelled a host of publicity appearances in an effort to take it easy between gigs.
Before the accident, the gig had been a success, with Beth Orton joining Beck onstage to perform a version of The Rolling Stone’s‘ ‘No Expectations’.
During Beth Orton‘s support slot for Beck, he came on to perform a blasted and emotive duet of The Rolling Stones classic from the 1968 album ‘Beggars Banquet’.
For his own set, Beck bustled through tracks from ‘Odelay’ and Midnite Vultures, plus versions of ‘Mellow Gold’‘s ‘Pay No Mind’ and ‘Nobody’s Fault But My Own’ from ‘Mutations’. This was puntuated by a huge silk-covered bed being lowered down from the ceiling at one point, and a man wearing a lightbuld on his head walking around the stage at another.
As a result of the earlier accident, Beck was unable to attend his own aftershow party at the London Notting Hill Cobden Club, which featured such stars as Gruff Rhys from Super Furry Animals, Finley Quaye, Ant & Dec, Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, Jarvis Cocker, Morcheeba, Reef, Justin Welch and former Elastica colleague Donna Matthews and Portishead’s Andy Smith.
Beck returns to the UK for the Reading/Leeds Carling Weekend this August Bank Holiday.
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