7/10/03+
Dennis Wilson was on stage with three other Beach Boys. The rest of the Beach Boys were in the audience sitting behind me. I was drumming along with Dennis and discovered that if pulled on the backs of the seats in front of me and kicked the bottom of the chairs I could duplicate the exact sounds that were coming from the drum kit on the stage.
Dennis would do a drum fill then I would echo it from the audience. I was getting pretty good at it until Dennis started to notice what I was doing. He started to glare at me from the stage. Finally he got really upset and started yelling at me. He threw a drum stick at me and I caught it. He threw another and I caught it as if it were some kind of Ninja trick. After he threw the fourth drum stick, and I caught it, he was fed up and stormed off stage.
The audience started booing and one of the Beach Boys behind me shouted, "You stopped the show, you get up there and finish it!" The audience agreed and started chanting for me to get up on stage and complete the show. I got behind Dennis Wilson's kit and the band started playing. I wasn't horrible. Especially when I finally found out which was the ride cymbal and covered up my bass drum mistakes by pinging loudly on it.
By the way, did I mention I've never sat behind a drum kit in my life?
I guess I wasn't faking it well enough to fool the audience because they booed me off stage. I went back and found my seat and someone behind me poked me on the shoulder. "Stuart Copeland (the drummer for The Police) is in the audience and he is really pissed at you." For some reason this threw me into a complete panic and I climbed over chairs to find Stuart Copeland. When I finally got to him he was sitting with his arms crossed looking at me with his eyes really narrow.
I gushed an explanation of what happened and how I'd never played drums before and I was just amazed at how I could duplicate the exact sounds with the seats in front of me and that I didn't realize that I was causing a disturbance and by the time I did realize it Dennis had already started to throw drumsticks at me and that made me angry so when they told me to get on stage I didn't really think I had a choice plus I really hate prima donnas and I know people paid money to see a show but I never anticipated things getting so out of hand and I'm really sorry and...
Stuart leaned forward and said, "Everyone thinks they can be a drummer."
With that, I left Stuart to return to my seat. As I walked down the aisle (this was an outdoor auditorium) I passed the 20 or so members of the Beach Boys' band. They were easy to spot, they were all wearing red and white Hawaiian print shirts and they were all giving me dirty looks.