Two Famous Drummers Have Very Different Bad Nights

April 7, 1990 is a day Steven Adler would probably like to forget – and one Tommy Lee is lucky he survived.

On that night the two drummers were performing 797 miles away from each other – Lee with Motley Crue in New Haven, Connecticut and Adler with Guns N’ Roses at Farm Aid 1990 in Indianapolis. One lost his job and the other could have lost his life.

Motley Crue were in the midst of a massive 168-date tour in support of 1989’s Dr. Feelgood album. By this point, Lee had become known for his gravity-defying drum solo stunts. Always eager to top himself, the new tour’s stage show featured Lee performing on a moving drum kit that hung just below the roof of the arenas the bands were playing at the time – then making a dramatic bungee jump back to the main stage to start the next song.

But on that night at the New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum, things went wrong. Apparently concerned that the brake wouldn’t be pulled in time, the drummer uncoupled himself mid-drop in order to “reach his foot strap, hanging him upside down.” The result was a 20-foot fall and a painful head-first landing.

The second half of the show was cancelled, and Lee was hospitalized with a mild concussion, but luckily escaped the incident without permanent damage. When Motley Crue returned to the road three days later in Poughkeepsie, New York, he was reportedly performing a modified, safer version of the bungee drop. The incident didn’t stop him from dreaming up more and more inventive high-flying drum stunts on future tours.

The Controversy Behind Steven Adler’s Last Guns N’ Roses Show

For Adler, the night wasn’t about sudden danger but rather a boiling over of long-simmering troubles. Farm Aid was the only show Guns N’ Roses played in 1990, as they spent most of the year working on their massive Use Your Illusion double albums.

In the eyes of his bandmates – none of whom claimed to be angels in this regard – Adler’s substance abuse issues had gotten out of control to the point where they were severely affecting his in-studio and on-stage performances.

Farm Aid marked the first time Guns N’ Roses had performed together since a drama-filled four-show stint opening for the Rolling Stones at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum six months earlier.

Things in Indianapolis didn’t get off to a great start. Slash recalled Adler missing a show-opening leap onto his drum kit by about four feet before struggling during their first live performance of the track “Civil War.”

“If his playing had been fine, I don’t think anyone would have cared what he was doing to himself – at least I wouldn’t have,” the guitarist later claimed in Slash: The Autobiography. “We weren’t really concerned for Steven’s health as much as we were pissed off that his addiction was handicapping his performance and therefore the rest of us.”

Things got worse when the band attempted to play a song Adler didn’t even know, a cover of the U.K. Subs’ “Down on the Farm.” Looking back on the show in his book My Appetite for Destruction, Adler contends he was set up to fail.

“I believe their strategy was to make my playing sound like this,” he wrote. “I believe they wanted me to fuck up on live TV; that would be their evidence. By branding me as an ill-equipped, crappy drummer, they’d be armed with a sound reason for kicking me out.”

Regardless of who was right and to what degree, the Farm Aid show was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and also the last time Adler performed as a member of Guns N’ Roses.

When the band returned to the road at Rock in Rio in January 1991, Matt Sorum had replaced Adler as their drummer. It would be the first of a series of lineup changes that would leave singer Axl Rose as the sole founding member of Guns N’ Roses from 1993 until his 2016 reunion with Slash and bassist Duff McKagan.

Watch Guns N’ Roses Perform ‘Civil War’ at Farm Aid 1990