30 years ago this week, 17-year-old Bernadette O’Brien was killed in a crowd crush during a Smashing Pumpkins concert at the Point Theatre. Does anyone recall the feelings about the Point in the late 1990s?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Theatre#Death_of_Bernadette_O’Brien
Posted by LetsTalkAboutVex
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Remember this very well. Whole thing was horrible. I was at the chili peppers the year before and had seated tickets. During Moby my friend said we should go downstairs and we just did. Can’t remember if our tickets were checked but we just moved from seated to standing with no bother. That chili peppers gig wasn’t sold out but it happened a good few gigs there that were sold out. I had standing for pearl jam but my friends with seated tickets just joined us; that’s just kind of how it was. Very sad what happened to Bernadette.
I was there…. I’m quite tall, so I distinctly remember holding heaving crowds back. Even once, when a girl fell at my feet. It was crazy.
The upper seats all empty that night.
The band telling everyone to relax as “this will be the longest concert you’ve ever been to in your life”. Only to be later cancelled early for obvious reasons.
It was one of the first concerts ever to be live streamed on the internet too if I remember.
I was working on this concert. Lots of very drunk kids and I remember security being stressed even before the band hit the stage. However I’d say this was a fairly common occurrence back then. The Point was just a huge Victorian warehouse and virtually no real way of controlling the crowd apart from a few lines of barriers which sometimes broke.
Awful – I had tickets to see them in Belfast the next night and it was cancelled. It was so upsetting to hear about poor Bernadette.
I was at that gig. A couple of years ago, I put the piece below together based on my memories, an audio recording of the gig I found online somewhere and some newspaper articles from the time that I tracked down.
Wrote it in one sitting and didn’t end up doing anything with it, but if anyone has the patience you’re more than welcome to wade through it.
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‘There are f*cking people backstage dying, do you care?’ – Inside the Smashing Pumpkins’ tragic Dublin show
This summer, Billy Corgan and his band will return to Dublin’s Point Theatre (nowadays the 3Arena) for the first time since a teenage fan’s death in 1996.
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It’s a warm early summer’s evening in Dublin’s docklands and D’arcy Wretzky is pleading for calm. “There are f*cking people backstage dying, do you care? I see people up here with smiles on their faces. It’s not f*cking funny.”
About 30 minutes prior Wretzky, along with her bandmates Billy Corgan, James Iha and Jimmy Chamberlin, collectively better known as the Smashing Pumpkins, had taken to the stage in the cavernous Point Theatre as part of a world tour to support their mid-90s genre-defining epic ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.’
Fans, some 7,000 or so of us, had crammed into the arena in sweaty anticipation of a band known mostly in those halcyon pre-internet days from MTV screens and bootleg cassettes.
One would not return home.
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It was around 10pm on Saturday May 11, 1996 when 17-year-old Bernadette O’Brien became seriously injured. An absence of effective crowd control inside the capital’s largest indoor music venue had contributed to streams of people abandoning the upper deck in the two-tiered arena in pursuit of a better, closer view of the band from the floor below.
O’Brien, like many others, had succumbed to the ensuing crush that had bottlenecked in front of the stage; each person powerless to counteract the swaying, heaving mass as more and more people surged towards the front, effectively restricting all escape routes. Some of the unlucky ones found themselves pinned to the floor.
Michael Nesdale would later recount his experience at the show. “I’m 23, six foot two and 12 stone,” he told the Irish Times five months later. “I still had no control over my movements. I leant down to get my jacket which was tied to the barrier. I realised the seriousness of the situation when it took all my strength to get back up.”
By now, the band had taken note and had begun issuing de-facto safety announcements to the crowd – each one with a higher degree of urgency than the one before. Security stationed in front of the stage had begun to pluck injured people from the crowd. Others, some with that unmistakable ragdoll effect of unconsciousness, were crowd-surfed towards safety – or at least away from danger – by concertgoers.
“Make sure you’re not standing on anyone,” Wretzky said, referencing the unfortunate few unable to immediately rise to their feet.
“Please make sure that there’s no one else that’s still down, OK?” Corgan implored the audience, by now involuntarily locked together.
“Is there anybody else that needs to come out?”
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A little more than 24 hours earlier, Bernadette O’Brien had travelled from her home in the east Cork village of Shangarry to Dublin ahead of the concert. Her father, back then a chef and fisherman and her mother, who worked with people with disabilities, had arranged for their teenage daughter and a friend of hers to stay with her two cousins in Rathmines. All four attended the show.
Two days later Noel and Annemarie O’Brien made the agonising decision to switch off their daughter’s life support machine.
O’Brien had been one of the dozens of fans who had ‘needed to come out’ from the swollen crowd. A doctor who attended her at the scene immediately recognised that hers was a more severe injury than the other bloody noses and twisted ankles, arranging for her to be rushed to the Mater Hospital.
Hospital authorities would later say that she had sustained “severe internal injuries” in the crush.
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“I feel very, very intensely for the family of Bernadette,” Corgan would say two years later on his – and his band’s – return to Dublin. “Just us being here of course is just a reminder of all that and brings that all back up. It certainly brings it all back up to the surface for me as well.
“It was the most terrible, horrible thing you can imagine.
“The thing I’ll say though is, the easiest thing to do would be to never come back. To us it would have been more disrespectful to not come back and pretend like it never happened, and just hide away in our limos.”
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In June, more than 28 years after O’Brien’s death, the Smashing Pumpkins will return to the Point Theatre for the first time since the band’s darkest moment.
Much has changed in the intervening years. Corgan’s trademark shaved head, which had for so long prematurely aged him, is now accompanied by a greyed beard, more adequately displaying his 57 years.
Wretzky, who was said to have been deeply affected by the event and whose admonishments to the Dublin crowd served as a soundtrack of sorts to the tragedy, is no longer with the band.
Even the venue itself – now known as the 3Arena – is different, having undergone a facelift as corporate funding modernised the previously decrepit former train depot into a modern live music venue.
But close to three decades later, those of us who were there in 1996 can still sometimes feel the echo of that night every time we walk into the place; an evening on the doorstep of summer at a time when our futures stretched out in front of us in the hazy May sunshine.
It remains a part of all who were there, the band and, sharpest of all, the O’Brien family.
“We’ll never forget,” Corgan said in 1998. “There’s no forgetting, it will never go away.”
Remember it well but I wasn’t at it. Very sad. I had started going to concerts about a year earlier. People were right pricks at concerts back then. Young lads wanting to make everything a mosh pit or thinking you had a right to force your way to the front because you were bigger and the band were your favourite band more than other people’s. I remember girls getting banged up regularly. Elbow to the face, knocked and trampled on etc.
I remember well..she was in my year in Midleton.
I’d been to a decent amount gigs around Dublin venues and had been in the point a few times for sold out shows. I’d been to bigger stuff like Feile and Slane too. I was 16, with my girlfriend at the time and her pal and we would have been about half way back ,right in the middle. It was bonkers during filter and I knew the movement in the crowd wasn’t right.
When Pumpkins started it was insane, the heaving in the crowd was so bad, I’ll never forget it. We pretty much moved all the way to the back as soon at the band started.
I know a few people back then, my girlfriend included who were not let go to gigs for 2 or 3 years after that. I remember being at Feile there in the Point later that summer and it being half empty when Foo Fighters played and I put it down to that.
I didn’t go to that gig but went to oasis the same year, we were right at the front barrier. It was so crowded and I remember lots of people getting pulled out by security over my head, my own friend fainted. Thankfully as I said we were barrier so she got dragged out straight away and me and my other friend went with her. I remember at the end when everyone left, we’d stayed back as my friend had lost her shoe and the amount of shoes getting swept to the side by the cleaners was something I’ve never experienced since tbh. We went again the next year but got seating tickets as we never wanted that experience again as it was quite scary.
I remember the news at the time. That’s all.
I was there, security let everyone onto the floor.
The crowd just exploded when the Pumpkins came on stage. I was probably 12ft off the front railing.
It was like standing in the sea with violent waves throwing you around.
I kept falling over, just helped getting back onto your feet.
The energy in the room was unbelievable.
Not too long after they started they began begging people to move back and calm down, but it was impossible for anyone in the crowd to do anything as it now had a mind of its own.
I remember them going off and coming back on, Darcy was nearly in tears saying there was people dying back stage.
Corgan was begging for people to move back, saying they would play all night if people would stop the crush.
Very few people in the crowd knew exactly what was going on as it was so chaotic.
Then they left the stage and a few minutes later the lights came on and we just made our way out. It wasn’t until the following day we found out what had happened, despite being in the midst of it.
I 100% blame the Point for what happend, as there was no effective crowd control, people could just flood onto the floor even if they had seated tickets.
My sister was there aged 18. Still think about it and tell my kids.
I was there.
Point was a shit show, used to always let people onto the floor that had balcony tickets.
I was loads of gigs there, it’s a miracle there weren’t more deaths.
Remeber at Aerosmith someone fell from the foyer balcony and somehow survived!
I saw the Smashing Pumpkins in the Point last year and was really disappointed that they didn’t acknowledge Bernadette’s death.
I would only have been 10 years old at the time of the crush but still remember it on the news and I still don’t understand why they didn’t commemorate her on their return to the same venue.
My middle-aged senility has me forgetting what the gig was, but I’d been at something in the Point not long before that when it was the same vibe, a huge surging crowd so packed it picked you up off your feet and carried you. As a dumb teenager I found it exhilarating cos it was so mad. Then only a few days later this happened, the poor girl who died was the same age as me, and I finally thought “shit”. It’s a miracle there weren’t more deaths, that so many of us have stories like this from the Point.
I remember this so well. The Point was such a shitshow with no crowd control capabilities. I always think of Bernadette every time I go to a gig there because it was such a shocking incident and an awful way to die.
Watch Oasis live from the Ethiad on YouTube.
It’s a massive stadium gig. At the start of the show there is a huge surge towards the stage.
It’s like a huge wave rocking back and forth. It was the on the verge of a serious incident, chilling to watch.
The show is stopped. An issue with the front barrier is fixed. Noel threatens to fire the staff down end front. Show resumes without a hitch.
My point is apparently one small defect in a barrier caused the crowd dynamics to shift dangerously.
So the design, implementation and testing of crowd control is v important.
Was there, 16 and drunk on brandy for some reason, I was towards the front. I’m 6’4″, would have been near enough that back then I suppose, and I remember my feet not touching the ground on multiple occasions, it was heaving and out of control.
My mother was a teacher in the school that she went to when it happened. She didn’t teach Bernadette personally, but did teach her friends who were with her at the gig. They told her that the band did everything they could to try to help her and calm the crowd.
I was there. I was just 15. The crowd was insane. I remember needing to cling to a barrier so as not to be forced even further forward by crowd surges near the start. I also remember feeling the panic of not being able to fill my lungs properly. But luckily, just at that point, the show was stopped temporarily by the band to allow people to get out. And I got free and brought to the back of the venue.
The old Point was a horrendously dangerous design….long and thin from what I recall.
I was at that very concert,I was right at the front,if I’m remembering correctly they stopped a couple of times warning people to to stop pushing and move back,I remember it was really hard to push away from the barrier ,I just went to the very back,it wasn’t long after that they stopped it,
My sister was at this. Something people might not fully appreciate now is that rumours travelled quicker than fact before mobile phones, and since a lot of the fans at this were staying in Dublin that night they weren’t being collected or anything, so there wasn’t any way to check in with them easily.
I’m not sure how, but somehow everyone at everyone’s home seemed to know at least one girl was dead right away (at one point I heard it was three and maybe more). But then it took several long, horrible hours for them all to get in contact with each of their own daughters and find out it wasn’t them.
A bit lawless back then for sure, but this could happen at any packed gig in standing area. Prodigy Breathe tour in 96 was pretty insane, Foo Fighters was a fucking mess. At a Korn gig in early 2000’s in rds and I spent most of the time protecting this tiny girl that was beside me. Shameful someone dies at what is supposed to be a happy event.
Yeah I remember it well. It had metal tubing to split the crowd up embedded in the concrete floor at regular intervals. I remember going to see Faith No More in 1992 and getting effectively knocked out by a guy in a studded leather jacket slamdiving me and others from behind by launching himself from standing on that tubing.at that concert. Crowd control was basic back then.
Big old empty warehouse. It was pretty shit for gigs unless you were up the front.
It was a weird venue, with insanely few loos. But I went to an Orbital gig there in the nineties. I think my fiancé and I were the only people there not on E and it was great. There was dancing room at the front. You could go and grab a free water and carry the plastic pint glass back to the very front of the barriers. No crush. No pushing. Booze is a shit drug for crowds.
First concert I ever went to. It was insane watching so many people being crowd surfed out half conscious. I got separated and stoof way back. Everyone kept swaying in a giant wave, and morons at the back kept pushing it back. Just people being drunk and not listening and noticing what was happening
Remember it was fucking bedlam rows of people lying down not able to stand as people lying on legs
Crowd gets back up and we find people still underfoot were passed out and we lifted them up and over barriers