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The very last thing an artist or a promoter or the owner of a venue or an insurance company wants to happen is for someone to get hurt or worse at a concert. But it does happen.
There are always stories about bad behavior or unexpected crowd dynamics. Altamont in 1969, the Who crowd crush in Cincinnati in 1979, Woodstock 99, the nine dead during Pearl Jam set at the Ross Guild Festival in 2000, the deaths at the Astroworld Festival in 2021, and the Brixton Academy crowd crush in 2023 all come to mind. Those were largely security failures and problems with crowd control.
But occasionally there's a different type of disaster, the kind that happens suddenly and without warning. When you go to a show, you expect that the building and everything in it will be safe, that all has been constructed to proper standards and won't present any kind of danger to anyone at the gig. The last thing you think about is the stage coming down on top of the performers, the crew and the crowd. The summer of 2011 was a really bad year for this sort of thing.
The stage fell down at the Indiana State Fair just before a concert by the country band Sugarland. The outdoor structure wasn't able to handle the wind from an approaching thunderstorm. Seven people were killed and 58 others were injured. A few days after that, there was an incident at the Puckle Pop Festival in the Netherlands. Five people dead. Then Cheap Trick almost got crushed when part of the stage set up for the Ottawa Blues Festival suddenly gave way because of high winds.
The Flaming Lips had a similar problem in Oklahoma. And all that happened within a few weeks. Despite all this, the problem has not gone away. Wind gusts brought down the stage at a Spanish EDM festival in 2022. One dead, dozens hurt. Two members of the Hong Kong boy band Mirror were badly hurt when a giant LED screen fell from the ceiling during a show. And there have been similar incidents in California, China, Brazil, and Thailand.
The most infamous of them all might be what happened at Downsview Park in Toronto on Saturday, June 12th, 2012. It was a beautiful, clear, calm summer day. But just minutes before the grounds were to open for fans, thousands upon thousands of pounds of equipment and scaffolding suddenly came crashing down. One person died and three people were injured. What happened? And why did it take so long for justice to be served?
And while we're at it, was justice served? I'm Alan Cross, and this is Uncharted, Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry, Episode 16. It's the Radiohead stage collapse. And have I got a story for you.
Outdoor concerts have been a thing for decades, and the staging used for them has come a long, long way from, let's say, what we saw at Woodstock in 1969. These structures are carefully engineered to withstand great stresses when it comes to weight and whatever the elements might throw at them, most of the time, but not always.
Let's go back to June 12, 2012 and trace what happened at that Radiohead concert. All that gear should not have come crashing down on a clear and calm day. Yet it did. Early in a band's career, it's simple to build a stage if you need one for a gig in a gym or a banquet hall or a parking lot. All you have to do is lash together some tables with some gaffer tape. But when you make the big time, things become very complex.
You need a structure that can withstand all kinds of different stresses. The weight of the audio and lighting gear, giant video monitors and screens, special effects equipment, and the humans up on the rafters helping to run the show.
If it's a temporary stage for an outdoor performance, it has to be engineered to exacting tolerances, architecturally capable of not only withstanding all that weight, but also able to deal with strong winds, rain, the underlying terrain, and of course the force of gravity. They also need to be built with a little bit of give to absorb any outside forces acting on it.
Needless to say, designing and building these stages comes with great responsibilities. In the case of Radiohead's Doom Stage, it was a temporary structure built at the bottom of a very slight incline in Toronto's Downsview Park. A week before the show, a designer drew up plans based on instructions from Optex, a staging company. Those plans were then handed over to the workers entrusted with building everything. And two days before the show, construction began.
This type of structure is known as a system scaffold, which allows for the stage roof to be raised above the stage floor and suspended between scaffold towers on either side. Key components included four pickup trusses, the metal structures that had to bear the weight of the roof grid and all the equipment hanging from it. The plans called for roof supports to be made of three-inch-wide components of steel and aluminum.
The math said that such trusses are capable of holding 7,700 kilograms, enough to hold all the gear and to allow for any slight momentum of that hanging equipment caused by the wind. The plans were reviewed and approved by a certified engineer. Building permits, the ones necessary, were in place. And along the way, several changes were made to reduce and redistribute the weight to be held by the roof.
As the stage took shape on that Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it was inspected by another engineer, who signed off on everything, effectively giving the show the go-ahead. By 2 o'clock on the afternoon of the show, this is Saturday, June 12th, stage construction was a little behind schedule, but nothing to worry about. The band's equipment was being put into place, including a dozen spinning screens suspended above the stage, weighing a total of 30,000 kilograms.
But Aide Pollack had a bad feeling. Aide was Radiohead's business manager, and to him it looked like the scaffolding above the stage, the part with those four roof trusses, was drooping a little. Now, a certain amount of droop is normal, but this looked weird. But Aide thought, "What do I know? I'm not an engineer." So he didn't say anything to anyone. He did, however, take a picture. He wasn't the only one either. There were discussions about the structure.
"This equipment and technology is old. It's been a long time since we've seen this kind of stage." Those were some of the comments before the collapse. The final engineer on the job did note the bend as well. That's called deflection, but he deemed that the deflection was within acceptable limits. Typically, such structures were designed and built to handle two to four times the amount of weight they needed to hold. And that was the assumption behind the construction of the Radiohead stage.
Everything else seemed fine, although things were running behind schedule. Again, no big deal. The crew was bustling on, under, and around the stage. And above it. The weather was near perfect. Sunny, warm, and calm. Radiohead was backstage, getting ready for the soundcheck for what would be the last stop on this tour. At four o'clock, about an hour before the gates were scheduled to open, and minutes before Radiohead was to appear on stage to start their soundcheck,
Suddenly, and without warning, the roof of the stage came crashing down, first falling towards the front of the stage, bringing down the entire top of the structure. Drummer Phil Selway was interviewed by the CBC. We heard what sounded like an enormous cabinet of glasses falling over. The top of the structure had buckled. Something that was meant to bring, you know, a lot of joy that evening, but it just...
resulted in the death of Scott. Some of Radiohead's crew was on stage at the time. Scott Johnson, Selway's drum tech, who had been with the band for about two years, was crushed by a video monitor that weighed almost 2,300 kilograms. I'm reading here from the official report by the Ontario coroner under cause of death. Crushing injury of head and brain. Three other members were also hurt, one seriously.
Everyone was horrified and the concert of course was cancelled. This became worldwide news. We're learning more tonight about the man who died in that staged collapse at Downsview Park yesterday. A freak accident that could have been catastrophic if it had happened just an hour later when the gates were scheduled to open to the public. Today Ministry of Labour officials are at Downsview Park trying to determine exactly what went so wrong. Antonia Robart with the latest.
The tangled mess of dozens of pieces of metal barely hang on close to six stories in the air. A reminder of what took the life of a man who had spent much of it on stages just like these. 33-year-old Scott Johnson from Doncaster, England, who had been on tour with the band Radiohead as their drum technician.
He was doing the final preparations for the sold-out show when tragedy struck. The stage was just mangled. The centre was just completely folded in on itself and scraps of metal all over the place. We saw the back and it was just caved right in. This is Scott Johnson from a few years ago in an interview while he was working for the popular British band Keen. So there's more potential for...
Not things to go wrong, but problems to arise. Friends in the music community are now mourning the loss of Johnson, with whom many of them worked. A fellow British drummer tweets, Devastated at the news my buddy being killed. Best drum tech you could ever wish for.
Meanwhile, the search for answers into how the stage collapsed just hours before the show continues. And at this point, for the Ministry of Labor who is heading the investigation, it does so slowly. The Ministry of Labor has deployed three inspectors and two engineers to Downsview Park. However, at this point, they say the structure is too unstable. They say it needs to be stabilized in order to be declared safe so they can complete their investigation.
But at this point, it appears the weather was not a factor in the collapse, which also injured three other people. Unlike recent previous stage disasters where high winds were partly to blame. At the Blues Fest in Ottawa last summer, where luckily no one died, and then just four weeks later in Indiana, where the devastating outcome of that tragic event resulted in four lives being taken. Live Nation, the concert promoter which put on Saturday's event, is not commenting at this point.
so many questions still need to be answered with the summer outdoor concert season about to begin many in the music industry and spectators hold these questions are answered soon Anthony Robart global news now Radiohead has just released a statement on the tragic death of their drum tech in that stage collapse it reads in part
We've all been shattered by the loss of Scott Johnson, our friend and colleague. He was a lovely man, always positive, supportive and funny, a highly skilled and valued member of our great road crew. We will miss him very much. Radiohead was really shaken by the accident, especially Phil Selway. Here he is talking to the CBC again. When the collapse happened, it happened at four o'clock.
in the afternoon. Our sound check was due to start at 4 o'clock and I actually should have been where Scott was and that is an incredible weight and I can't personally, I can't let this lie. For about a week after the collapse, the band wasn't sure they should continue.
Phil Selway had this to say: "When we came away, it was like, 'God, do we ever want to do this again? If it causes this, can we do it?'" Ultimately, though, Radiohead decided to carry on as a way of dealing with the trauma. Three weeks later, they were back on stage. But only after offering every member of the road crew a chance to leave. However, everyone chose to stay on. Meanwhile, the family of Scott Johnson had to deal with his death.
Johnson was a longtime roadie, having worked with the Killers and Keene in the past. He was, by all accounts, very well liked and respected. Both Radiohead and Keene raised money to create the Scott Johnson Bursary, which makes drum kits available to schools with help from Yamaha Drums. He was buried in a churchyard in South Yorkshire. His gravestone reads, Here lies Scott Johnson, the only child of Ken and Sue Johnson, departed this world tragically in Canada.
Phil Selway dedicated his second solo album to Scott. And Radiohead's 2016 record, A Moon-Shaped Pool, also came with a dedication. There has been other charitable giving in Scott's memory since.
But what happened on that Saturday afternoon? How did a professional staging company get it so wrong? And what happened in the end? The story is very strange. It's also frustrating and heartbreaking. We'll look at everything next. Here is the central question. How could a professionally built and certified outdoor stage suddenly have components fail and come crashing down?
When it came to the Radiohead incident at Downsview Park in Toronto, it was up to the Ontario Ministry of Labour to figure that out. At its heart, this was all considered to be a workplace fatality. Officials and engineers were on the scene immediately and began an investigation that took months. Because it was a Radiohead show, they had to get involved too. Their insurance company hired a forensic engineer. He showed how the metal that was supposed to hold all this weight for a multipoint structure buckled and bent.
He also found that when it came to Canadian codes and standards, there really wasn't anything that covered this kind of structure. So had the stage been built to design specifications? This was just one of the many questions he had. In June 2013, one year after the collapse, Live Nation, the promoter of the show and the organization in charge of all the venue arrangements,
Optics Staging and Services, the builder of the stage, which was hired by Live Nation, and Dominic Cugliari, the engineer contracted by Optics, the guy who signed off on the stage, were all charged under Ontario's health and safety laws. There were 13 charges in all, with much of the focus on Cugliari, who was accused of miscalculating the weight of the stage roof and all the gear hanging from it. And it was a big miscalculation.
The charge was that he was off by 7,260 kilograms or over 16,000 pounds. But the findings of that initial investigation were never publicly released. News organizations filed a freedom of information request, but nothing was made available. It would be another two years before there could be a court date. It was initially set for June 2015, but then a postponement because Optex didn't have a lawyer.
When the inquest finally got underway in November 2015, everyone involved pleaded not guilty. And over the next 15 days, there was a lot of testimony, including from members of Radiohead's management and their road crew. By December 2015, that part of the inquest was over. The inquiry was scheduled for another two weeks beginning in May 2016, but that was postponed because the defense asked for more time to prepare.
A month later, June 2016, two charges against Live Nation and Optex were dropped because of lack of evidence. Everyone else got ready for more testimony in December 2016 and January 2017. Then, in June 2017, a full five years after the disaster, the presiding judge, Sean Nakatsuro, with just three days remaining in the trial, declared a mistrial. Why? Something very, very unusual.
He declared a mistrial because he'd been appointed to federal court and thus no longer had any jurisdiction over this Radiohead case that he'd been trying. There had been no fines, no convictions, no answers, just a mistrial five years after it all happened. Oh, and it got worse. In September 2017, a new judge ruled in favor of dropping the case under something called the Jordan ruling.
That entitles people accused of crimes the right to be tried in a reasonable time frame. In other words, everyone has the right to a speedy trial. But this case had dragged on for more than five years. Was that unreasonable? This judge thought so. So all 13 charges that were filed in June 2013 were stayed.
That was a major complication, and one that Scott Johnson's family and Radiohead did not take well. So the CBC did a follow-up. It's been too hard for Ken's wife, Sue, to talk publicly about the loss of their only child. Thank you very much. Until now. I didn't worry that we wouldn't get justice. And I feel so let down by Canada. I really do. They seem to have forgot, Scott, in all this. It's almost as if they've...
Tried the best to delay and delay to try and get themselves off with these charges. But they seem to forget that Scott lost his life because somebody made a mistake. Radiohead was also angry. Here's Phil Selway again. We expect justice to be done. You expect a, you know, a court case to find out what happened.
for anybody who has any culpability in it to accept responsibility. And then out of all of that, you expect measures to be taken. No one was going to let this lie. Both Scott's parents and Radiohead started a letter-writing campaign to the members of the British Parliament demanding that this case be taken up with the Canadian High Commission and demanding that this case be reopened.
Radiohead did not return to play in Toronto until July 19th, 2018, when they played the Scotiabank Arena. Six years had passed since the incident. Tom York had a lot to say about the case. And just before performing the last song of the set, he tried to hold a minute of silence in Scott's memory. Six years ago, we wanted to do a show in Toronto. The stage collapsed.
killing one of our colleagues and friends. The people who should be held accountable are still not being held accountable in this city. The silence is fucking deathly. - Let's dance! -
Then they launched into this song. Fitting, don't you think? Like a teacher
In the fall of 2019, seven years after the accident, Tom York said this, Believe me, words cannot describe the feelings that went along with it for us and our crew. But on the act of going and playing in Toronto and standing in silence, I hope our silence is our last word on the subject. I felt that our silence was a bell that sounded very loudly, and I hope people heard it for Scott's sake and for his family.
We know exactly whose fault it was, and they'll be held accountable at some point. Okay, so what happened? Did the Radiohead stage collapse disaster ever have any kind of resolution? Was justice ever served? We'll pick it up there in a moment. What was the final outcome of all the inquests and investigations and trials into the Radiohead stage collapse? Let's go through everything.
In November 2017, more than five years after the accident, the Ontario coroner announced that the case would be reopened, but it didn't get underway until March 19th, 2019. This time, 25 witnesses offered statements in front of a five-person jury. The inquest looked at the circumstances of the accident, but it wasn't allowed to assign blame. The witnesses included Scott Johnson's father, Phil Selway, and employees of Optex. Here's what we learned. First of all,
Scott's father was a scaffold constructor in the UK, so he knew a lot about these kinds of construction projects. And he was baffled to learn that while he had to undergo certification and licensing in the UK to do his job, that sort of training wasn't required in Ontario. Optics said that the stage design required a certain type of truss component that Optics didn't have. This had been an issue for several years.
They told Dominic Cugliari, the engineer with the final say over the construction, that this was a problem. And they told him several times. Cugliari admitted that his design of the Radiohead stage did contain some errors. "Very sloppy," he called them. For example, the plans did not specify how beams should be attached to the roof structure. Too much weight was given to conceptual drawings and not the real-world needs of such a stage. Those conceptual drawings were never submitted to Optex either.
There were inconsistencies in the drawings that should have begged clarification. We learned that Cugliari didn't design the stage. That went to someone else who worked for him. But again, he had final sign-off and approval. Cugliari also believed that Optex had used the correct truss with the required 3-inch diameter struts. He inspected things visually, but it was really hard to tell the difference between 2-inch struts and 3-inch struts when you're observing them from stage level and looking up.
Was there an engineer on site for the days during which the stage was constructed? No. If there had been, there would have been a chance to inspect the components before they were lifted into place. Were they two or three inch struts? Pictures could have been taken to document the stage's construction. Okay, so what about building permits and inspections? Well, it turns out there weren't any. And that's because Downsview Park is on federal land, meaning that Ontario's building codes don't apply.
There were no national building codes that applied either, and there's no requirement for a third party to inspect any temporary structures built on such a site. We also learned that the roof grid was woefully inadequate. The design was based on 1990 specifications. The design was approved by an engineer named George Snowden, someone who had since died, and he also had problems in his past.
When a scaffold erected around the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor collapsed with fatal results, he'd been formally disciplined. Dominic Cugliari was working with Snowden when that happened. The roof needed to hold over 34,000 kilograms. That's about 76,000 pounds. Speakers, lights, video screens, and it just couldn't. The trusses were slowly crushed, they bent, and they gave way. Dale Martin, the president of Optex, stepped up. Here's a quote.
The system failed. Not just the trusts, my people, me. I'm responsible. In the end, the jury issued 28 non-binding recommendations aimed at making sure such a tragedy never happened again. That included the creation of a working group to develop and maintain standards for the live performance industry, including rules for the design, building, and operation of all temporary stage structures.
These rules should be revisited regularly, kept up to date, and be easily accessible to anyone entrusted with building such a structure. Companies that build temporary stages were recommended to undergo licensing, which incredibly, like I said, wasn't a requirement before all this. Riggers working on such stages were also recommended to go through a certification process similar to what every electrician has to deal with. Again, before the Radiohead incident, this was not a thing.
Same thing with having a trained supervisor on site during the entire construction process. Another recommendation was for the Ontario Building Code to clearly and effectively regulate the construction of indoor and outdoor stages. Meanwhile, Scott Johnson's death was ruled as accidental. There were no charges, no fines, no jail time. But that wasn't all. In October 2019, there was another inquest, this time in Scott's hometown of Doncaster, England.
It found that there was inadequate technical advice and poor construction techniques that resulted in Johnson's death. And there's still more. In November 2020, more than eight years after the collapse, Dominic Cugliari was found guilty of professional misconduct by an Ontario Professional Engineers Association. His engineering license was revoked and he was fined $5,000. But by this time, Cugliari had retired.
He still had to pay the fine, but since he wasn't working anymore, the misconduct charge and the revocation of his license was too little and too late for Scott Johnson's family and for Radiohead. An organization called Canadian Occupational Safety wrote that the justice system failed the victims of the Radiohead stage collapse. I quote, "...prosecution may be the worst method of achieving the goal of improving workplace safety."
The resources of health and safety regulators would be better invested in other strategies to set, communicate and enforce Ontario health and safety standards. Although health and safety prosecutions may satisfy victims and their families, there's little evidence that prosecutions prevent future accidents. The Ontario Federation of Labour had similar feelings. This is from President Chris Buckley: "Our judicial system failed the family of Scott Johnson, the worker who was killed, and the three workers who were injured.
Live Nation's response was to agree with the jury recommendations regarding building permits and additional oversights by an independent engineer. A host of other companies and organizations also endorsed those recommendations. They are now standard practice in the province of Ontario. But in the end, was anyone held directly accountable for Scott Johnson's death? Not really. We got a lot of answers and plenty of recommendations designed to prevent such tragedies in the future, but none of them
We'll bring back Scott Johnson. You can catch up on all episodes of Uncharted by downloading them from your favorite podcast platform. Please rate and review if you get a chance.
If you have any questions or comments, shoot me an email, alan at alancross.ca. We can also meet up on all the social media sites, along with my website, ajournalofmusicalthings.com. It's updated with music news and recommendations every single day, and there's a free daily newsletter that you should probably get. And please check out my other podcast, The Ongoing History of New Music. There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can enjoy for free. Technical Productions by Rob Johnston. He is certified. I'm Alan Cross.
