Eight fans died and many more were injured when the crowd stampeded at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld concert in Houston on Saturday. According to CNN, those killed ranged in age from 14 to 27 and they died when Scott hit the stage and the crowd surged forward. Up to 25 people were taken to the hospital.
In the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, a video of another star musician, Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, handling a similar crowd situation with compassion and authority, went viral.
The Foo Fighters incident occurred in 2018. It lit up Twitter following events in Houston in part because it highlighted how Grohl took responsibility and control of the situation, using his mic and position on stage to stop everything. He’d spotted a blind and autistic kid in the front and pointed the child and his parents out to security, concerned they had nowhere to sit. He had them brought to the side of the stage, emphatically telling the audience that it was “a family occasion.”
The fan, Owen Anderson, was 13. His mom Stacy later described the situation to a publication in a way that only added to the growing mountain of evidence that Dave Grohl is a good dude, kind of a regular guy who ended up ridiculously famous but hasn’t let that fame turn him into a dick.
She said she didn’t “know if [Grohl] knew [Owen] was blind at that point, but he stopped and asked if he needed a seat, told him to come up and bring the parents, to go to the side of the stage.”
Grohl, she said, then “came over with his guitar and got Owen to feel and play it a little bit. I was so proud of Owen and so happy he gets to do cool things like this.”
As Barstool Sports noted, this wasn’t the first time Grohl took charge of such a situation, as he stopped everything at 2011 concert when he saw a fight was happening in the crowd. Watch that video above.
To be fair to Travis Scott, the evidence seems to indicate he didn’t really know what was happening when the crowd crushed forward at the Astroworld concert, and comments he posted later on social media indicated he was torn up about what happened. Scott also said he was “committed to working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.”
Kylie Jenner, expecting a second child with Scott, was in Houston for the event and expressed her emotions about the crowd crush on Instagram, writing in part that her “thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in anyway [sic] by yesterday’s events. And also for Travis, who I know cares deeply for his fans and the Houston community.”
Jenner added that they “weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show and in no world would have continued filming or performing.”
CNN reports that lawsuits have already been filed against Scott, promoter Live Nation, and others involved in the Astroworld Festival. It seems likely there will be more to come.
