Kaiser Chiefs fan who 'died' at their gig thrown out of venue hours later

25 July 2023 , 11:05

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Kaiser Chiefs fan who 'died' at their gig thrown out of venue hours later

A Kaiser Chiefs fan went into cardiac arrest at one of their shows but hours later, was booted out of a local pub for being too drunk.

The chart-topping group had been performing at Halifax's Piece Hall when the music lover took ill and instantly required medical attention. As the group consisting of lead singer Ricky Wilson, guitarist Andrew White, bassist and backing vocalist Simon Rix, keyboards player Nick Baines and Vijay Mistry went off before their encore, things took a drastic turn.

Speaking to the Mirror ahead of their set on the Sarah Nulty Main Stage at Tramlines Festival, Simon explained the group were in disbelief.

"You could tell in the last song that someone was having a hard time," he said before continuing: "We went off and waited to do the encore. We were told to wait as someone had had a heart attack in the crowd.

Kaiser Chiefs star Rimon Rix revealed a fan went into cardiac arrest at one of their gigs (Getty Images)

"They got them out and they were doing the whole tent thing then he was ok, they brought him back to life, we got told he was ok and we got told 'You can go back on and do another song you can, you don't have to', we went and did another song, it was good – we went home because we were in Halifax and we were playing Piece Hall again.

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"When we got to the venue, I was like 'Oh how was the guy? Is he alright? Did he have to go to the hospital? Can we do anything?' One of our crew was like 'Oh yeah, I saw him at midnight getting kicked out of a pub for being too drunk' - it's not a crazy fan story but it's a crazy gig story.

"Someone died, then was alive, brought back to life just to get drunk."

Simon and his bandmates recently performed a headline slot on the Sarah Nulty Main Stage at Tramlines Festival (Carolina Faruolo)

The group who originally formed in 1997 under the name Runston Parva before rebranding as the Kaiser Cheifs in 2003 have been a staple in British rock music over the years. Explaining their secret to their success, Simon added: "We've always been ambitious, we just making a new record and we always want it to be better than the last one. We're never just resting on our old stuff and going around playing I Predict A Riot.

"We want to keep improving and doing different stuff and by the time Kaiser were successful, we were relatively old, like 25 - compared to Arctic Monkeys who were 17/18. I feel like we'd done it, a lot of rubbish gigs of nobody being interested so when it finally happened it was like 'this is good'."

On their new record, the group have worked with the legendary Nile Rodgers over Zoom due to lockdown with Simon saying: "He's played guitar on one of the songs for our new album but the best thing that happened, weirdly he introduced us to this guy, Amir Amor who was in Rudimental.

"Nile got Amir to produce the track we were doing together, he'd also been in a band supporting Kaiser Chiefs which we didn't know – it was nice to know of having an effect on people you'd never know. Now he's produced the album, you would think the Nile Rodgers thing was the opportunity, it was great but actually, it was the byproduct of that, that was the good thing."

The group performed alongside the likes of McFly, Sugababes and Courteeners with over 40,000 music lovers flocking to Sheffield's Hillsborough Park despite the torrential rain. While many may have run for shelter, the festival goers embraced the weather and were seen sliding through the mud across the festival grounds in between acts.

Daniel Bird