Music News

Three months after a shocking physical attack following a Def Leppard show in Florida, the band’s drummer, Rick Allen, has finally spoken out about the bizarre incident. In an interview with Good Morning America, Allen, 59, said he was “totally blindsided” by the alleged attack by 19-year-old Ohio resident Max Hartley.

“I heard a couple of steps and then I just saw this [flash] and the next thing I knew was I was on the ground,” Allen told GMA. “I landed on my backside… hit my head on the pavement.” Afraid he’d be attack again after being pushed down, Allen — who lost his left arm after a 1984 car crash — put up his right hand and told his alleged attacker, “I am no threat to you.”

“I don’t think he knew who I was, but he must have seen that I wasn’t a threat because, you know, I’ve only got one arm,” said Allen. Fort Lauderdale police arrested Hartley shortly after the alleged attack near the site of the assault outside the Four Seasons in Fort Lauderdale on March 13, which also allegedly included an assault on a woman who came to Allen’s aid. Hartley was later charged with two counts of battery and four of criminal mischief and abusing an elderly or disabled adult; he pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

A police report at the time noted that Hartley hid behind a pillar outside the hotel entrance while Allen smoked and then allegedly rushed at the drummer at full speed and knocked him to the ground. The report said that Allen “hit his head on the ground causing injury” and that when a woman ran out to help Allen Hartley allegedly attacked her as well.

Hartley was arrested a short time later after police found him at another hotel allegedly breaking car windows.

Allen told GMA that he is coping by playing drums, specifically for the long-running band’s first show since the attack, an intimate gig Monday night (May 22) in Sheffield, England. “I know that I’m not going to be playing music in a band forever,” Allen told GMA. “But while I am, I plan on making as many people happy as I possibly can. And this is my time. This is my opportunity.”

A classic piece of Kurt Cobain memorabilia went under the gavel this weekend at Julien’s Auctions and raked in huge bucks. The Fender Stratocaster signed by the late Nirvana singer and former bandmates Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic — which had been smashed to bits by the singer and reassembled — sold for nearly $600,000 after initially being listed for $60,000.

Julien’s said before the $595,000 sale that the instrument was splintered by Cobain on stage during Nirvana’s Nevermind album era and that it was put back together afterward, but was unplayable. In addition to the trio’s signatures, the guitar also has a message to pal Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan from Kurt that read, “Hell-o mark! Love, Your Pal, Kurdt Kobain/ Washed up rockstar.”

The black guitar’s neck plate featured an engraving reading “Boddah Lives,” in reference to Cobain’s imaginary childhood friend and came in a black hard case with the inscription “Abort Christ.” According to a description, Cobain gave the busted guitar to Lanegan in the fall of 1992 during the North American leg of the Nevermind tour. In describing its condition, Julien’s noted that it had been “smashed and reassembled” and that “aside from the broken neck there are many marks and signs of use and abuse including chunks of wood missing from the bottom rear of the body.”

That wasn’t the only high-ticket Nirvana item that went in the auction. A bidder also paid big bucks for a setlist from the band’s April 17, 1991 show at the OK Hotel in Seattle, Washington, which sold for $50,800, from the show that featured the live debut of their soon-to-be-iconic breakthrough hit, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which was released in November of that year.

Last May the iconic left-handed 1969 Fender Mustang guitar played by Cobain in the 1991 video for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” sold for $4.5 million.

See a picture of the guitar below.