Big crowds can be great to play to. There’s nothing better on a sunny summer’s day than looking out from behind the drum kit over a sea of smiling faces, and watching the bodies jump up and down in exactly the same rhythm you’re providing. Band and audience as one, totally in sync.

The same scenario at night can be a totally different experience and especially challenging for a drummer. First, the barrage of bright lights aimed directly at the players makes it almost impossible to see any further than the first one or two rows of people. Secondly, because the drummer is usually on an elevated riser, it can be hard to see the other musicians on stage. Your view can be blocked by cymbals and microphone stands, and the band, except Rick, were usually moving around a lot.

The first song is always one where you ‘settle in’ and make a mental list of what needs moving in the split second between the end of the first song and the start of the second. It might be a cymbal that’s not close enough, or a tom-tom that’s slightly out of place, but having it as perfect as possible makes a big difference to how you play. Also, if my foldback speaker needed adjusting, I’d spend a lot of the first song staring at Bobby Daniels on the monitor desk, waiting for him to look at me so I could signal him to make the adjustment.

As we ploughed into our second song, ‘Night Comes Early’, I caught sight of something in the lights and instinctively ducked as it hit the drum riser. Glass shattered all over my kit. I flashed a look at Chris, who was on my left. ‘Fuck!’ he mouthed with a look of horror, as another missile smashed behind me. I was astonished to see the broken neck of a glass flagon sticking into the wooden shell of my monitor speaker, only a foot from my head. We kept playing but I quickly readjusted my cymbals and kept a low profile behind them as we sped through ‘Take a Long Line’ and then introduced ‘No Secrets’ from the upcoming album.

A few people from the audience had begun climbing up the front of the stage. I saw security guards simply push them straight back down again so they fell four metres onto the crowd below. This inflamed the situation, bringing a barrage of more bottles and cans. Another fast version of ‘Comin’ Down’ followed. Nothing could have been more descriptive. Now pieces of the sponsor AGL’s outsized Masonite advertising sign on the front of the stage were being broken off and flung, frisbee-like, towards the stage, presumably at the security guys. I couldn’t see any of the missiles heading my way until they arrived, and I couldn’t really avoid them unless I stopped playing altogether. We ploughed on, keeping a sharp eye on incoming, but during ‘Who Rings the Bell’ Chris finally managed to kick an empty bottle over to the side of the stage. Our manager John Woodruff and tour manager Mark Pope were standing there, and the looks on their faces said it all.

We were into ‘Marseilles’ when John and Mark made hand-across-the-neck gestures to stop the show. Chris returned to my riser, motioning with a head toss that we’d be leaving the stage at the end of this, our ninth song. It couldn’t be soon enough for me. But just as we got to the quiet passage featuring Chris’s bass solo, he turned back towards the crowd, and a champagne bottle hit him on the forehead right between the eyes, knocking him to the ground. The bass made a loud rumbling sound as it hit the stage and began to feed back. I looked at Doc just as a piece of Masonite sliced into the back of his head, knocking him to his knees. He clutched at his head and collapsed, face down onto the stage, bleeding.

It was truly like a war zone. Chris was being helped to walk off stage by Mark Pope and someone was running towards Doc. Rick, seemingly in a trance, just kept playing. Since his whole shtick was to stay almost immobile while he played, he was actually a sitting duck, but, incredibly, he was spared any damage. John had stopped playing by now and looked as scared as me.

I couldn’t help feeling really pissed off that our big night – everyone’s big night – had been ruined, and my band had been attacked when all we wanted to do was give the crowd our all. I grabbed my snare microphone and screamed ‘Well done, fuckwits! Happy fucking New Year!’ I heard my words roaring over the PA. I reckon the TV viewers got the start of my tongue-lashing too, before my mic was cut and I ran for sanctuary off stage.

Chris and Doc were rushed to hospital. The doctors and ambos there said there’d been a record number of casualties that day. Bad planning, plus allowing BYO alcohol, glasses and bottles, had resulted in the entire area being strewn with shards of broken glass. Numerous cuts and wounds were cross-infected by the filth of discarded undies, soiled where their owners stood, having no chance to escape the crush and find a place to relieve themselves.

There was such an outcry from politicians that ‘this rock band’ had caused such a catastrophic outcome that contemporary music events were banned from the Opera House forecourt for many years. No one really talked about the shocking ineptitude and irresponsibility of the people who put it together. I was particularly disappointed that our management didn’t sue for damages. Chris suffered for the rest of his life with complications from a detached retina. Doc was ‘luckier’, in that his head wound soon healed up, although traumatic brain injury can be a bit of a smoky. Possible long-term effects were not really recognised back then. Who knows whether unrecognised brain damage played a role in Doc’s struggles with depression down the road?

The boat ride home with John and Rick was a sombre one. They asked to come in for a cup of tea and a joint when we got home. Kay just wanted to go to bed, but she was also very worried about her two younger brothers, who had been in the audience. In the days before mobile phones, she had to wait until the next morning to find out they were okay.

We eventually got a call from Mark Pope to say Doc was out of hospital, but Chris had been concussed so was being held overnight. It was a dramatic way to bring in the New Year and one that I hope will never happen again to anyone. We did have a couple of moments of crowd aggression when we were overseas the next year. Each time a foreign object was thrown onto the stage, I was well and truly up and off my kit before things got a chance to get out of control.

This is an edited extract from ‘No Secrets’ by Graham ‘Buzz’ Bidstrup (Harper Collins Publishers $35.99). You can purchase a copy here.