Blog post #8 Chaotic Divas (Part 3 of 3)

This blog post is part of a series of three posts on the subject of Chaotic Divas. In the previous two posts we looked at three examples of Chaotic Divas: Colin Europe, Fabiola Tantrums and Foxy California. We witnessed the destructive mayhem a Chaotic Diva can cause.

In this final post on the subject, we’ll examine two last examples: Hugh Jazz and Hairy Styles. We’ll also delve into how to defend your band against the destructive tendencies of a Chaotic Diva and discuss when to say enough is enough and mercilessly throw them out of the band.

Chaotic diva #4: Hugh Jazz

Sometimes a talented instrumentalist can be as troublesome and tiresome as a singing diva. For example, consider two jazz greats, Charlie ‘Bird” Parker and Django Reinhardt. There are many stories about these two not showing up for concerts. People would be sent out to find them and bring them to the gig. The other musicians would be waiting. The audience would be waiting. Eventually Bird might be found high as a kite with a needle in his arm at his dealer’s apartment in New York. Django might be found fishing on a riverbank on the outskirts of Paris. They would then need to be persuaded to come to the gig where they were the main attraction.

Hugh Jazz was a well-renowned violinist who had played with some European jazz greats. On the advice of my friend, Gary, a bassist, I hired Hugh for a swanky corporate gig. We were to play some sophisticated jazzy background music as a trio to about 200 diners in a large events hall in Brussels, Belgium. The diners would be dressed up in formal wear: suits and ties and cocktail dresses.

Hugh committed to one short rehearsal before the gig. But, don’t worry, Gary assured me, Hugh is a professional and a great improviser. He knows what he is doing. You’ll see, it’ll be alright on the night.

As band leader, I had been told by the event organizer that we musicians must wear suits and ties. I relayed this info to Gary, who in turn passed on the message to Hugh Jazz.

The day of the gig

I was standing next to the event organizer when Hugh turned up at the gig. We both turned to look at him as he walked across the large dance floor toward us. The organizer’s mouth was hanging open slightly. She looked a little shocked. Hugh had chosen, for this glitzy occasion, the following ensemble: an over-sized and moth-eaten brown corduroy jacket, a large and colourful silk tie with Homer Simpson’s face on it (the kind of thing an eight-year old might buy his grandfather for Christmas circa 2003) and a pair of scruffy desert boots. His blond hair was unkempt and all over the place. His shirt and trousers were extremely creased. Imagine taking a sheet of tin foil, scrunching it up into a ball and then trying to flatten it out again. That’s the level of creasing I’m talking about here. He had obviously dug his shirt and trousers out from the bottom of the laundry basket one hour ago and directly put them on. I had to laugh when Hugh opened his case and brought out a highly unusual fluorescent pink electric violin! (He had played a lovely old acoustic violin at the rehearsal.) Hugh’s overall appearance was one of a naked man who had been covered in glue and thrown through a charity shop window.

After a brief sound check, Hugh headed directly to the free bar, whereupon, in a short space of time, he managed to get totally s**t-faced. He then started flirting with the event organiser, who blushed and all-of-a-sudden hurried away to attend to an urgent matter elsewhere. When it came time for us to play, Hugh slowly staggered up to the stage. He then proceeded to play a great two hours of largely improvised music, just as Gary had promised he would.

At the end of the evening, Hugh Jazz interrupted the gentle hum of 200 people involved in after-dinner chat to announce to them that we, the band, were leaving. He did this by shouting, there being no vocal microphone. This totally killed the cool, sophisticated atmosphere of the event that we were hired to embellish. The conversation in the hall stopped dead and the guests looked around in all directions to see where the commotion was coming from. Hugh then introduced Gary, me and himself to the diners. We each received a somewhat reluctant but polite round of applause.

The event organiser had hired me to put together bands for events a few times before. These gigs were always very well paid. This was the last time she hired me.

Chaotic Diva #5: Hairy Styles

I used to play in a band called The Tingly Sensations with singer Hairy Styles. Hairy was a handsome guy and very popular with the ladies. He wore skin-tight leather trousers. And he didn’t just wear them on stage: he also wore them to take the bus to Tesco’s on Tuesday mornings to do his weekly shop.

Hairy was a good frontman but he had a couple of quirks. One was drinking to excess and the other was impish mischievousness. Hairy could get away with a fair degree of cheeky behaviour due to his good looks.

Inappropriate announcements

Hairy Styles’ chief amusement in life was to make inappropriate announcements over the microphone to the audience. For example, he would announce that a famous and much-loved musician, such as Paul McCartney or Eric Clapton, had sadly passed away earlier that day. These two musicians were still very much alive at this time, a fact that the audience would only discover over the following days, weeks or perhaps months. In an age before smartphones, Hairy’s sad news could not immediately be verified by audience members and they automatically assumed he was telling the truth. Surely no one would joke about such a thing? Well, yes someone would as it turned out. And that someone was Hairy Styles and his perverse sense of humour. After Hairy’s solemn announcement, an air of melancholy would hang over the audience as the band started to play a cover of either Yesterday or Tears in Heaven.

Another way that Hairy would amuse himself onstage was by shouting out odd and sometimes deeply offensive slogans. One of his favourites was “Free Nelson Mandela!”. Nelson Mandela WAS free at this time. In fact, he had been the president of South Africa and had since retired from being the president of South Africa. He had been free a long time. “Respect the c**k!”, was another Hairy Styles favourite: a phrase Tom Cruise’s character shouts in the 1999 film Magnolia.

Surprisingly, these slogans would very often get a round of applause from a portion of the audience.

I have a photograph of Hairy taken after one gig. He is lighting up a bong under a sign saying “Strictly no drugs allowed on the premises”.

We most probably didn’t get asked back to some venues due to Hairy Styles’ high jinks.

Conclusions about Chaotic Divas.

The five cautionary tales you have read over the course of these last three blog posts... Colin Europe, Foxy California, Fabiola Tantrums, Hugh Jazz and Hairy Styles show the detrimental effect a Chaotic Diva can have on a band. They can annoy band mates, erode team spirit and morale, waste time and lose the band gigs. However, you may still need a Chaotic Diva for the energy, creativity and star quality they bring to the band. They do tend to be great performers. They tend to have stage presence. Shoe-gazing guitarists and drummers hiding behind their cymbals need an outrageous frontman or frontwoman to compliment their talents. Audiences love an over-confident narcissist for some reason.


So, how should you deal with a Chaotic Diva in your band? My advice is to, frankly, treat them like you would a small child. The big mistake band members often make is in failing to identify a Chaotic Diva as such in the first place, and then continuing to treat them like a grown adult. When a Chaotic Diva starts being disruptive and annoying, call out their behaviour. When they start requesting new songs at a rate the band will struggle with, keep telling them why these songs cannot all be attempted right now. Maybe we can play them later. If they turn up late for rehearsals regularly or are not doing their share of the logistical side of things, let them know that this will soon start to piss off their fellow band members. Obviously, take them to one side to tell them this. No need to spank their bottoms in public. And, when a Chaotic Diva behaves well, reward them with a visit to MacDonald’s and a Happy Meal.

Seriously though, my experience is that Chaotic Divas don’t respond badly to being kept in check occasionally, if done with a little tact. They’ve been a pain in the ass before. This is not new behaviour for them. Somebody has undoubtedly told them that they were being a pain in the ass before. Everyone lived and it was fine. So, you can do the same. Telling them straight is how you quell their destructive tenancies before they become a problem. Accept the small risk that they leave the band in a huff.

Of course, you’ll also want to perform a cost/benefit analysis from time to time, to check whether the magic a Chaotic Diva brings to the band is worth all the hassle they cause. If the Chaotic Diva becomes too much to handle, kick them out without remorse and look for a less troublesome replacement.

Lastly, it’s important to remember that a Chaotic Diva should not really have a superiority complex in an amateur band playing gigs at The Dog and Duck on Thursday evenings for £50 and two free beers each.

This concludes this series of three blog posts on the topic of Chaotic Divas. Hopefully, after reading these posts, you’ll be better able to spot one in the wild and also better able to assess whether their talent outweighs the amount of havoc they cause.



(Some musician and band names have been changed in this article to protect identities.)



Mark Baxter (c) 2024