Posted on 11/13/2001 10:07:17 AM PST by maxwell
The guitarist of rock band REM, Peter Buck, drank 15 glasses of wine before assaulting members of British Airways staff with yoghurt in a drunken air-rage incident while travelling from the US to London, a court has heard.
Mr Buck, 44, allegedly concealed a knife up his sleeve during a bout of "childish" drunken- ness and is accused of attacking a cabin services manager, Mario Agius, and an air stewardess, Holly Ward, on a flight from Seattle to Heathrow on 21 April. The rock star's behaviour saw him staggering along the aisles repeatedly, a jury at Isleworth Crown Court heard. He was flying to London for an REM concert in Trafalgar Square to celebrate the role of British-based anti-apartheid protesters in bringing democracy to South Africa, before the group began a world tour.
At one stage, it was claimed, after drinking wine for three hours with his tour manager, Robert Whittaker, and two others, he got stuck between two seats before he was pulled free. He also managed, the prosecution alleged, to cover himself and the cabin services manager with a tub full of yoghurt.
Edward Lewis, for the prosecution, said that, at another point on the eight and a half hour flight, the millionaire, who is a father of two, mistook the hostess trolley for a CD player and tried to insert a disc into it.
Although Mr Buck seemed to be drinking too much he was not behaving aggressively so the air cabin staff complied with his requests for more wine, the court heard. However, his further demands for refills were eventually "diplomatically ignored".
Soon afterwards, he was seen "stumbling up the aisles, bumping into passengers' seats and sometimes landing on them", claiming that one of them was his wife. Mr Lewis told the jury that Mr Buck and his tour manager, who was also said to have drunk several wine refills, were acting like "naughty children".
But Mr Buck was a "pain in the neck with many staff diverted from their duties to calm things down", said Mr Lewis, who added: "It was getting beyond a joke."
He said Mr Buck was so determined to get more drink that he tried "every ruse he could think of", even offering the crew money.
It was then that he got stuck between seats and had to be pulled free, a situation which would have been "hilarious" but for the "tragic nature" of what was happening. Then, said the barrister, he was allegedly spotted trying to slip a knife up his sleeve as he was tidying up.
After the knife was taken from him and he was asked to sit down again, the musician announced: "I am REM and I can make up a story that I was assaulted," Mr Lewis said.
Mr Buck, who appeared in court in a pin-striped navy suit, white shirt and dark blue tie, denies being drunk on an aircraft, two counts of common assault and one charge of damaging British Airways crockery.
The trial continues.
Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along.
When your day is night alone,
if you feel like letting go,
when you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on...
Everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends.
Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand.
If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone
If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,
when you think you've had too much of this life to hang on.
Well, everybody hurts sometimes,
everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes.
And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on...
BWAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Good times...
Thanks dude! That rules so hard....
Hey, it's happened to me...
They should've just left him there. Then force feed him those little bottles of booze till he passed out. When they land, pull him loose. Course, he's a rock star so his punishment will not be as harsh as any of our's would have been.
So this is what it's like when you lose your religion!
He's lucky it was a British plane and not a US carrier,
were he could have killed by the other passengers.
Well you know how it goes, you sit down and you're shootin' the bull and you can just rip through that crap. I'm not a big wine person but Doc Otis hard lemonade does me that way. I'm ripping away and before you know it there's two of me or something... And cheap-a$$ tequila. Doesn't take as much of that stuff though...
Give me a break! Granted, he was behaving in a childish manner, but that doesn't make him a child. You have to give individuals the chance to screw up their own lives, preferably in a public manner so that we can point and laugh at them.
Thank God for small favors. I hate things like making bartenders responsible for the actions of a drunk. No one is responsible for anyone else.
"Hello, how are you? I know you, I knew you
"I think I can remember your name, name, name, name...
"Hello, I'm sorry, I lost myself
"I think I thought you were someone else...."
Yep, my slightly lib tendencies make me want to jump on that bandwagon... There's something in me, maybe Puritan-ethic-conservative bubbling up, or maybe just bad spaghetti for lunch, that says I am sort of my brother's keeper in that I wouldn't want someone's death or horrible maiming on my conscience just because I refused to take a stand and be proactive on something...
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