NSFW Video: Smash Mouth Frontman Wants to Throw Down With Bread Throwers at 2015 Taste of Fort Collins

You never know what’s going to happen some days. I can’t imagine how I had felt if I had gone home and missed the epic meltdown of Smash Mouth's Steve Harwell.

Get the scoop from behind the scenes as I was there onstage!

First off, let’s say that the folks at The Taste of Fort Collins were great. They bent over backwards to accommodate over 20 bands during the 2015 event; none of this should reflect poorly on them!

Smash Mouth was the last band to play at the event. Myself and Goldberg from our sister station 99.9 The Point did a little intro thing before they took the stage, and I was to hang around and do the ‘thank you for coming’ announcement after they had finished. Goldberg probably wished that he had drawn the short straw and gotten to announce, as super-fits like this don’t happen that often.

The band put on a fine show for the thousands and thousands of folks who came to see them. They played ‘Walking on the Sun’, ‘I’m a Believer’ and a lot of other great songs, leading up to the smash-- 'All Star.' I watched from behind the stage. Everything seemed pretty cool. Little did I know Mount Vesuvius was about to erupt.

Earlier, Goldberg had told me about the bread being thrown the night before for the Atlas Genius show. "Like the Rocky Horror Picture Show," he said. One of the vendors at the Taste of Fort Collins, Nature’s Harvest, was giving away free loaves of bread and people were launching slices into the crowd and onto the stage. I didn’t think much of it until I saw the same thing happening again for Smash Mouth. The lead singer, Steve Harwell, seemed to be in an O.K. mood, as far as I could tell. They finished the majority of their set and then left to relax for a minute before the encore-- and ‘All Star’.

A couple of minutes went by, and then all this commotion begins, coming from the green room area. "He’s pissed about the bread," someone said. A Taste of Fort Collins official came up to me and said, "You gotta go out there and tell them to not throw the bread or he’s not coming back out.”

In my head, I was thinking, ‘Really? He’s THAT upset that a couple of pieces are making it up to the stage?’ Backstage personnel are frantically running around. Again they come up to me- "Yeah, you have to go up there." I was a little hesitant because in my experience, the moment you get up and tell people to stop doing something, they just do it MORE. But I wasn’t in charge; I was just the MC guy.

As you watch the video above you can see Steve coming around from the west side of the stage. I did not see him at all as I was walking from the east side up to the mic to make the announcement.

Then…. there he was. He scared the crap out of me. The guy is big, and he was pissed. I stood there, waiting to see what he was going to do. I think that maybe I thought I could help him; then it was clear that he didn’t need my help at all. This was his show and his meltdown. I thought, ‘O.K. I’m getting out of here.’ I turned and headed back off stage.

He started his tantrum. Backstage, they are FREAKING out! "What’s he doing??" ‘What are we going to do?" "Somebody get up there and chill him out!". Then, the guy with the beard goes out there and tries to keep him from doing something he’ll regret-- like punching a concert-goer.

He finally backs away from the crowd and gets back on the stage, and stands there as the band’s playing ‘All Star.’ Finally, he calms down and starts singing the song. After the song, the band leaves the stage and a Taste of Fort Collins offical said, “O.K.-- tell them that liquor sales are over and to get home safe."

I thanked everyone and told them to join us next year for the 20th annual Taste of Fort Collins—"What will IT bring?"

Show business, right?

See our full gallery of photos from the Smash Mouth show below: