The Californian responding to Niall’s post blames Wishbone Ash.
My road to … pardon started with Deep Purple in Rock tour, consolidated with Jeff Beck’s Wired Tour and nail in the coffin was Grinderman.
Who do you blame for your hearing loss?
by 47 Comments
Pete Townshend. I saw The Who at Deeside Leisure Centre (North Wales) in 1981 when I was 18. I was wedged on the rail in front of Pete and his guitar was so loud and distorted that I couldn’t hear properly for a week afterwards and I think my hearing was never quite the same again
Ian McNobb and his Icicle Works.
Ten years of kids in bed, headphones on, amp turned up to 11
Jake Stigers (brother of the more famous Curtis) and the Velvet Roots. They played a tiny club in Chelmsford called The Bassment 20 odd years ago and I’ve had tinnitus ever since.
The dreaded health and safety have had some positive impact upon this in recent years. Silly volumes are far less likely or allowable by the licensing authorities. Loudest of late were the Alabama 3, shifted from O2 Institute stage 1 to the basement. The same kit in the more confined space near blew me drums, and I couldn’t hear for 3 days, Not good.
Uriah Heep (John Wetton on board) and Thin Lizzy started the rot: but I believe things went downhill when I started playing bass in a band – rear stage right, next to the drummer, with his cymbals just at ear height. I now have proper tinnitus in one ear – guess which one!
Yes to the cymbals! I played on a loud band for a few years and my right ear was next to the cymbals and that’s where my tinnitus is worse. That coupled with my mate’s Pistols tribute band – saw them at The Horns in Watford and was too near the PA on the right and the same ear got battering – the side of my head was numb the next day.
I feel your pain. Or high-pitched whine.
I am approaching my 9th anniversary of having tinnitus (2017 – 2026). I don’t believe it was loud music which caused it but a stressful situation that I was going through at the time. I have white noise in my head and not ringing in my ears. The best advice I ever received wasn’t from any medical expert but a complete stranger online. His advice was :
1. Accept that it’s never going away.
2. Don’t mention it to anyone.
3. After time you will become accustomed to it and it will fade into the background.
It doesn’t bug me as much as it used to but it was a little sod when it first came along.
I have just taken the online hearing test and I have no hearing problems, which is good to know.
Same as me.
Mostly Led Zep or to be more accurate the second time I saw them. I was stood far too close to the left hand stacks. I knew this was probably something I’d regret the minute they kicked off with Rock and Roll. The pressure wave was intense to put it mildly. I was deaf apart from a high pitch whine in my left ear for days after the gig. Eventually that cleared up and my hearing returned to normal. I wasn’t surprised when I developed a low level tinnitus in my left ear years later. The situation was undoubtedly worsened during my teenage by regular gig going. I’m not complaining. I have no regrets. You play, you pay.
I’ve always been quite careful at gigs, apart from one time when I was about 16 and I had a little buzzing for a couple of days.
I had a shocking cold about 15 years ago with so much pressure in my sinuses that I couldn’t sleep and nothing would relieve it. I tried everything including sitting over a bowl of hot water with a towel over my head but it lasted more than two weeks and I’ve had tinnitus ever since. It doesn’t bother me too much although I reckon my hearing has declined a bit in the last 5 years or so.
My hearing damage is industrial not musical, though there have been a few overly-loud gigs*.
Working on building sites in the late ’80s and ’90s, in the days before hearing protection was offered. Jackhammers, grinders, routers, circular saws, nail guns, welding etc. Being a telephone apprentice in the late ’60s working in mechanical Strowger telephone exchanges probably didn’t help.
*Albert Lee & Hogan’s Heroes at The Rayners Hotel was ridiculously loud for a smallish room. Only just tolerable standing right at the back. Then with Hellwood (Jim White & Johnny Dowd) at The Astoria (I think), the bass from the drummer/bassist (he used bass pedals along with his kit) vibrated my stomach and made me feel queasy until I found a spot where the resonance through the floor wasn’t so bad.
I had that queasiness when seeing 808 State at a rave in a warehouse in Slough circa 1989. Everyone else was on other stimulants, but I was drinking bottled beer from a white van (which had done the booze cruise to a French hypermarket).
The subsonic bass walloped my abdomen and I threw up a lager fountain in the middle of the dancefloor.
Apologies to anyone having their breakfast (and to the owner of the empty warehouse).
Remarkably, Occupational Health keep telling me at my annual medical that my hearing is excellent. Quite often they tell me that it’s better than last year, which does rather undermine their credibility, but what the heck.
I was at some of the tours mentioned above – notably The Who in 1981 – and I have come away unscathed.
Bionic ears ?
Inoculated by bagpipes and melodeons.
I blame a Motorhead gig in the late 90s at the Kentish town Forum. The noise they made was like a jet engine with some form of music barely audible behind the wall of sound. My friend kept his fingers in his ear throughout. The next day I played a CD with Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer on it. I couldn’t hear the synth-flute bit in the middle at all. It took days for my hearing to get back towards normal.
I think that some damage was done but a flu coupled with extremely painful ear infections that rendered me effectively deaf for a week in 2005 were where the real damage was done. My right ear never fully recovered.
I never had tinnitus until the day after I had my first ever COVID vaccine. This has been an issue since then although it has diminished considerably since I got hearing aids.
Motorhead were banned from Berkshire after their gig at Reading university in 1988 as so many people ended up in the Royal Berks hospital A&E with bleeding ears.
I found it was tolerable if I stood in the Ents Soc office, off the corridor outside the main venue. My Halls neighbour chewed up his ticket and stuck two gooey paper balls into his ears. He came to my room afterwards in search of a “screwdriver” to remove them with. I was in no state to use tweezers, so I frogmarched him down to A&E.
So many with hearing aids! I had not thought deaf had undone so many.
Ooh – I know that. It’s “The Waste Land”!
STRANGLERS – Lancaster University 1979; I’ve had tinnitus ever since.
My Jack Russell sitting on the centre console inches from my left lug. Eh?
Industrial noise and my employer for not providing ear defenders and too many loud gigs.
Result: tinnitus.
Pardon?
Well somebody had to.
Had a very painful ear infection in my right ear in 2003 which permanently wiped out 80% of my hearing on the right. Saw Machester’s Puressence at the Scala that same year, who played at ridiculous, stupid, completely unnecessary volume (with dreadful sound quality too) and have had mild tinnitus ever since. Interestingly I saw My Bloody Valentine on their early 90s Rollercoaster tour and although that was also painfully loud it didn’t cause any lasting effect.
I wear earplugs at the increasingly rare gigs I go to now, and hope to get an NHS hearing aid in the next couple of months.
I just can’t get on with ear plugs. I feel I may as well not go.
It’s just acoustic gigs for me these days.
With standard earplugs, or just the wax ones, I’d probably agree but I have ones that come with different fittings, letting a bit more sound in if needed but still able to filter out the frequencies that cause the damage.
Ear plugs do seem to block out the incessant chatter from my fellow gig goers. Protecting my hearing is an added bonus.
Go to a good gun shop and ask for earplugs specifically designed for clay shooters – they only cut out the sharp transients and are a revelation at loud gigs.
You can still talk fairly normally to anyone standing next to you and you won’t hear the music as if through ten thick blankets or the house next door. They are lightweight things too, and you’ll forget you are wearing them.
I use these. Same idea.
https://amzn.eu/d/cdynsFR
Yep, very similar – I have the MusicSafePro ones, as well as the pair I bought from a gun shop.
Their performance is pretty much identical, though the Alpine ones, being slightly more expensive, have adjustable attentuation, while the ones I bought for shooting are just – Frankly – One Size Fits All.
I’d guess that the shooting ones are closer to the higher attenuation level that the Alpines offer – believe me, when you are at a clay shoot with folk using full speed (i.e. supersonic at the muzzle) cartridges, the peak noise level is at least at the same level as, say, Geezer Butler’s bass!
I got through 70s gigs by Led Zeppelin, the Sabs, Motorhead, Hawkwind, Quo, and Thin Lizzy almost intact. I was at the Who gig at Charlton (1976) which was once in the Guinness Book of Records as the loudest ever gig. Survived. Decades of punk, prog, and post-punk followed, plus occasional revisits to the above guvnors of rock. Then it all fell to bits; Metallica at Nottingham – couldn’t hear the car driving home, and the ominous hum lasted a few days after. But it was Pigs 7 at the Leicester O2 in 2024 that really shafted me. I’ve got tinnitus at this moment.
Various semi-pro lead and rhythm guitarists with whom I spent hundreds of hours rehearsing and gigging with crap PAs. The accidental feedback emitted in a small rehearsal room while the PA and guitar amps are plugging in is something else again. As a punter, it would have to be Dave Edmunds feeding back in Rockpile without a care in the world, while I was trapped by the mosh at the lip of the stage directly in front if him. Did my head in, big time. It took a good couple of minutes to fight my way out of a packed Regent Theatre in Sydney.
Yep the feedback squeal. That’s a killer.
I think mine could well be hereditary. I’ve started to notice a bit of loss (sorry, say again) and I’m about the same age my dad was when the same thing happened to him. Should probably book a hearing test.
I can’t say that I miss the days of having tinnitus after a gig (and into the next day). Not that I go to many gigs now, but the ones I go to I wear ear plugs, which seems to help.
Loudest gigs I’ve ever been to – Barclay James Harvest, round about the time of the second album, and Golden Earring, touring the UK on the tails of their big Radar Love hit. Both in Plymouth Guildhall, in the days when bands brought their own kit and their own sound engineers, all of whom seemed to be in a competition to be louder than anyone else. The rock gigs at the Guildhall were ceased after a while, because the stained-glass windows were cracking. Health and Safety, far too late. Stupidity itself.
Loudest gig for me was The Beastie Boys at The ICA. Not really my thing but I was working on it, a showcase gig for EMI. I actually quite enjoyed it, despite it being so loud and the guy on the decks could really work them, quite a change from the posing normally seen on videos and the telly.
Talked to my audiologist about the causes of deafness. He reckons it’s usually age, genetics and the frequency of exposure to damaging levels of noise. The extent to which each of these plays a part varies by person, as do the sound frequencies that people lose.
He reckons most will recover from loud gigs if it’s just occasional exposure but repetition diminishes the degree of recovery. In my case it seems I can’t blame Pat Travers at the Marquee but mostly age and genetics, helped along by a few years of playing the drums without protection and a tendency to have headphones up too loud on a regular basis (something which Pete Townsend says played a role in his hearing loss).
22-20s. I was in pain for weeks after that otherwise superb gig. I have friends who left because it was so loud & I as stood directly next to the speakers, watching the drummer go through cymbals as he was (& I believe this is the correct technical term) smashing the shit out of them.
I have a few venues where ear plugs are a must. My favourite is The PInk Room @ Yes in Manchester, I never need them there as the sound is always great.
I went to see Fishbone at Manchester Academy in 1992. It was punishingly loud. The next morning I awoke to a persistent, repetitive but dull thudding sound. It was my alarm clock. The upper range of my hearing seemed to have vanished overnight. It did recover, but I’m not entirely sure it’s ever been quite the same.
I went to see Steve Hackett and it was loud but it was the bass pedals which I could feel moving my internal organs around. I had ear plugs in but even so the next day I couldn’t hear at all in my right ear and badly in the left. I went to a consultant audiologist at the local hospital and he put me on 6 weeks of steroids after which it did return though I can’t hear anything over 4k. In a noisy pub or restaurant I can hear the hubbub but if I’m talking to someone I can see their lips moving but can’t hear what they’re saying.
Apropos of nothing: were your hands just like two balloons?
In Switzerland they hand out disposable ear plugs for free when you enter the venue, or they used to. A practice I like, another practice of not allowing you to keep your ticket stub at GA shows once you were in I liked less.
I donny have any hearing loss as far as I know – so far.
However if I did I would blame Deep Purple,Beck Bogart and Appice and Drive by Truckers at Birmingham Institute who were ridiculously loud in a time when people should have known better.