When Alison Mosshart, singer for The Kills and The Dead Weather, was hospitalized in Boulder, Colorado Wednesday night, her publicist said it was merely a spell of shortness of breath “caused by a combination of cold and altitude sickness.” Colorado’s high altitude probably didn’t help, but in a recent Q&A Mosshart revealed that she’s a bit prone to physical breakdowns on stage.
When asked if she’s ever fainted on stage before, Mossheart told Interview magazine: “A couple of times, actually. I did at Lollapalooza, which was outside and about 115 degrees. The stage was black, and we felt like we were melting—the bottoms of my shoes were literally smoking.” You know you’re rock ‘n roll when even your shoes are smoking.
“Another time,” she continued, “when we were in France in this massive auditorium, there were loads of people and absolutely no ventilation. I would look out to the audience, and all I could think was, You are stealing all my oxygen! It got stuck in my head. You guys are stealing my oxygen! And it kept on going around and around, and then I blacked out.”
This event sounds very similar to this week’s incident in Boulder. A source working backstage at the Fox Theatre show told TwentyFourBit exclusively that Mosshart was “totally killing it… and like 50 minutes in she just collapsed on stage. It was so quick and freak, nobody knew what happened.”
Mosshart drinks, smokes, rocks hard and then blacks out. Rock’s alive and well, kids.