The history of rock music is filled with outrageous pranks pulled by prankster rock stars. While these pranks can be life-threatening, such as when Tony Iommi almost killed his bandmate, Bill Ward, they can also turn into a legendary prank war like the hilarious one between Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Most of these unbelievable pranks are done between bandmates as they are close enough to take a harsh joke. However, somebody outside the band can always take a challenge when money is involved. This is precisely what happened when Nickelback frontman Chad Kroeger got his drummer technician involved in a brutal prank.
It would be an underestimation to call Kroeger’s prank brutal as the singer came up with the most unexpected combination, including a genital area and an electric fan with metal blades. Let’s travel back in time to see how the musician paid his tech to stick his penis into a deadly fan while touring.
Chad Kroeger Got His Tech’s Penis Into A Fan
During a 2012 interview with Men’s Health, Chad Kroeger was asked about his favorite crazy story in his music career while touring. Although the singer didn’t initially want to share, he spilled one of the most absurd stories involving a prank and a bet.
Kroeger started by saying that every member of Nickelback has always been close to their road crew, allowing them to have fun and get silly while on the road. However, they might have misunderstood the meaning of the word as being ‘silly’ has caused them to hurt or injure themselves from time to time.
The rocker’s favorite story was from when they felt like playing around in Germany when the weather was quite hot. The band was backstage with the crew, and there was an old fan with a metal blade to cool them down. That’s when Kroeger came up with the brilliant prank idea.
The bandmates challenged their drum technician 600 Deutschmarks to stick his penis into the working fan. To their surprise, the tech agreed on taking the challenge, and the rest of the story is quite frightening since what Kroeger defined as funny meant the man suffering from cuts in his genital area.
According to Men’s Health, Kroeger said:
“We’ve always been very close to our crew, so we’ve had a lot of fun getting them to do silly, stupid things that could possibly cause them to hurt or injure themselves in some way. We were in Germany years ago—this was one of my favorite stories—and we were just bored. There was a heatwave going on in Germany.
In a backroom in the venue where we were playing, there was an old fan with a metal blade. I don’t remember the last time I saw a fan with a metal blade. And we paid the drum tech… Oh god, I forget the exact amount. I think we got the pot up to about 600 Deutschmarks. At this time Germany hadn’t converted to the Euro yet.
I can still hear the ‘bleh-bleh-blehhhhhhh’ of the blade slowly sputtering to a stop, and this blood-curdling scream. It was fantastic. Somebody has video footage of this somewhere that needs to be resurrected and shown at the guy’s next birthday party.”
The band members must have been incredibly close with their road crew since one of their techs actually let his genital area get injured for amusement. Apparently, Chad Kroeger wasn’t aware that the tech could’ve been seriously hurt as he described the incident as a fun memory.
