Ongoing History Daily: Ian Astbury’s strange disappearance
Ian Astbury of the Cult has always been a reasonably intense rock’n’roll sort of guy. He was known to cause riots, rip up hotel rooms and take the occasional shot at the guys in the band. But nothing was quite as weird as that episode during the tour behind the Love” tour of 1985-86.
One night, he just walked away and disappeared. He was eventually found at a train station in England with a sports bag containing several hundred English pounds, an automatic pistol and—get this—a bayonet.
Ask Ian about it now and he swears he can’t remember where he was going or what he planned to do.
Yesterday’s post told of the attempted assassination of Bob Marley. And don’t forget to check out my podcast The Ongoing History of New Music where you listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google, Stitcher, or wherever you get your on-demand audio.
I was expecting this story to end with him in Hamilton. I’ve heard he lived there for some reason … but now my dates feel off. I wanted to say late 80s, early 90s, but that doesn’t really seem to make any sense with The Cult in full swing at the time.