People always ask about the shows. The lights, the roar, the leather, the power. But what they never ask about is the silence that follows it all. The strange, hollow quiet you find yourself in after a crowd of twenty thousand disappears into the night and you’re alone backstage, peeling off sweat-soaked clothes under flickering fluorescents. That’s where the odd things happen. The stuff nobody wants to talk about because it doesn’t fit the narrative of screaming fans and thunderous riffs. But that silence is real. And once, in 1984, it got very strange.
We were deep into the Defenders of the Faith tour. Europe was behind us, and we were rolling hard through the U.S. Midwest. By that point in the tour, you’re sleepwalking from stage to stage. Same setlist, same roar, same hotels with the same bland furniture. It was like living inside a loop. One night, we were in Cincinnati. Old arena, built in the ’70s, drafty concrete hallways, weird echoes in the rafters. I remember the dressing room had this ancient refrigerator humming louder than the monitors. The kind of place that feels like it never really wakes up.
That night, during soundcheck, something felt off. I can’t explain it. The room just felt heavy. Not physically, but like a mood had settled into the air. I’ve always been sensitive to energy—call it intuition, call it whatever you like. All I know is when you’ve played as many shows as we had, you can feel the difference between nerves and something else. This was something else.
We were halfway through the set when it happened. Right in the middle of The Sentinel. Glenn was ripping through the solo, and I was about to launch into the next line when every light in the arena went out. Total blackout. Not just the stage lights, but the entire place. Complete darkness. Now normally, you’d think backup generators would kick in, or at least the emergency lighting, but for maybe ten, fifteen seconds, there was absolutely nothing. No light. No sound. Just this crushing black silence.
Then, just as suddenly, the lights came back. We were all still standing there. Glenn looked pale. Ian dropped a stick. Scott thought the power surge had hit his in-ears. The crowd screamed, of course. They thought it was part of the show. We laughed it off too, tried to keep the momentum going. But afterward, backstage, no one was laughing. The crew said the generators were fine. No one pulled the switch. No weather problems. No system fault. The board hadn’t gone dead. It was like the whole building just… shut off for a moment.
I went back to the dressing room alone after the meet and greet. Everyone else had cleared out. I sat there for a bit, trying to replay it in my head. That’s when I noticed something. My mic, which I always take back with me, had a faint smear of something across the grill. Not sweat. Not lipstick. Something darker. Greasy, like oil. But there’d been no one near me. Nothing on my gloves. Just that smear, right in the center, as if someone had pressed their lips to it.
I didn’t say anything at the time. What would I have said? Ghosts don’t exactly make good press. But the truth is, that wasn’t the last time something strange happened on that tour. That blackout was just the first.
The rest… well, maybe I’ll talk about it someday. Maybe.