Moscow Music Peace Festival

Moscow Music Peace Festival (Rock against drugs & alcohol)
Cover of Moscow Music Peace Festival Vol.2
Genre	Rock, heavy metal, glam metal
Dates	12 and 13 August 1989
Location(s)	Soviet Union, Moscow
Years active	1989
Founded by	Doc McGhee, Stas Namin

The Moscow Music Peace Festival was a one-time gathering of high-profile hard rock acts for a performance in Moscow, Soviet Union on 12 and 13 August 1989 to promote world peace and establish international cooperation in fighting the drug war in Russia. It was part of an era of momentous change in the Soviet Union.

The concert was a pinnacle moment in glam metal.

The show involved a large production team and logistics provided by Eurotruk. Generators powered the entire event as it was broadcast as a pay-per-view event by MTV. Catering came from the UK. There were direct-dial telephone lines from the production office, and satellite uplink from Bear Lake back to the USA.

The show production radios were the latest from the USA and some were encrypted. There was 6 Megawatts of power available from the generators.

The concert was put together by the Make a Difference Foundation, its founder, rock producer and manager Doc McGhee, Stas Namin and other major players in the Soviet Union and the United States. It is often stated that McGhee agreed to bring his artists to Moscow after becoming involved in a drug scandal himself and wishing to avoid a jail sentence, but he explicitly denied that in 2011. "We always wanted to go over to Moscow and do the first rock show in the Soviet Union. I wanted to do their ." Since it had also been part of that plan that the proceeds would go to Make a Difference and doctors would be brought to the USSR to teach methods of treating addiction (Soviet doctors at the time primarily used electroshock therapy for that purpose), he did not expect the sentencing judge would have denied him the opportunity.

Mötley Crüe have been on record stating they were upset with McGhee at this point in time. They felt McGhee was favoring Bon Jovi, whom he also managed, and whom Crüe disdained. When Bon Jovi closed the show, they used pyrotechnics, which Mötley Crüe had been told they could not do (McGhee claims it was a malfunction on one side of the stadium that he did not hear because he was backstage). Sebastian Bach of Skid Row, whom McGhee also managed, says Tommy Lee went over to him and said "Your manager's a fucking asshole" and chugged most of a bottle of vodka Bach had been drinking (up to this point, Lee has said, it was the first time the band had done a show sober). Then he ran up to McGhee, punched him in the face and told him he could go manage The Chipmunks because he was no longer Mötley Crüe's manager. Bon Jovi fired him as well shortly afterwards. Lee and his bandmates were still so angry they refused to fly home on the same plane as McGhee.

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Wikipedia