A promotional trip flying 150 journalists around the world with Rihanna to plug her new album, Unapologetic, has turned into a Spinal Tap-type disaster. The singer's globetrotting seven-day junket aboard a Boeing 777 started to go pear-shaped when she refused to come out of the special "panic room" to actually promote.
THE MUTINY FINALLY HAPPENED on plane BLN>LDN. Ppl chanting "RIHANNA! SAVE OUR JOBS!" WE ALL COLLECTIVELY LOST IT AT THE SAME TIME. #777tour
— J. Escobedo Shepherd (@jawnita) November 19, 2012
With the stir-crazy hacks piling into the free alcohol and wondering how they would get a story, it was perhaps inevitable that they would start chanting "Just one quote!", while one of them stripped naked and streaked through the plane.
Crowd chanted "Just one quote!," "I need a headline!" and "Occupy 777" while Aussie journo stripped naked and ran around the plane.
— Jason Newman (@Jasonrnewman) November 19, 2012
Now the fiasco has become the story, which may be exactly what Rihanna's people fiendishly planned, to draw attention from the hardly glowing reviews of her duet with, and songs seemingly defending, former boyfriend Chris Brown, still serving a probationary sentence after being convicted of assaulting her.
Watch the streaker run naked on @rihanna #777Tour plane! WE GOT VIDEO! youtu.be/Ugax2gEQgiM
— Fuse TV (@fusetv) November 19, 2012
Equally likely, they had forgotten the curse befalling many a pop junket that mixes pop stars, journalists and aeroplanes.
This is typified by the infamous fiasco that ensued in 1970, when 150 pop hacks were flown to New York's Fillmore East to see once hotly tipped Brit pub-rockers Brinsley Schwarz. Alas, the plane broke down over the Atlantic, the journalists ended up at Shannon airport, calming their shattered nerves with a free bar, while an old drug bust meant two of the band were detained at the Canadian border. The few sozzled journalists that made the gig slated it as "an expensive disaster", and it took the band 34 years to clear their £30,000 record-company debt.
It was a similar farce in 1998 when I was among 100 journalists flown to Copenhagen to meet Barbie Girl hitmakers Aqua, and plied with vodka. The drunken questions at the press conference were wildly inappropriate; the gig – with the band dressed as skeletons – was like a surreal acid trip. Some journalists failed to make the flight home, and were never seen again – which is pretty much what happened to Aqua's career.
Lately, it seemed Iron Maiden's metal singer-cum-professional-pilot Bruce Dickinson had overcome the curse by flying hacks in the band's own Boeing "Ed Force One" himself without crashing the aircraft or banishing Maiden to obscurity. However, the airline he was working for went bust.
So the question the hacks still aboard the 777 may want to ask Rihanna – if she ever comes out of the panic room – is: "Are you feeling lucky?"
