This is an interesting read (published just yesterday) and pretty relevant to this thread…
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Not sure I’ve ever felt unsafe in a big crowd (which I’m glad about - a very direct type of risk)
But I do remember a lot of, I guess I would call it background aggro at festivals I went to in my youth? The sort of environment where violence is always possible, even if it doesn’t happen?
The one that really sticks out was the one time I went to T in the Park in 2005 I think. Just a real sense of hostility from a lot of people there, I suspect not caused entirely by the drugs and alcohol doing the rounds but definitely enhanced by it. Topless hench men telling you to fuck off, kids setting fires all night. I can’t say I ever felt in danger exactly, but it was a really unpleasant experience.
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Got an image of you burned into my brain looking at me in the Protomartyr pit with my glasses in my mouth for safekeeping like “wtf are you doing”
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Glastonbury 2015 during Lionel Richie. Got stuck in the crowd in a bottle neck and couldn’t move for about 30 minutes. pregnancy related CW Heavily pregnant women next to me was crying because thought she may lose her unborn child and was being crushed. Lots of shorter people saying they couldn’t breath. Had to basically lift this women up who was behind me as she was short of breath. Bloke next to me was shouting that he was at Hillsborough and that he was traumatised and needed to get out.
And just to make it all better I was coming up quite hard on some very strong acid
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The Vaccines at Reading 2011 - I was near the front and people were slamming forward making the crowd surge, I was a bit afraid at that point but it was when I was trying to leave afterwards and a group of guys crushed me in and wouldn’t move to let me out, I couldn’t breathe and had no balance and they were much taller than me so I was sinking down, screamed at them and hit them and they finally let me through (while laughing hysterically)
Also the guy standing behind me who tried to put his hands in my knickers when I was 17 at The Bouncing Souls, luckily he ended up in the bit between my tights and pants and I elbowed him so he didn’t do it again. sadly the next person who tried this at a gig in a nightclub succeeded. I froze up 
Various festival crowds in the days before D-barriers and the like became widespread. You’d often spend the entire gig moving as part of a wave of crowd, just trying to stay upright, while also being crushed the entire time.
Scariest indoor one was at that Deftones gig at Dockland’s Arena. I was near the front for Linkin Park and could barely breathe. I was too heavy to get lifted out so had to battle backwards. I guess I also had to leave Muse at Reading 2000 in similar circumstances. Saw 30 seconds of Roll With It and went back to Muse, slightly further back.
Thing is, though, I’m 6’2" and was a loosehead prop at school, so could handle it a lot better than smaller people. At another Muse gig, in Southampton the next year, I spend most of the gig right near the front trying to shield some kid who’d found their way there. The Guildhall isn’t very big, but still wouldn’t have fancied the weight of a bunch of adults falling in the pit crushing into the kid.
These days I tend to stand at the back where there’s space to dance without being too annoying.
Very much did not appreciate the drinks situation at Primavera this year. Definitely the most dangerous festival experience I’ve had in recent years.
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Trampled in a crowd surge for Blur at Reading 1999. Quite a brief trampling but scary nonetheless. Once somebody pulled me up, I worked my way out, went to another tent to calm down, watched The All Seeing I (who were ace), then returned to the back of the main stage crowd to see the rest of Blur’s long set.
Lots of aggro from twats at gigs and festivals over the years, often to do with the temerity of getting in the way of them hassling women in our group (or not in our group actually - I remember just manoeuvring myself to get in the way of some guy who seemed to be accidentally on purpose bumping into a woman in the crowd and then having him behind me muttering threats at me).
Yeah, I was in the front for QOTSA before RATM and that was really bad. Had to clamber over the barrier and help some people over too. Nasty crowd that day. Stood well back for RATM
Download 2006 on the hottest weekend of that year
wanted to be near the front for Metallica so made my way down early to put up with the two (awful) bands on before and bumble my way closer as gaps appeared
spending a few hours jammed in close with other people in that kind of weather = 
my water got very warm before I finished it, Metallica came on late because dickhead rockstars do that, made my way out halfway through desperate for hydration
This was the weekend I went to as well, remember missing all of Killing Joke because they were supposed to clash with Metallica but Metallica hadn’t even come on by the time Killing Joke had finished.
From memory one of the terrible bands you would have had to sit through was the Jonathan Davis-less “Korn-eoke” set. You have my sympathy for that.
Managed to fall down, lose my glasses and somehow stuck a hand out and immediately grabbed them while someone was pulling me up. If I hadn’t got them at the first grab they’d have been goners
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I think that set was on a different stage. I had to suffer through Avenged Sevenfold and Trivium, which I think might be much worse
Metallica were very late indeed, weren’t they? no consideration for fans at all.
I did end up finding an ice cream van on the side of a hill, but all they had left were Fabs. so I sat and ate four Fabs during the encores
Oh and the final night of reading 2007. There had been flooding of the Thames the week leading up to the festival meaning a lot of the camping fields by the river were underwater. They opened up some of the car parks as camping fields, but they were behind the big wooden fences to separate the site from the car parks. On the final night, there was a large group trying, and eventually succeeding, to flatten the fences on to the tents on the other side. We were trying to stop them and get people from their tents and stop them getting flattened. I got hit a couple of times from security for some reason. Really scary. Those wooden fences then got set alight and the whole atmosphere was really nasty. Genuinely an incredibly scary experience.
Had a similar experience watching Madness in 2016. I went off the the toilet half way through (right side of the stage) and someone else must have finished elsewhere so there was a clash of crowds going both ways. It did become a bit scary at one point as the crowd just didn’t seem to be moving.
Try to steer clear of mosh pits as they’re really not for me but get a bit worried when one starts up a bit too close to me for comfort.
When I was 18 I was at a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and a mosh pit broke out right in front of us. I stepped back a bit from the edge to avoid getting caught up, and someone behind me tried to full on push me into it. A complete stranger who wasn’t in the pit himself. Bizarre behaviour.
Joanna Newsom. Sunday afternoon solo set at Latitude 2008
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Yeah, I’ve seen Metallica twice and they’ve been close to an hour late both times. When I was younger I just assumed it was the done thing for “big” bands to show up whenever they felt like it but I can’t remember another band ever being that late.
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I think Reading 2007 might have been the last one I went to (possibly 2008). Stopped going as it was just a nasty atmosphere, people setting fires everywhere and chucking stuff and generally being dicks and behaving dangerously. Lots of teenage boys on their first nights away from home trying to show off
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2008 was the last one I went to where I witnessed a tent with people inside scrabbling to get out get dragged onto a fire.
Couldn’t deal with it. Never slept on the final night anyway and packed up all our gear ready to get the first train out in the morning.
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I was going to say Sunday night at Reading 2000 and 2001. Just awful behaviour going off everywhere, gas canisters being thrown on fires, security towers being shaken and pulled down with staff still on them. Really grim.