Mike Ness, frontman of California punk band Social Distortion, has been accused of punching a concert attendee at a July show, as The New York Times notes. A man named Tim Hildebrand said the incident occurred on July 19 at Sacramento’s Ace of Spades. In an interview with Sacramento’s CBS13, which aired yesterday (August 15), Hildebrand claimed that Ness told the crowd about “how horrible and racist America is, how everyone in America is racist,” and that Ness called President Donald Trump “a bigot and racist.”
Hildebrand told CBS13 that, in response, he said aloud at the concert, “I paid for your music, not your politics,” and held up his middle finger through multiple songs. During the band’s encore, according to Hildebrand, Ness noticed him in the crowd, pointed at him, cursed at him, and allegedly spit on him, before Ness allegedly “punched him multiple times in the head.” Hildebrand said that he suffered a concussion, got two black eyes and a “busted lip,” and that he nearly lost a tooth. He also claimed that he could not fight back because other concertgoers were “holding [him] back.”
Video from the concert, which surfaced online earlier this month, shows Ness removing his guitar and jumping into the crowd before returning to the stage. The Sacramento Police Department is “aware of the allegations” and investigating the incident, according to The Times and CBS13. Pitchfork has reached out to representatives for Social Distortion.
Mike Ness has criticized Donald Trump during past Social Distortion concerts. At a 2017 show, he told the crowd, “I think the president should be a humanitarian. And I think a president should care about his country, but the rest of the world, as well.” He continued, “I don’t think he’s a good president. I don’t think he even knows what the fuck he’s doing.” He also called Trump “a racist” during the concert.
