Live music is back! Unless you’re a cautious A-list rock star

The glorious post-pandemic return of live music may not be all that it seems. Just weeks after our venues re-opened their doors after 15 months of enforced inactivity, an alarming number of rock and pop tours are being cancelled. But this time it’s not the global lockdown that’s being the party pooper: it’s nervous rock-stars.

With venue entry-rules in flux and global cases of the Delta variant of Covid-19 surging, performers are taking the decision to ditch or postpone touring commitments. Just as the live-music industry emerges from its darkest period for decades, cancel-happy musicians start unplugging their amps and packing their guitars back into flight cases. One might have expected audiences, rather than artists, to be the wary ones. But no. It’s “Goodnight Wembley!” – just not as we know it.

Most of the musicians pulling out of shows are American. On Monday, US artist Machine Gun Kelly withdrew from this weekend’s Reading and Leeds festivals due to “restrictions and logistics”. He also pulled out of a festival on London’s Clapham Common. Organisers of the ALT+LDN festival said that restrictive Covid measures mean that some of the international artists they’d booked were unable to come.

Last month, US rockers Queens of the Stone Age also pulled out of their Reading and Leeds headline slot due to “restrictions and logistics”. The phrase looks set to become industry shorthand for concert no-shows in the way that “fruit and flowers” became shorthand for labels’ procurement of illegal substances for bands in days gone by.

But these artists represent the mere tip of an ominous-looking iceberg. Earlier this month, Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks cancelled all of her US solo shows this year, saying: “At my age, I am extremely cautious.” The 73-year-old said we live in “challenging times with challenging decisions that have to be made”, and added that the rise in Covid cases should be “of concern to all of us”. Nu-metal band Limp Bizkit recently cancelled the last eight dates of their US tour, the unfortunately titled Limited Last Minute Post Pandemic Popup Party tour. Turns out it was more “limited” than anticipated. Their frontman Fred Durst blamed a “system” that is still “very flawed”.

The list goes on. In June The Eagles cancelled this weekend’s two-night stand at Wembley Stadium, having already postponed the shows for a year. No explanation was given in June, though with a 46-piece orchestra and 22-voice choir in tow, they can probably be forgiven for blaming “restrictions and logistics”. They plan to return next summer.

More recently, K-Pop titans BTS and industrial outfit Nine Inch Nails cancelled stadium and festival headline dates, while Counting Crows, Korn and The Pixies have postponed or cancelled shows (in some cases, there was Covid in the camp). Michael Bublé has pushed back dates to October, and Phoebe Bridgers has moved all her 2021 US concerts to outdoor venues.

BTS said that their Map of the Soul Tour, which had already been postponed once and was due to take in two nights at Twickenham Stadium, had been cancelled due to “changing circumstances beyond our control”. By their actions or words, artists seem to believe that the industry has jumped the gun by opening up too soon. Nine Inch Nails put it perfectly when they said: “When originally planned, these shows were intended to be a cathartic return to live music. However with each passing day, it’s becoming more apparent we’re not in that place yet.”

Many music fans would no doubt argue that there’s a fine line between caution and cowardice. And there’s something about millionaire rock stars cancelling people’s fun that sticks in the craw. But there are, thankfully, many exceptions amid this wave of cancellations.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been to a handful of extraordinary live shows where the crowds’ pent-up desire to party has been gloriously obvious. Gorillaz at the O2 and Sleaford Mods at the Crystal Palace Bowl were marked by precisely the levels of celebration and intemperance you’d expect from audience members who’d been stuck at home watching Luther re-runs for 500 days.

Yet while UK tours by UK acts are likely to continue, don’t expect big-name acts to cross the pond any time soon. One veteran musician with over 40 years’ experience of touring the world tells me that North American bands and musicians simply won’t come to Europe. “The pandemic will make people suffer. Big American musicians won’t come over here to Europe,” he says.

The problem with concerts – be they in Newcastle or New York – lies in a mismatch of expectations and outlooks inherent in an act of mass gathering. Concerts are a bit like a river delta flowing in reverse. They are where myriad streams of people come together from a variety of different angles. Each constituent part of the concert ecosystem -– the audience, the band and their crew, the technicians, the venue staff, the security, the catering staff and the public transport workers ferrying people to and fro – will be living by different Covid protocols and standards.

Some will inevitably be laxer than others. And in the act of sweaty convergence, the virus gets transmitted. As Limp Bizkit’s Durst told Billboard: “Even if the performers, crews, staff, and promoters do their best to ensure safety on and behind the stage, that doesn’t ensure the safety of the audience as a whole.”

In the UK, most venues are asking for proof of double vaccination (with at least a two-week gap since the second jab) or proof of a negative test. But this is by no means failsafe. And the virus can lurk anywhere. There was a story in The Los Angeles Times this week -– America, yes, but it could have been anywhere – about an audio engineer who was touring with a band and saw the entire tour cancelled because some of the crew got Covid. Cancellation was clearly the correct thing to do. But the probable reason? No one working backstage at the local venues was wearing a mask.

With different industries and different geographical areas abiding by different guidelines, it is falling to performers to make the rules. Seizing the initiative, Phoebe Bridgers recently said that “at my request” all her US shows would require proof of vaccination against Covid-19. “Where that’s not permissible by law,” the 27-year-old wrote on social media, “we’ll agree to proof of vaccination OR proof of negative test result (PCR preferred/antigen accepted) within 48 hours prior to entering those venues. And please wear a mask. I love you. See you soon.”

Pop stars have to be a lot of things these days: performers, entrepreneurs, marketeers and public role models. To this job description, it seems you can now add virologists.

All this comes as the debate rages over whether concerts are safe environments. Official evidence from the British Government’s Events Research Programme (ERP) suggests that mass gatherings are indeed safe. Data released last week from 37 of the government’s “big crowd” trial events showed that large gatherings “can be conducted safely”. The ERP included theatre performances, sporting events and music festivals such as Download and Tramlines. Results showed that Covid cases from the events were “largely in line with or below” community infection rates. On top of this, over 77 per cent of the UK population is fully vaccinated.

All this comes as the debate rages over whether concerts are safe environments. Official evidence from the UK government’s Events Research Programme (ERP) suggests that mass gatherings are indeed safe. Data released last week from 37 of the government’s ‘big crowd’ trial events showed that large gatherings “can be conducted safely”. The ERP included theatre performances, sporting events and music festivals such as Download, Tramlines and Latitude. Results showed that Covid cases from the events were “largely in line with or below” community infection rates. On top of this, over 77 per cent of the UK population are fully vaccinated.

Tell this, however, to people who attended the Boardmasters festival in Cornwall two weekends ago – Cornwall Council have said that 4,700 cases of Covid could be linked to the event; investigations are ongoing. (Latitude, meanwhile, reported 1,000 cases in the days following the event. Given that its capacity was 40,000, this amounts to 2.5 per cent of attendees, which is hardly a startling figure.)

So where does this leave live music in the months ahead? The answer is: in a precarious situation. Things could go two ways. On the one hand, the recent spate of cancellations certainly feels like the thin end of the wedge. We should brace ourselves for more tours to be binned. Massive UK tours are scheduled for next summer by the likes of The Killers, Foo Fighters, Billie Eilish, Diana Ross, Celine Dion, Guns N’ Roses, and Alicia Keys. Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga are rumoured. Fans of Taylor Swift would love to see her play vast shows she was forced to cancel. There is no suggestion that any of the confirmed tours mentioned above won’t happen.

But although June 2022 feels like a long way away, industry insiders believe that the problem won’t have completely disappeared by then. On the other hand – and this is cause for optimism – senior people in the touring world tell me that it has become almost impossible for bands to book well-known stadia for shows next summer, such is the demand for venues. Perhaps the music will play on after all.

For the moment, however, it feels as though live music just can’t get a break. Last Saturday, New York hosted the massive We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert in Central Park. Around 60,000 fully vaccinated fans turned up to see the likes of Carlos Santana and Jennifer Hudson perform. But an hour of lightning and historically heavy rain meant that the event was cut short, meaning that stars including Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Springsteen and Elvis Costello didn’t get to play.

It felt depressingly symbolic. Poor old live music. It seems that those pesky “restrictions and logistics” are not restricted to Covid.