The coronavirus pandemic may still be shutting down the live business, but at least the gigs of yesteryear live on (and on and on) in our memory. Music Week recently asked a host of top artist and executives to reflect on the greatest gigs they ever saw (check out Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 if you haven't already), and we were inundated with responses.
Here, Merck Mercuriadis, Emma Banks, Matthew Healy, Jonathan Dickins, Louis Bloom, Ed Howard, Phil Christie, Andrea C Martin and many more recall some of their most treasured live experiences...
BILLIE EILISH
“The atmosphere at Shepherd’s Bush Empire [in 2019] was incredible, as everyone in the house knew they were seeing a now massive artist playing an intimate show in an iconic venue. Sometimes it is not the over-elaborate, big production shows that are the most memorable but, instead, this one was unforgettable as the energy in the room was electric, the screams deafening, the guest list impressive and an incredible artist had the audience in the palm of her hand the whole night. It was also special as everyone in the house knew what a turning point moment it would turn out to be in her career.”
MIKE MALAK, AGENT, PARADIGM
PRINCE
“In 2015, Prince came to Montreal and played in the equivalent of The O2, The Bell Centre, where they have the hockey and big acts like Madonna and the Rolling Stones. He played for almost three hours. It was so incredible.”
ANDREA C MARTIN, CEO, PRS FOR MUSIC
“Prince at Wembley Arena on the Lovesexy Tour in 1988 just blew my mind. I’m a massive Prince fan. It was a brilliant production, played in the round. Those songs… He’s a genius, isn’t he? I don’t even know if you can call Prince generational, people like him come along two or three times in a hundred years, you know?”
JONATHAN DICKINS, FOUNDER, SEPTEMBER MANAGEMENT
“Prince at the Roundhouse, when he did all the surprise shows [in 2014]. It was announced that morning and, as soon as it was announced, I got the tickets, turned up, no photos – but I do have one slightly blurry one! It was absolutely incredible. It was so sad he passed away soon after that. I’d seen him before at The O2 and it was great but suddenly it was like, ‘My hero is here and he’s playing the hits’. It was incredible.”
TED MAY, DIRECTOR, UK MUSIC, ENTERTAINMENT ONE
KISS
“My favourite gig remains one of my first, Kiss at the Halifax Forum in 1976 with Cheap Trick in support. I was 12 and by myself, which made it easy to make my way to the front. Both bands were stunning and in the interval I befriended a few people that were double my age. We talked about Jeff Beck, Zeppelin, The Stooges, Ramones and many others. They then tried to trip me up by asking what I thought of the third New York Dolls album. My reply of, ‘There isn’t one, there’s just New York Dolls and Too Much Too Soon’ elicited high fives and pats on the back. I felt 10 feet tall! And to make the evening perfect, I caught one of Rick Nielsen’s custom guitar picks!”
MERCK MERCURIADIS, CEO, HIPGNOSIS SONGS
RADIOHEAD
“I was in my first year at university when I saw Radiohead at Manchester Academy in 1995. It was The Bends tour so it was hundreds of people in the room, not thousands. I just remember thinking how amazing they were. They were just a small band then but it sticks in my mind.”
BEN MAWSON, CO-FOUNDER, TAP MUSIC
D’ANGELO
“D’Angelo at Hammersmith Apollo in 2018 was just ridiculous. My friend managed to get us tickets two rows from the front and he came down into the audience. I have a photo that I post every year to remind everyone it was the best gig ever! It looked like D’Angelo was serenading me for about a second, there’s the look of love from me and him, I believe.”
JESSIE WARE
TUBELORD/BLAKFISH/ DRIVE LIKE I DO
“This was both a gig that I’ve seen and was involved in. We played at Café Saki in Manchester in August 2008. Tubelord were really great, a cool, math rock band. Blakfish were a Birmingham punk band, the best live band I’ve ever seen. It was already mental for us because [guitarist] Adam Hann’s amp set on fire and I was doing a lot of drugs at the time so it got very hedonistic very quickly. Blakfish came on and were throwing kids into the drums from the crowd, putting their guitars on them and doing solos lying on top of them. It was absolute chaos, the best show I’ve ever seen.”
MATTHEW HEALY, THE 1975
U2
“It was in the Olympic Stadium in Sweden in 1993. Island Records took the entire company to see that show, because we had all three acts: U2, Stereo MC’s and PJ Harvey. It was the heady days when the whole company plus partners, believe it or not, were flown to Stockholm to see that show. There were two reasons for that – one, it was such a celebration of the label having three acts that were very different but all on the same bill, and second it was the Zoo TV set, which was a groundbreaking live production. It took live production to a different level. The power of seeing it in that setting, a band at the very peak of their career and also the two support acts being acts that the label was having a great degree of success with... It encapsulated a period and once again demonstrated the importance of labels and the live sector coming together.”
ALISTAIR NORBURY, PRESIDENT, REPERTOIRE & MARKETING, BMG UK
CHARLI XCX
“The first show I saw of Charli’s, at the Horse & Groom in 2009, sticks in my mind as a bonkers experience you couldn’t get right now. Charli was supposed to go on at midnight and I think she went on about 2.30am. It was a room full of 200 drunk East London kids on a Saturday night, suddenly this 15-year-old in a massive blue wig jumps on a chair in the middle of the room with no introduction at all apart from the music stopping, plugs an iPod in and starts going completely mental, jumping in people’s faces and rolling around on the floor. For anyone who saw Charli at that time, there was something incredibly special about her.”
ED HOWARD, CO-PRESIDENT, ATLANTIC
“I’ve been a lifelong Jay-Z fan and a very early Kanye fan. I’d seen Kanye, but I’d never seen Jay-Z outside of a festival, so to see both on the Watch The Throne tour at The O2 in 2012 was like, ‘I’ve ticked that box, I don’t need to go to any more shows!’ At the time, the Ni**as In Paris reruns were happening, so it was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to get out of here at 11 or 12 o’clock’ because they were pulling it up seven, eight, 12 times, trying to beat each other’s record!”
NEGLA ABDELA, HEAD OF DIGITAL MARKETING, MINISTRY OF SOUND
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
“It was 1993 at the Ritz in Manchester. I remember using my fake ID to get in and then having my mind completely blown! It stands as the most intense and life-changing show I have ever been to.”
LOUIS BLOOM, PRESIDENT, ISLAND RECORDS
“One of my formative gigs would have been Rage Against The Machine at Brixton Academy in 1996. To a 15-year-old, it was just life giving.”
PHIL CHRISTIE, PRESIDENT, WARNER RECORDS
RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS
“There are just so many incredible moments that I have been lucky to be part of. From a marker in the sand point of view of an experience and highlight within my life, when the Chili Peppers sold out three nights in Hyde Park [in 2004] at 85,000-capacity, that was very, very special. The gigs were great but it was more what the whole thing meant and the achievement, it’s something I’m never going to forget.”
EMMA BANKS, AGENT, CAA
JAMES BROWN
“I saw him play [Essential Festival] in Brighton in 2000. I wasn’t sure it was going to be any good and I think it was raining. But I thought I might as well go, I just didn’t want to see James Brown and for it not be great, because I love his music so much. And he was dynamite, absolutely unbelievable – he did the dancing and the thing where they carry him off the stage. I’m so grateful I took the chance to go and see him.”
JOE KENTISH, HEAD OF A&R, WARNER RECORDS
GRUFF RHYS
“It was at Toynbee Hall in East London in 2010 when he was debuting Shark Ridden Waters. It’s such a small venue and it felt really like an intimate, communal experience with the band and audience engaging with the performance and singing along. I’ve seen Gruff play many times in many different venues, but this one stood out.”
ANNABELLA COLDRICK, CEO, MMF
FOUR TET
“He just thought completely outside the box for the Alexandra Palace show in 2019. It was a completely unique experience, I’ve never been to anything like it and it completely took you away from everything else, pure escapism. He took you on a real journey, I wasn’t expecting it to sound and feel as big as it did.”
AMY WHEATLEY, GM, MINISTRY OF SOUND
ALICE IN CHAINS
“Just because it opened my eyes. I come from a small town and it was my first experience of getting on a train to London and going to my first ever gig at Brixton Academy in 1993. I was 14 and it was like, ‘This is exciting!’ I was in the moshpit, on the barrier and that was the thing that set me on a path and opened my eyes to something.”
ED MILLETT, CO-FOUNDER, TAP MUSIC
TALK TALK
“The gig that stayed with me forever was Talk Talk in 1986 at Duxford Aerodrome. I don’t know what they were doing there! It was around The Colour Of Spring album and I only knew them for synth pop, but it blew me away. The musicianship, the quality of the songwriting, Mark Hollis’ voice… I instantly became an enormous fan and it’s stayed with me for the rest of my life.”
GEOFF TAYLOR, CEO, BPI
THE GRATEFUL DEAD
“Some time around spring 1972, I saw the Grateful Dead play four times in the space of 10 days – twice at the Empire Pool [now SSE Arena, Wembley], and twice at the Lyceum. Each night they played for around four or five hours, a thought that pains me now! But as far as I was concerned back then, they could have played for four or five days straight and I would still have wanted more. Every night was a different set, and a different experience. No other band takes their audience on such an exploratory and unexpected journey night after night, often - but not always - reaching unimagined musical highs. And it’s all there (or some of it) on Europe ’72, one of the great live albums. Amazing times.”
JEREMY LASCELLES, CO-FOUNDER, BLUE RAINCOAT MUSIC
DENZEL CURRY
“Coachella in 2017 was insane. It was during the time when Denzel’s Ultimate single was booming, it was one of his big songs. Before this, I wasn’t too sure about Denzel, I wasn’t really a fan of his music, I knew Ultimate but not really much else. I remember this show was nuts, I was in the mosh pit, I was having a sick time, it was a sick show.”
KSI
JONI MITCHELL
“I probably had the worst seat in the house. I can’t remember which arena it was, but it was in the ’80s when Wild Things Run Fast was out. I was obsessed with her. I still am. One of the finest moments of my life. It was filmed for the Old Grey Whistle Test and it was quite a jazzy set, but she started God Must Be A Boogie Man and I screamed at the top of my voice, ‘Joni Mitchell, I bloody love you!’ and you could hear me on the Old Grey Whistle Test. I don’t think I’ve told anyone that before!”
MICHAEL BALL
SOPHIE
“There have been some particularly good warehouse parties in downtown LA over the past year. One of my favourite people to see DJ or perform live is Sophie, who was performing at this party at Heav3n last year and it just blew my mind. There were fucking lasers, sweat and people… Everything was so loud, I miss that.”
CHARLI XCX
PINK FLOYD
“If I set those aside all the Stevie Wonder gigs I’ve seen then, from a production point of view, and my awe and wonder at the scale of what was being done, my favourite gig would be Pink Floyd at the Westfalenhalle in Dortmund, when they were doing their The Wall show in 1981. That was when they built the wall across the front of the stage, it was amazing and it fitted so well with the concept of the album, it was excellent.”
KEITH HARRIS, MD, KEITH HARRIS MUSIC
FANTASTIC NEGRITO
“I went to Dingwalls about 18 months ago on the spur of the moment and saw this absolutely brilliant rootsy R&B act called Fantastic Negrito. It was one of the best live gigs I’ve ever been to – and about six months later he went and won a Grammy. This is a guy in his 50s, but he looks like he’s in his 30s. It was just one of those nights where the roof went off. I literally just thought, ‘I want to go and see some live music, what’s on at Dingwalls?’ And it was brilliant!”
TOM WATSON, CHAIRMAN, UK MUSIC
SMASHING PUMPKINS
“The Siamese Dream show at The Astoria in February 1994 was the greatest thing I’ve ever seen. Billy Corgan played guitar like I’ve never seen in my life. The guitarist, James Iha, looked like the coolest motherfucker I’d ever seen, D’arcy Wretzky was an absolute legendary bass player and Jimmy Chamberlin on drums was one of the greatest of that era. That night they were the best band in the world by fucking miles.”
JAMIE OBORNE, FOUNDER, DIRTY HIT/ALL ON RED MANAGEMENT
THE PRODIGY
“It was at Milton Keynes Bowl in 2010. We were supporting them in Europe and it was everything you’d want from a show as ridiculously big as the Milton Keynes Bowl. They’ve been such a big part of my band, they were real heroes in terms of being an influence on us. So being able to play with them was just amazing for starters. I can remember putting our stuff on stage to soundcheck and seeing these ambulances hanging from the rafters! I was like, ‘What the fuck!? Wow, what are we doing here, supporting a band like this!?’ It’s so unbelievably sad Keith Flint is gone, I’m so glad I have these memories. They were brilliant times for us. The shows were just incredible. Even though they ran like clockwork, because they have to when you’re an outfit that relies so heavily on production, it never got boring. You just could not get bored of it.”
ROU REYNOLDS, ENTER SHIKARI
“Lollapalooza festival in 1997, in Kansas City, still sticks out my mind as being the most amazing live experience. The Prodigy headlined it, and the Americans didn’t really know who The Prodigy were at the time. I remember Tool, who were an incredibly big rock band in the States at the time, finished their set and the Americans all turned around to start leaving to go home. Then Keith Flint came on, it was amazing watching all these Americans suddenly turn around and come back and stick it out for this English band that they’d never heard of before.”
DREW HILL, MD, PROPER MUSIC
GRACE JONES
“She headlined We Love Space at the club Space in Ibiza in August 2009. There was something truly magical about seeing this iconic artist perform in Ibiza, at one of the best clubs in the world. Grace was incredible, as always, and for the duration of her set, myself and the rest of the audience were transported away to another time and place that felt like a Balearic version of the Studio 54 era. A spectacular and unforgettable moment from an artist who remains at the top of her game and quite literally is unlike any other. Legend.”
STEVE PITRON, SVP, ISLAND RECORDS & PROMOTIONS, ISLAND RECORDS
