Arena rock is dying – so why build more arenas?
Earlier this month I received an email bearing news of a ground-breaking happening. This summer, I was told, the Standon Calling festival, in Hertfordshire, will become the first British event of its kind at which “51 per cent of the artists across all music stages [will identify] as female or non-binary”. Over four-nights in July, the 10,000 or so people in attendance will be at liberty to enjoy sets by, among many others, Self Esteem, The Human League and Melanie C.
Good. But as the British music scene prepares to embark on another season of outdoor performances, a different kind of imbalance continues to grow, unopposed and unaddressed. As persistent as knotweed, it centres around the question of age. Not only is the headline class of the 21st Century growing older, but the rock biz’s rickety infrastructure for younger bands means that at the top end of the market replacements are proving hard to find. Of all the British guitar groups formed in the 21st Century, only one, Arctic Monkeys, have risen to stadium-level.
In announcing last month that the Monkeys (relatively youthful with an average age of almost 37) will be joining the 75-year old Elton John and Guns N’ Roses, whose core members are in their late 50s and early 60s, as the three main-stage headliners at this year’s Glastonbury, festival organiser Emily Eavis spoke of a “pipeline” problem as the reason for this somewhat off-brand line-up. To put it quietly, it scrambles my brain that in using this word, she is referring only to the sex of the artists atop the bill. As best as I can tell, age doesn’t come into it.
“I agree with Emily Eavis that there’s a problem with the pipeline,” says Mark Davyd, the CEO and founder of the Music Venue Trust, a domestic charity which seeks to protect and preserve grassroots venues in the UK. “But what’s her role in it? Your role can’t be just to sit there as Glastonbury… and say that the pipeline isn’t producing enough headliners.” He goes on to say that, according to research conduced by his organisation “the average age of festival headliners is going up… every year.”
In other words, despite the concert industry “generating a lot of money and sustaining a lot of jobs, it doesn’t seem to have a plan for the future. “The whole thing needs a rethink,” Davyd tells me.
Certainly, the strategy of hoping that something will turn up is looking more desperate with each passing year. Last summer, the average age of the six headliners at British Summer Time (at which patrons pay as much as £750 for an evening’s entertainment at London’s Hyde Park) was 64. Alarmingly, but for the presence of the 34-year old Adele atop the bill for two nights, it would have been higher still. From the stage, at least one of the acts let it be known that time was at last catching up with them. “Probably we won’t be passing by this way again,” admitted the 74-year old Don Henley at the end of a set by the Eagles.
But before we start ordering wholesale quantities of lilies and vol-au-vents, it should be said that some genres are faring better than others. The popularity of artists such as Taylor Swift and Beyonce, as well as K-poppers Blackpink and Jackson Wang, suggests that the most successful practitioners of 21st Century pop have little trouble ascending to headline status in the largest indoor and outdoor venues in the world. Conversely, though, younger people armed with guitars and drums and amplifiers are struggling for their livelihoods. Such is the slough of their despond, in fact, that the long-term viability of arena rock itself looks very much in doubt.
Which is odd because arenas themselves could hardly be more in vogue. Up and across Britain there are currently plans to build no fewer than eight enormodomes, with capacities ranging from 8,000 to almost 25,000, in cities including Bristol, Edinburgh, Sunderland and Dundee. And while a minority of these projects are yet to progress beyond the drawing board, others have broken ground. Scheduled to open in December of this year, Co-op Live, in Manchester, will be the largest indoor venue in the country.
The trend looks more like a frenzy than a strategy. When it opens in 2025, the 12,500 seat Sage, in Gateshead, will stand only a short distance from a comparably-sized arena in Newcastle that boasts just 19-bookings between now and the end of the year. In Liverpool, meanwhile, the M&S Bank Arena advertises a spring and summer season peppered with cover bands paying tribute to (among others) Bob Marley, Take That, Neil Diamond, Queen, ABBA and The Beatles. As best I can tell, barely a ticket has been sold for The Magic Of The Bee Gees show in July.
“The question we should be asking is, ‘What is the point of this additional capacity?’,” Mark Davyd tells me. “Not now, because we know that 60-years of contemporary music history has created a number of legacy artists that have the potential to sell out these arenas. But the point is that an arena is a permanent structure of the landscape. We’re not putting up a temporary arena for which people can buy tickets to see the remaining members of the Rolling Stones play this year, or the year after. It’s going to be there in 10 years time.”
Which is more than can be said for other public spaces. After witnessing the closure of more than a dozen grassroots venues in the UK this year alone, the Music Venue Trust anticipates harder times still with the cessation next month of the government’s Energy Enhanced Release Scheme. This is the reality of the pipeline about which Emily Eavis spoke last month. This is where it all begins. Or where it’s supposed to, at least. Because to take just one notable example, of the 25-clubs visited by Oasis on their first tour of Britain, in 1993, only nine remain open today.
“I think cities need to be smarter about this,” Davyd says. “I don’t think they should be allowing these arenas to open, as part of a planning process, if there isn’t an economic plan of how they’re going to find the talent to put on in future years. And it’s so easy to do. You’ve got people who are paying £100, £150, up to £300 to see some of these acts. What about if they paid £1 more and that money went into a fund that supported grassroots artists and venues? Let’s just make this a bit more economically sustainable.”
He continues. “[Our venues] put on thousands of bands, thousands of acts, and maybe one or two of them will… rise to be an Adele or an Ed Sheeran. Coldplay played my venue [The Forum] in Tunbridge Wells three times, each time as a support [group]. Did I think they’d go on to headline stadiums on any of those three occasions? No, I didn’t. Because nobody knows… You just have to get the infrastructure right so that there’s enough activity at the lower level that people are able to rise through the levels to get to the point where they’re filling these arenas, these stadiums, and headlining these festivals.”
The problem seems particularly British, Certainly, in North America, my home for six months until July, the business model from sea to shining sea is that rooms such as the United Center, in Chicago, and the Little Caesars Arena, in Detroit, operate around the tenancy of ice hockey and basketball franchises whose occupancies can be relied upon to bring custom for as many as 114-nights each year. Overwhelmingly, in the UK things are different. When it comes to local attractions, it seems rather a lot to expect Peter Kay to give up three months in order to bolster the box office receipts at the Bolton Arena.
Which is why, a mere 15-blocks from where I write these words, there stands a venue that can be confident that its rightful claim as “The World’s Most Famous Arena” will remain unchallenged. With its $17 pints of beer and its $200 tickets to see the New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden will never be reduced to hosting events at which a look-a-like crooner sings the songs of Frankie Valli for coachloads of tourists bussed in from the boondocks. With upcoming concerts by The National, Paramore, Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service and Avenged Sevenfold, MSG has even managed to attract a rock clientele that looks comparatively hip and young.
Even so, it was the last of this year’s bookings that caught my eye. Come December, hometown icons Kiss will at last lower the curtain on their 50-year career with two farewell appearances at “the Garden”. With the very architects of arena rock itself preparing to leave the stage, what remains will seem more fragile than ever before.
