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“Everyone has a duty of care, but the artists are up on that stage to perform for a crowd,” says Allen. “The pedigree that was there has been diluted significantly,” says Allen.Īllen and Kemp are divided on whether the performer should hold the ultimate responsibility for crowd safety. It’s not just about money.”Īnother side-effect of the pandemic is that many highly trained security staff were forced to retrain in other fields owing to the absence of work, which has led to venues working with less-qualified operatives. “That decision is about safety,” says Kemp. In these particularly frenzied moments, performers will chat to their teams between songs and perhaps opt for a slower number to simmer down the energy in a room. “I see the genuine excitement among as if they have a Willy Wonka ticket.” “You might think Rod Stewart: no problem at all. In turn, this reactivity from artists has created an expectation of safety among fans – particularly as they and their favourite artists return to a changed industry.Īfter nearly 18 months of being deprived of live music, crowds are generally more excited across the board. Post-Astroworld, Billie Eilish was widely praised as one of the first musicians to pause proceedings in order to get a fan an inhaler. Fans have quickly come to understand these gig pauses as reflecting genuine concern on the part of the artist. Increasingly, it’s the artist who triggers it. “The promoter will turn around and say: ‘For you to play here the local authority have insisted I have to double my security, so my profit is now cut,’” says Allen. A gig in which a crowd feels unsafe or prompts backlash online could mean ticket sales plunging or heightened infrastructure fees. The world’s richest artists make more than 75% of their income from touring.
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“Shit,” though, as Allen says, “can happen.” It’s why the showstop procedure is still a key part of reactive management, the final emergency mechanism at the end of a daisy chain of safe practices.Īstroworld has made touring teams aware of the risks of not having such a procedure in place: as well as the potential injury to life, musicians may face legal, reputational and financial repercussions.
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“The more you plan, the more you can mitigate the chances,” says Kemp. In 2016, Kemp worked with the Roskilde festival in Denmark – the scene of a 2000 tragedy where nine people were crushed to death during Pearl Jam’s performance – to establish a meticulous protocol including a system of staggered entry to reduce crushes. The aftermath at the Roskilde festival in 2000.
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“There needs to be a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities,” Allen explains, referencing the extensive planning he undertook for Eminem’s Anger Management tour, in which they invited the police force from the city of the subsequent gig to prepare by attending the one before. The vast majority of crowd management today is still preventive rather than – as with the showstop procedure – reactive. While shows had been stopped before – Nirvana stopped a show in Oakland in 1993 to challenge a sexual assault in the crowd – it was Allen’s codification of the procedure in 1997 that made it a serious tool in the crowd manager’s arsenal, and one now widely used by security staff worldwide. Given that people die within three minutes of not having oxygen, he says, you “need to hear”. So did Allen’s team, who he says accepted ridicule for wearing noise-cancelling headphones to communicate with one another – as opposed to clip-on mic headsets – before they went mainstream. The Gallagher brothers actually cared about what happened.” “Anybody else who tried to get on stage and do that. The founder of Mind Over Matter Consultancy, Prof Chris Kemp, who started the world’s first crowd management degree, says that the procedure worked because it came from the band themselves. They didn’t want a death or a major incident at their concerts, simple as that.” We must have stopped 17 to 25 different shows around the world the band were 100% compliant. The system he set up saw him stand on the stage barrier ready to signal to the Gallaghers if the crowd’s safety was compromised. “I explained to Noel that if we didn’t have this system in place, there’s a strong possibility that someone’s going to get seriously hurt.” At a gig in Aberdeen, the energy of the crowd was so “off the Richter scale” that it necessitated establishing a formal plan of action in the event of future mishap. In September 1997, Allen coined the term “showstop procedure” while working with Oasis.