Plug pulled on Sir Paul McCartney

Dave_C_2

We can - and probably will - argue all day and all night* about the merits and demerits of the Bruce Springsteen performance.

However from a MSE point of view the Boss is good value for money in terms of hours played per gig.

Dave

*But only up to 10:40pm

Kite2010

Better an artist over-runs then being tight and manages to pull out the last song to be 10 minutes long just to fulfil the contract of (say) 90 minutes. Once that clock hits the 90 minute mark it's thank you and good night.

art_for_arts_sake

Good job it wasn't Ken Dodd on stage or they'd still be there now.

zenmaster

art_for_arts_sake wrote: »

I think you'll find it was Ritchie Valens, who was only 17 when he died in the same plane crash as Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.

Oh dear. Not strong on sarcasm are you?

I bet you do well in Trivial Pursuit or pub quizzes though .

In case it comes up, the pilot was Roger Peterson.

scotty1971

was this a free concert?

zenmaster

Dave_C wrote: »

In reply to

I can't find the original post but, I think you will find that it was Twist and Shout not La Bamba.

It was a cover of an Isley Brothers song. The Beatles Please Please Me Album (which contained this song) reached number 1 in the album charts and the Twist and Shout EP reached number 2 in the singles charts.

So I think this counts as a Beatles hit:)

Dave

I heard it on the radio this morning. It was indeed Twist and Shout though it was reported as La Bamba.

I suspect they played them both as a medley, as I have done many times in pub bands, because they are basically the same song. We never finished with The Sound of Silence though.

Yo no soy marinero, soy capitan.

Azari

melbell wrote: »

Im glad they shut it down I had 3 days of The Stone Roses. I live within 300 meters-ish of the stage, I could hear every word.

Whilst your there rocking away. think of the residents!!

And the children.

Won't somebody please think of the children?

Gothicfairy

This is the same rubbish Gun's and Roses pull all the time. I could understand an over run when the band is green and doesn't understand the licensing rules or local council / government rules but when someone has been around this long they must understand a cut off point.
As has already been mentioned there are places in the USA where they are very very up on all the rules and regulations and the artist gets fined as well as the venue so there is little excuse.

Do your set to the time scale you are booked for and let the venue close on time ( as advertised) so that everyone can get home.

I have had to leave concerts to catch trains etc that over run and I find that more annoying as it means I am missing out through no fault of my own, I am where I am meant to be within the time frame set so why can't so call professionals manage the same ?

Scarpacci

I was there and although it was a strange, somewhat disappointing way to end the gig, it's been blown way out of proportion in the media. The end of a song was cut off - faded out actually, as they seemed to switch the stacks off one-by-one - and we missed them saying goodbye. There may have been another song planned, but they were clearly wrapping up. Sure, a Beatle and the Boss is big news, but we were still treated to an excellent show and this fantastic duet (although I'm not much of a McCartney fan).

I really can't get angry about this. I don't like the rules in this country; 10:30 seems far too early to me and I wish we more like the Europeans who have concerts run past midnight, but then I don't live near a giant park or stadium. And a later curfew wouldn't necessarily have worked, as they would likely have hit up against that too. Having leeway is fine (they did get 10 minutes), but if it becomes engrained that you can have an extra 10/20 minutes or so, well they'll probably fill that up too. I can see the need for a hard line, although obviously it could have been handled better.

I do feel the need to defend Springsteen a little as some comments in this thread are definitely off the mark. They really don't break curfews as a way to stick it to the man, they're not young hell-raisers thinking they're annoying those in power. They just do it because they want to put on a good, long show. It's easy to blame them for coming on late, but this was a festival - there were late acts before him. They really set up the stage as quickly as they could, and Springsteen even played the first song while there was still setting up going on. They could not possibly have started earlier or on time. Hard Rock Calling definitely deserve some criticism for not allocating more time. He had 3:15 allotted, 3:30 to the curfew, if everything went on time. 3:30 is about average for his current tour, but knowing how live events don't always go to plan they should have given him more time.

He played Manchester and Sunderland earlier on this tour and he came on pretty much on time and played fairly long shows without any trouble. I don't think he's been turned off elsewhere (yet), but there are curfews in other countries too - it's not just Britain. I don't think Springsteen will have been crying into his Coco Pops the next morning, or vowing never to return to Britain again.

paddyrg

^^ One of the golden rules of a multi-act show is that you do not start the headliner late - if that was the case, the show director has to shoulder a bit of the blame - if you're going to cut any act, for goodness sake make it one of the ones people don't care about!

I worked a show where we had 23 acts plus about the same in celebrity links in 8 hrs on a single stage with an 80k capacity. Very major acts, some with 100-odd people in their party (once you count dancers, choirs, etc) and at one point we were 6 mins behind, but the director caught it up by clipping a couple of sets by a track each so the headliner would run to time and not break curfew. It can be done!

That said, on a 3hr set, The Boss can tailor the length pretty well himself ;-)