Touring issues - King Crimson
Jan 26, 2023 12:00:55 GMT
Post by keithknight on Jan 26, 2023 12:00:55 GMT
Fripp on touring from an interview in Rolling Stone July 2022:
Whether King Crimson itself will ever be seen on a stage again is less certain. “No plans at all,” he says. “I think we have to view the reality of the age of the people involved. Two of us are 76, and shortly three will be. So going out for eight weeks to do performances of three hours and 20 minutes is a very big ask. It takes me six months to get ready as a player. King Crimson guitar parts for me are the Olympics of guitar playing. And being asked to do athletic feats that I was doing 40 or 50 years ago, that’s also a big ask.”
To exacerbate matters, Fripp says the band’s 2021 tours were “logistically terrifying,” starting with having to put up $2 million in advance for hotels, truck, and touring equipment. “In the time of lockdown, the people providing services were nervous,” he says, “and they wanted deposits, quite reasonably.” Traveling to the States from Europe, the group had to endure random searches and health checks upon departure, only to arrive in the U.S. for their first shows in Florida and Texas and find neither masks nor precautions. “No one gave a hoot!” Fripp exclaims. “At the time, 40 percent of the new outbreaks were in those two states. If we had lost dates because of Covid, the King Crimson partnership would have been bankrupted. It was that much on an edge.”
VdGG are operating live on a smaller scale than Crimson but the issues they are facing are not dissimilar. I would imagine that having to abandon last year's tour would put VdGG insurance premiums up significantly. Quite apart from everyone's state of health.
Whether King Crimson itself will ever be seen on a stage again is less certain. “No plans at all,” he says. “I think we have to view the reality of the age of the people involved. Two of us are 76, and shortly three will be. So going out for eight weeks to do performances of three hours and 20 minutes is a very big ask. It takes me six months to get ready as a player. King Crimson guitar parts for me are the Olympics of guitar playing. And being asked to do athletic feats that I was doing 40 or 50 years ago, that’s also a big ask.”
To exacerbate matters, Fripp says the band’s 2021 tours were “logistically terrifying,” starting with having to put up $2 million in advance for hotels, truck, and touring equipment. “In the time of lockdown, the people providing services were nervous,” he says, “and they wanted deposits, quite reasonably.” Traveling to the States from Europe, the group had to endure random searches and health checks upon departure, only to arrive in the U.S. for their first shows in Florida and Texas and find neither masks nor precautions. “No one gave a hoot!” Fripp exclaims. “At the time, 40 percent of the new outbreaks were in those two states. If we had lost dates because of Covid, the King Crimson partnership would have been bankrupted. It was that much on an edge.”
VdGG are operating live on a smaller scale than Crimson but the issues they are facing are not dissimilar. I would imagine that having to abandon last year's tour would put VdGG insurance premiums up significantly. Quite apart from everyone's state of health.