Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl is offering fans of live music some hope this week, insisting that concerts will be a thing again.
“I don’t know when it will be safe to return to singing arm in arm at the top of our lungs, hearts racing, bodies moving, souls bursting with life. But I do know that we will do it again, because we have to,” he wrote in The Atlantic.
“It’s not a choice. We’re human. We need moments that reassure us that we are not alone. That we are understood. That we are imperfect. And, most important, that we need each other.”
Last month, U.S. bioethicist Zeke Emanuel told The New York Times it will be quite some time before concerts and music festivals are allowed to happen again. "Realistically we’re talking fall 2021 at the earliest," he said. California governor Gavin Newsom also predicted a slow return to live music events. "The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine," he said.
A study by United Talent Agency and SightX found that only 39 percent of respondents said they will attend an arena or stadium concert or a music festival within the first month after COVID-19 restrictions are eased.
Grohl said the lockdown has reduced live music to live-streaming – “unflattering little windows that look like doorbell security footage and sound like Neil Armstrong’s distorted transmissions from the moon, so stuttered and compressed.”
He said fans will still want to live the concert experience and see artists onstage rather than solely on their computers.
“I’ve been lifted and carried to the stage by total strangers for a glorious swan dive back into their sweaty embrace. Arm in arm, I have sung at the top of my lungs with people I may never see again,” wrote Grohl. “All to celebrate and share the tangible, communal power of music.”