Big venues pack summer schedules with big acts
A decade ago, an idea circulated through the music industry: Big concert venues were doomed. Many thought old superstars would die off or quit the business and younger acts wouldn’t cultivate fan bases to replace them. The idea was wrong on multiple levels.
This summer, Boston will see one of its biggest concert seasons. Older icons have stuck around — James Taylor, Billy Joel and Dead & Company will return to Fenway Park. U2, Coldplay and Kenny Chesney head back to Gillette Stadium. Newer artists have continued to graduate to bigger venues — the 5,000seat Blue Hills Bank Pavilion has packed its schedule with such fresh faces as Jason Isbell, Alt-J, Alabama Shakes and Father John Misty.
Fenway, Gillette and Live Nation’s largest venues, the Xfinity Center and Pavilion, won’t set records this summer, but they will all be close: There will be an astounding 25 shows at Xfinity and 48 at the Pavilion. However, the TD Garden will make history.
“It’s been a record-breaking year for concerts at TD Garden, having booked 31 shows, six with multi-date engagements, and we aren’t done booking yet,” TD Garden President Amy Latimer said. “We’ve been able to capture a wide range of touring acts, making TD Garden the perfect venue for all types of music, from Red Hot Chili Peppers to Kendrick Lamar to Ed Sheeran.”
All three of our region’s pro sports venues house legendary teams — the TD Garden somehow managed to fit these concerts around playoff runs from both the Celtics and Bruins. While Fenway will always be known as the home of the Sox, concerts have become a major source of revenue, publicity and fun for the organization. What began in 2003, with Bruce Springsteen as a one artist/two concerts a summer tradition, has blossomed into something huge: Fenway hosted 11 concerts in 2016 and will have eight this summer.
“There is no perfect number (of yearly Fenway concerts),” Red Sox President Sam Kennedy said. “We target a wide range of artists and genres when booking concerts, and, as you can imagine, matching tour schedules with the limited number of road trips each season that are long enough to accommodate building a stage can be challenging. We try to work in as many shows as the baseball schedule and concert touring schedules allow.”
But surely Billy Joel and James Taylor, who are 68 and 69 respectively, won’t be headlining the bandbox in a decade. Nobody will want to see 67-year-old Bono strutting his stuff or a 79-yearold Bob Weir croaking out Grateful Dead tunes in 2027, right? Don’t be so sure. Bob Dylan (75), Neil Diamond (76) and Willie Nelson (84) are all on tour this summer.
Partly because nobody is retiring, partly because plenty of new artists keep breaking nationally, Live Nation New England President Don Law doesn’t see an end to success of the biz.
“It’s hard to be clairvoyant, but clearly people love to go to live events,” Law said. “We don’t have ’ BCN. We don’t have ’FNX. We don’t have rock radio driving the concert business anymore. You’d think that would cause a downturn, but really, the business is bigger than ever. If you look at clubs and theaters, and on up through the industry, it’s all bigger than ever.
“I don’t know if I would predict much change in a decade,” he added. “And it’s not just Boston. The concert business is booming everywhere.”
So if you’re still waiting on that U2 at Fenway show, looks like you have time. Bono and band at the park in the next year or the next decade is a real possibility.