Stadium Concerts Quotes

At the end of OK Computer we were playing big, big arenas and it wasn't right. You can do those things occasionally but at the time it didn't feel right.

In those days a concert was a personal experience. I wanted to be as close as possible to the audience, and of course big stadiums didn't enable you to do that. It wasn't my style.

As a rock fan, you read of the big labels and the multinationals and the big tours with road crews and semi-trailers full of gear, and playing stadiums. In the '90s, that's what we did.

When I started making music, we'd lost a lot of our great people. Rock was moving in a direction I didn't like. Rock was my generation's revolutionary, sexual, poetic, and political voice, but it had become corporatized. It was going into stadiums. It was so far removed from its basic roots.

I enjoy my solo career because I get to play smaller places like clubs and theaters, and the interaction with the audience is much higher quality. It also sounds better than a baseball stadium. Everybody has a good seat, and I don't have to play a specific part like I do in the Eagles.

When I was managing Cream and the Bee Gees at the same time - when they were playing stadiums all over the world - it was very wearing.

The big stadiums get totally packed, and everyone knows the words, and it's screaming young girls. I met a whole bunch of great Nashville musicians, and they accepted me in their community. Classic rock and country music go well together.

We've got a great bench of songs, and the people have a really good time at our Stereophonics's shows. People are the same all over the world. If we can play football stadiums and arenas in one country, there's no reason we can't play them in another country. People are people.

You know, with bands like Kiss back out on the road and Aerosmith coming out, we are going to be a band like that, in the sense that it's a big rock band.

Even the biggest bands - and I hate to break the magic - but even the band that sold out 90,000 tickets in your football stadium, they might come back two years later and do an arena. It still feels huge, but there's a difference - there's a big difference. And there's a big difference playing a 30,000-seat stadium and a 90,000.

The idea of standing five feet away from Norah Jones and listening to her sing Neil Young's 'Down By The River' was just phenomenal. I compare that to what my kids know of at a concert, which is sitting in a stadium and watching a huge screen.

You feel quite distant by playing at huge stadiums year after year, where you only can see a great darkness in front of you.

People had this idea about becoming rock stars packing stadiums instead of having the goal of becoming what musicians used to be in terms of how they would perform and connect people.

Travelling to different countries is a goal. I wouldn't mind playing huge places if we got an opportunity to, but it's nice to play small places too. Fish was saying yesterday that he doesn't ever want to play stadiums, or maybe he would once, he said.