Stoned Taylor Beatles Queen In Rio

Did Taylor Swift’s rising fame make more or less sense after pausing her tour over a fan’s death? Would the Rolling Stones guarded by Hell’s Angels let alone the Fab Four’s Beatlemania have passed the commonsense litmus test?

We could be cynical & say Taylor postponed one Rio concert after a young fan died just before its start in the midst of an oppressive heat wave because of liability fears. At subsequent concerts & at Taylor’s insistence, water was distributed to anyone who held up a phone & overheated crowds were doused by firefighters with hoses. Beyond that, to what extent is any performer – doing their thing as billed – responsible for attendees’ health; that is, assuming the venue that’s paying them haven’t negligently created any dangers? Think the Altamont Speedway murder captured on film in Gimme Shelter & no thanks to the use of the notorious motorcycle gang as “security” for the Rolling Stones’ 1969 concert.

Of course, we could also recall that 1966 Beatles concert at New York’s Shea Stadium, in which a 50-minute documentary clearly shows scores of fans literally swooning; as the New York Times reported, the 55k attendees’ “immature lungs produced a sound so staggering, so massive, so shrill & sustained that I quickly crossed the line from enthusiasm into hysteria & was soon in the area of the classic Greek meaning of the word pandemonium – the region of all demons.” All because John, Paul, George & Ringo were hamming it up on stage … because even they couldn’t hear themselves singing mostly off key. Meanwhile, there’s no reason to doubt Taylor was genuinely “overwhelmed by grief” by the 23-year-old’s death as she would say in a hand-written note on social media. Still, was Queen right in poetically asking all of us in their classic “The Show Must Go On”: “Empty spaces, what are we looking for?”

Davd Soul