Well, that’s the UK part of the Clockwork Angels tour over. And Rush went out on a high note with their performance last night in Glasgow. The crowd didn’t quite beat Sheffield for atmosphere – but they came darned close. It was a great way for Rush to leave the UK on this tour.
The set was virtually the same as the one they first played in Manchester – but with the interesting addition of Limelight in place of Middletown Dreams in the first part of the set. Here’s the set list as I remember it:
Part 1
- Subdivisions
- Big Money
- Force Ten
- Grand Designs
- Limelight
- Territories
- The Analog Kid
- The Pass
- Where’s My Thing? (with drum solo)
- Far Cry
Part 2
- Caravan
- Clockwork Angels
- The Anarchist
- Carnies
- The Wreckers
- Headlong Flight (with drum solo)
- Halo Effect
- Wish Them Well
- The Garden
- Dreamline
- Drum Solo
- Red Sector A
- YYZ
- The Spirit of Radio
Encore
- Tom Sawyer
- 2112 Part I: Overture
- 2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx
- 2112 Part VII: Grand Finale
The band were perfect, as usual. Here’s a selection of some of the pictures I got from my excellent position centre stage, and about 6 rows back.
Initially, I was impressed that the SECC was only charging £6 for the car park, but I was subsequently very disappointed that they had apparently disabled all the drinks vending machines inside (£1.50 for a bottle of Coke), which subsequently forced everyone to pay £2.00 or more at the event catering outlets. I tried four machines when I got there, and all were either broken or not accepting money. Miraculously, ALL of them were working at the end of the show as we made out way out. Deny it all you like, SECC, you DID disable them! There’s no way the vending machine company comes and fixes so many broken machines after 6pm on a Thursday evening.
The SECC is an unusual arena inasmuch as it doesn’t go up very far (not high tiers), but it curves around the stage more than most places. It seems to be based on an oval shape, whereas all the other UK venues are on a rectangular plan.
Whenever I go to see Rush I’m always worried when I see any empty or unfilled seats, because I know Rush care about that a lot, and it makes me fret about whether it will make it worth their while coming back on their subsequent tours. But some people go completely overboard with their pessimism and negativity.
Attendances
I don’t have official figures, but here is my assessment of the attendances for the 5 shows on the UK tour.
Manchester – I couldn’t see many empty seats, and only a couple of tiers at the back were sheeted off. I would say the arena was at least 90% full, and with a stated capacity of 23,000 that means there were more than 20,000 present.
London – I couldn’t see any significant numbers of empty seats. I would say the venue was over 95% full, and with a capacity of 20,000 that means there were around 19,000 there.
Birmingham – only a couple of sheeted-off tiers. I would say the arena was over 90% full, and with a capacity of approximately 14,000, that means there were more than 12,500 there.
Sheffield – there were quite a few empty seats and empty tiers. The venue was at least 75% full, and with a capacity of 13,500 that means around 10,000 people present.
Glasgow – by now (having read the negative comments elsewhere) I was keeping tabs. Four complete blocks were sheeted off out of 24 blocks in total. Even assuming that these blocks were the same size as all the others (the six floor blocks are bigger), that means 85% of the arena was in use. There were a few empty seats on the floor, but not too many. So I estimate that there was at least an 85% capacity crowd in an arena with a maximum capacity of 10,000 – so 8,500 present.
As I mentioned in the Sheffield review, the crowd doesn’t have to be at maximum capacity to make a brilliant show. Nor does a single empty seat mean the beginning of the end of Rush, which seems to be the way some people on some forums look at it! With around 70,000 people therefore seeing the shows in the UK, gross ticket sales must have exceeded £3.7m – and then there would have been merchandise sales on top of it all. I don’t think that Rush will have been unduly concerned about a few empty seats.
It’s worth noting that Rush is 33rd in the list of 2012 tour earners in North America. Considering that the tour only began in September 2012, and that it had grossed $27.2m by year end (36 shows), that’s a bloody good turnout they’re experiencing. In fact, if my calculation above is correct, the UK stage (5 shows) was pro rata more profitable than the ones in the US (though you have to remember that shipping everything over here and humping it around Europe costs more than just moving it around North America). So much for the doom and gloom merchants out there!
Merchandise
The quality of Rush tour merchandise is astounding. Admittedly, at £30 for a T-shirt and £60 for a button-up baseball shirt you’d expect nothing less – and there was even a leather jacket available priced at £400 (I saw at least half a dozen people wearing one at the various gigs) – but the merchandise stalls were doing a roaring trade at every one of the UK concerts.
The Shows
People have complained that the ticket prices were too high. Well, mine had a face value of £75 each, but I paid nearly double that to my agent to make sure I was near the front. I would gladly have paid more if necessary.
Given that most of the shows were virtually sold out, and even the poorest attendance was still around 75% of capacity (Sheffield was an anomaly all round), it would seem that a lot of other genuine fans were also more concerned about seeing Rush than they were about getting tickets for under £35 with their Happy Meals at McDonalds! You see, you get your money’s worth with Rush. The tickets may have been the most expensive ever, but for that you got a show which began around 7.30pm and finished not far off 11pm. You got 3 hours of music (with a 15 minute break in the middle), great light show, rear-screen movies, multiple overhead screens, fireworks – and a 5- or 7-piece string ensemble for half of the show. And that’s on top of seeing a legendary band in performance.
You can’t shift a spectacle of that size around the world for 1980s or 1990s ticket prices, nor can you draw parallels with ticket prices for lesser artists who only put on 80-90 minute shows, or who have a vast secondary income as a result of their glitzy, Stateside showbiz image and corresponding endorsements, and who use cheap (or free) tickets at certain gigs as extra fuel for that image.
Rush is about the music and the performance.
As an aside, Billy Joel is touring later this year, and his tickets have a face value of £95. Bruce Springsteen tickets are at least £68 at various stadiums (I think more at arenas). And let’s not forget the Rolling Stones, who were charging into the hundreds for their sold-out tickets. These people are in business, and they have every right to charge what people are prepared to pay.
The Future
The Clockwork Angels Tour is scheduled to finish in August 2013 (as I mentioned, it began in September 2012). In an interview I heard with Alex Lifeson on Planet Rock a couple of weeks ago, he said that they were planning to take some time off (a “couple of years” was mentioned) once the tour ended. I suspect that they’ll be back at work in less than two years, though. They enjoy the job too much.
I’m a bit late with this review because I didn’t get home until nearly 5am this morning! It was a clear run back from Glasgow, across the A66 to the A1, and it was nice and mild. I had developed a streaming cold the day before, and felt like crap coming back, but I saw some stunning noctilucent clouds when I stopped at around 1am somewhere in the southern reaches of Scotland. Nottingham was cloudy, but in full daylight when I got back, whereas it had been above 20ºC and sunny all afternoon and evening up in Glasgow.