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Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard talk going orchestral at the Bowl, and finally saying ‘F— Spotify'
Need a model for how to thrive in the stranglehold of the modern music economy? How about a band of Australian garage-rockers who cut albums at the pace of an Atlanta rap crew, tour like peak-era Grateful Dead and who just told the biggest company in streaming to go to hell. King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard are a fascinating phenomenon in rock. Over 15 years, their LPs have flitted between genres with insouciant musicianship, pulling from punky scuzz, regal soul, krautrock, electro-funk and psychedelia. These LPs come at an insane clip — sometimes up to five in a year, 27 so far. Their freewheeling live shows made them a coveted arena act, when few new rock bands can aspire to that. Two weeks ago, they became probably the most high-profile band to take their music off Spotify in the wake of Chief Executive Daniel Ek's investments in an AI-driven weapons firm. The band self-releases on its own labels — they needed no one's permission. King Gizzard returns to the Hollywood Bowl on Sunday, this time backed by the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra for a live read of its new album 'Phantom Island,' a standout LP that adds deft orchestration to its toolkit. The band's frontman, Stu Mackenzie, spoke to The Times about giving Spotify the boot, how the L.A. Phil inspired the new record's arrangements and what they've figured out about staying afloat while artists get squeezed from all sides today. What was your initial reaction to Daniel Ek's investments in an AI arms company? A bit of shock, and then feeling that I shouldn't be shocked. We've been saying f— Spotify for years. In our circle of musician friends, that's what people say all the time, for all of these other reasons which are well documented. We saw a couple of other bands who we admire, and thought 'I don't really want our music to be here, at least right now.' I don't really consider myself an activist, and I don't feel comfortable soapboxing. But this feels like a decision staying true to ourselves, and doing what we think is is right for our music, having our music in places that we feel all right about. Was choosing to leave a complicated decision for the band? The thing that made it hard was I do want to have our music be accessible to people. I don't really care about making money from streaming. I know it's unfair, and I know they are banking so much. But for me personally, I just want to make music, and I want people to be able to listen to it. The hard part was to take that away from so many people. But sometimes you've just got to say, 'Well, sorry, we're not going to be here right now.' In the end, it actually was just one quick phone call with the other guys to get off the ship. As the sizes of everything gets larger, all of the stakes start to feel higher. I grapple with that, because that's not the kind of band that I like to be in, where it feels like everything is high stakes. I do miss the time where we could just do anything without any consequences, but I still try really hard to operate like that. In the past, I have felt tied to it, that we have to be there. But with this band, we have been happy to take a lot of risks, and for the most part, I'm just happy to see what happens if we just choose the path that feels right for us. Do you think Spotify noticed or cares that you left? I don't expect Daniel Ek to pay attention to this. We have made a lot of experimental moves with the way we've released records — bootlegging stuff for free. We have allowed ourselves a license to break conventions, and the people who listen to our music have a trust and a faith to go along on this ride together. I feel grateful to have the sort of fan base you'll just trust, even when you do something a little counterintuitive. It feels like an experiment to me, like, 'Let's just go away from Spotify, and let's see what happens.' Why does this have to be a big deal? It actually feels like we're just trying to find our own positivity in a dark situation. 'Phantom Island' is a really distinct record in your catalog for using so much orchestration. I heard some conversations with the L.A. Phil planted the seed for it? We played this Hollywood Bowl show a little over two years ago, and being the home stadium of the L.A. Phil, we naturally chatted with them at the show. It did plant a seed of doing a show there backed by the orchestra. We happened to be halfway through making a record at that exact time that we weren't really sure how to finish. When we started talking about doing a show backed by an orchestra, we thought, 'Let's just make an album with an orchestra.' We rearranged and rewrote these songs with a composer, Chad Kelly. We knew the songs needed something, and we ended up rewriting the songs to work for a rock band in a symphonic medium. Were there any records you looked to for how to make that approach work? I hear a lot of ELO in there, Isaac Hayes, maybe the Beatles' 'A Day in the Life.' To be completely honest, I just don't think there was a model for it. I think we landed on something that we only could have made because we wrote the songs not knowing there were going to be orchestral parts. When you ask me what were the touchstones, well, there weren't any. I was probably thinking of a lot of music from the early '60s, a lot of soul and R&B music at that time, which had often had orchestral arrangements. Etta James, for instance, was in the tone and the feel. This isn't the perfect way to do it, but it was a really serendipitous process. Your live shows are pretty raucous to say the least; how did you adapt to keep that feeling with orchestras behind you on this tour? I was pretty anxious, to be honest. We only had one rehearsal the day before the first show. We had to go in and cross our fingers, like, 'Okay, I think that's going to work. I'm just going to hope that it translates.' Our rehearsal was the most intense two and a half hours, but for the show, you're just like, 'All right, this is it.' You've just got to commit to what's on the page. We've had some really awesome people collaborating with us — Sean O'Laughlin did the arrangements for the live shows, and Sarah Hicks is an amazing conductor. We're just a garage rock band from Australia; we're very lucky to get to honestly work with the best of the best. On the other end of the venue spectrum, what was it like playing a residency in a Lithuanian prison? It was a real prison until really recently [Lukiškės Prison 2.0 in Vilnius, Lithuania]. The history is very dark — like, very, very dark. But there are artist spaces there now, and it's quite a culturally positive force. They're the things that make you restore your faith in humanity. You spend so much of your life losing faith in it, and then you go to places like that, and you're like, 'Yeah, humans are okay.' Speaking of threats to humanity, I think your band contests the idea that artists need to use AI to make enough music to be successful on streaming. You're proof you can make a ton of music quickly, with real people. Making music is fun as f—, especially making music with other people. That's a deeply motivating factor, and we just have a ton of fun making music together. It feels human, it feels spiritual, it feels social. It's deeply central to who we all are as human beings. And it doesn't feel hard. It doesn't feel like we're fighting against some AI trend or anything. We just make music because it feels good. You're an arena act with your own label, and pretty autonomous as a band. Do you think you've figured out something important about how to be successful in the modern music economy? I think we've been good at asking internal questions, and questioning what everybody else does and whether we need to do that or not. Sometimes we do the same thing that everybody else does. Sometimes we do something completely different because it makes sense to us. I think we've been quite good at being true to ourselves and being confident, or maybe reckless enough to do that. I do think there's some serendipity and fate in the personalities of the other guys in the band, and the people that we work with, who have have also been on a pretty unconventional journey and have faith that — in the least pretentious way possible — that other people will dig it, and not worry too much about the other other stuff. Do you hope to see more and bigger bands striking out on their own, since the big institutions of the music business have yet again proven to not really reflect their values? I just know what has worked for us, and I'm not sure that means that it'll work for other people. I don't know if there's a model in it. If there is a model, it's that you don't have to follow a path if you don't want to. The well-treaded path is going to work for some people, but you don't have to stay on that. I think one thing about this band is that we've all been at peace with failing. That if this all fell apart and we went back home and we got regular jobs, I think we would say, 'Well, we're proud of ourselves. We had a good time.' We did what we wanted to do and just suffered the consequences along the way. We're probably being reckless enough to make potentially selfish decisions over and over again. But people, for some reason, want to come out and see us do that, and we're super grateful.
The Guardian
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘We have a high appetite for risk': inside King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard's historic EU tour
'It's always good to make yourself feel small,' says Stu Mackenzie. We're sitting behind the stage of the Ancient theatre in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, after the second night of his band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard's three shows there. The marble-hewn amphitheatre was built between 98-117AD. We're flanked by columns bearing ancient Greek inscriptions from back when this place was called Philippopolis; the precipitous drop behind us reveals the east side of Europe's longest continually inhabited city, the glowing cross of the Cathedral of St Louis and the shadow of the hills in the distance. In front of the stage where the Australian experimental rock band have just spent two hours wilding out is an arena where man and beast used to do battle in front of a far more bloodthirsty crowd than the one that just drank the venue dry of beer. It's hard not to feel like a speck here, awesomely adrift in all of human history. The band at Lukiškiu prison, Vilnius, Lithuania Plovdiv marks the end of Gizz's European residency tour, which has seen the band post up in five different cities for three-night runs in historic or otherwise curious venues: the panopticon Lukiškės prison in Vilnius, which closed in 2019 and is now a venue; Lycabettus hill theatre in Athens. After similarly successful residencies at natural amphitheatre-type venues in the US, the band wanted to make sure their European fans didn't get left out. 'We're like tourists on this trip as well,' says Mackenzie, still in his sweat-dappled baby pink stage boilersuit. 'The contrast between a regular bus tour, where we're in a different city every night, is pretty stark. Usually you wake up after a long drive, you actually can't remember where you are and it's about orienting yourself – finding a coffee or a green space and just surviving. But on a tour like this, you actually have a moment to soak it up and breathe, which is rare. We're having such a ball – spending time cruising around, eating, seeing the cities, just hanging out with each other – the good stuff.' Boarding from Lisbon to Barcelona Ambrose Kenny Smith on a day off in Hydra, Greece (left), and in Lisbon, Portugal If anyone knows the price of hard-touring, it's Gizz, who started as a party band in Melbourne in 2010 – hence the un-serious name, which stuck – and have gigged their way to becoming their generation's Grateful Dead or Phish, bolstering their psych-rock with metal, krautrock, microtonal experiments and more. They've headlined Green Man and End of the Road, and this month saw the release of their 27th album, Phantom Island, where country choogle meets Philly-inspired soul thanks to their first foray into orchestral arrangements. It's a beautiful if worried record, its lyrical protagonists often observing the world from the cockpit of a plane and wondering what the purpose of it all is. Performing at Lycabettus theatre, Athens, Greece The existential vibe feels right at home in these perspective-realigning venues, built on thousands of years of human existence. 'A lot of the lyrics we've written together have stemmed from spending a lot of time away from home, from family, from kids,' says Mackenzie, who welcomed his third baby just before tour started, 'and trying to figure out how we make sense of all of that, and the world. It has been an existential few records,' he agrees. From left: Mickey Cavs, Stu Mackenzie, Joey Walker, Ambrose Kenny Smith, Lucas Harwood and Cook Craig backstage at the Ancient theatre, Plovdiv, Bulgaria Gizz run a staunchly DIY enterprise. They self-release their albums, which they still record in the same small studio in Melbourne. They've never worked with a producer. Their friend Jason Galea does all their artwork and Maclay Heriot takes their photos. They release free bootlegs of every live show – the Barcelona residency is already up on Spotify by the time they hit Plovdiv – and broadcast a high-quality livestream of each night on YouTube that they've taken painstaking care to perfect. To outsiders, they're perhaps best known for their prolificacy – in 2017 alone, they released five albums. Their output can be seen as intimidating, or perceived as some sort of novelty factor. But for Mackenzie, it seems more about the sense that every creative whim is worth honouring, and every bit of life really is worth figuring out creatively, indicative of a tendency towards archivism. A member of the Weirdo Swarm at Coliseu dos Recreios, Lisbon 'You've nailed a big part of the motivation for it,' he says. 'We as a group have a big appetite for risk. We've been good at just being in it together, and if this fails or people don't like it, it's fine. We're all here together because we actually are all best friends, we're really grateful to be here and I don't think anyone wants to do anything else.' The ambition isn't to play the Royal Albert Hall, as they are this November; that's just a nicely crazy surprise. 'It does keep the motors greased and it keeps us on the horse,' says Mackenzie. 'But it's definitely not the goal. We've been pretty careful to honour that. As things become more seductive, we've tried to keep it feeling very small. There might be a few more people around, but I think we've been very protective of our little, tiny, miniature universe.' But in another sense, Gizz is a beautifully open-source universe. They give fans – the Weirdo Swarm – their blessing to make bootleg merch and even bootleg records of their live recordings (they only ask that they send them a 'fair' amount of pressings in exchange). Where much pop fandom constitutes little more than idol worship, the Swarm are a generative and self-sustaining community: on their fansite, they've put together a detailed guide to each city on the EU tour, including information about attitudes to LGBTQ+ people and drugs (both very censorious in Bulgaria). 'I do feel really proud of that,' says Mackenzie. From left: Stu Mackenzie and Joey Walker playing 'Nathan' at Lukiškiu prison In Plovdiv, a group of local fans thrilled that Gizz have finally come to their country have organised daytime meet-ups at a bar before the first and last shows, where stickers and friendship bracelets are traded and bespoke posters are sold, as well as nightly afterparty gigs at a local bar. Once again, not a drop of beer remains at any event. The atmosphere is radiantly sincere and celebratory. We meet fans from Denver who are almost always on acid; a kid from Belgrade who posts in the rapidly renewing Gizz sub-Reddit that he loves Plovdiv so much he wants to move there, and includes the details of his outfit so that anyone can come up and say hi, which we do and get a huge hug. We hear about the flight from the last date in Athens to the Bulgarian capital Sofia, which was filled with about 80 Gizz heads and the band themselves. A closeup of Nathan Tara from San Diego has seen the band umpteen times and used to be a Phish fan; the difference in the oft-compared 'jam bands', she says, is that Phish wig out into abstraction – catnip for casual listeners off their nut on drugs – while Gizz splice together intricate medleys of their songs, which rewards close focus from fans literate in their vast catalogue. One group of fans have made Gizz-themed football shirts in the Bulgarian team colours; the back of one is emblazoned with 'Nathan', the name of the modular synth rack that looks like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard that the band have been consistently building and experimenting with on tour. 'Every city we go to, they're like, 'Is there a modular synth place here?'' says Heriot, their photographer: the band – and particularly musician Joey Walker – add new bits to it like tourists collecting fridge magnets. From left: Joey Walker and Stu Mackenzie building Nathan in Lisbon On day two, an excellent free socialist architecture walking tour of the city that apparently usually draws five people attracts a crowd of 43 – largely Gizz heads – to the delight of the tour guide. Before the show, an American guy called Michael is going around the venue asking people what their first ever gig was, though it's hard to imagine anyone having a better story than his: after his dad picked up some German hitchhikers who stayed for a month, to his mother's chagrin, their parting apology was to take him to see Fleetwood Mac on the Rumours tour. During the performances, Heriot is underneath Nathan, shooting upwards through Mackenzie's legs, putting his battered Leica M6 – originally a war camera – to good use. Drugs may be illegal but weed, acid and MDMA are apparently flowing freely. And after a heavy rainshower before the show, fans everywhere (me included) are stacking it down the steep, slippery marble steps, many of which have no hand rails, sending drinks flying. (The venue's health and safety doesn't seem to have moved on since ancient times.) On the last night, we overhear an Australian man giving a local tips on how to know when the acid is kicking in. As the final show of the run draws to a close, Walker says from the stage: 'Thanks to our majestic crew for facilitating our bizarre-as-fuck behaviour.' From left: Ambrose Kenny Smith, Cook Craig, Lucas Harwood, Mickey Cavs, Joey Walker and Stu Mackenzie at Lukiškiu prison Part of that is rewarding the fans with a totally different setlist on each night of a single residency, not repeating any songs in a single city. 'It's not really sent over until half an hour before the show,' says Heriot, who has known the band for 10 years, has carte blanche to document their existence and also got their blessing to learn how to shoot on 16mm film for a forthcoming documentary. 'They all know what to do, but it leaves that opportunity to step it up. You can see there's a chemistry there where they don't even have to talk, they've played with each other for so long and for so many hours. It's super interesting to watch, and what makes it exciting to document and photograph.' He talks about the classic 'hero photograph' of a musician, where they're caught mid-jump or in a triumphant pose. 'The photo looks incredible – then you see them doing it again the next night. It happens every night in the same spot, at the same time.' Gizz's constant deviation from any script means 'you really have to respond to the moment, to be as tuned in as possible to what's happening.' To aid that, Heriot wears an in-ear with the front-of-house mix. 'It means I can really hear what's happening on stage and chase their energy.' Gizz entered proggy territory around 2016's Nonagon Infinity, leading to a tightly structured live show that never stopped for breath. 'We got to the end of the rainbow on that one,' says Mackenzie. 'For us, at least, it got boring. And that's when the setlist started to unravel, throwing in older songs. We had this back catalogue we barely ever played live – we should dig into this. We really noticed around that time that the audience slowly started to change in a nice way, and it became apparent that nobody cares if you make a wrong note.' Performing at Lukiškiu prison It dovetailed with the 34-year-old's growing interest in connecting with people rather than shocking them. 'People are interested in the humanity of that, and that's quite a liberating feeling. It's also something we still wrestle with on the daily – you get up there and you might as well be naked. It's pretty intense, like – shit, I can't remember this song we haven't played in two years, we didn't soundcheck it. But you work your way through it together, it forces you to look at each other and make music with each other.' Previously, he said, he felt like a performer; now he feels like a musician. Gizz also don't rehearse. 'You have no choice but to figure it out as you go, you listen and you're playing on the fly, creating in real time,' says Mackenzie. 'It's the best feeling. We've leaned into that more and more. This residency thing, part of the format is that we get to play seven hours or something of all different music – that's like a dream to us.' On the opening, title track of Phantom Island, one of Gizz's pilots has landed on a mysterious desert island, experiencing 'a symphony of delusion as my thoughts finally realise their purpose'. Amid loneliness and doubt, conspiracy and suspicion blooms. It feels like the kind of typically characterful reflection on modern life that Gizz have been writing in recent years. In a grasping industry and an increasingly siloed modern life, their existence feels like an antidote to this sort of isolation: generous, communal, devoid of cynicism and pure of motivation. Their world is seductive: small egos, huge hearts, full of purpose. Old places can make you feel small, says Mackenzie, and so can big crowds, in the best possible way. 'I know some people can get anxious in them, but I think it's important. There's something in the experience of going to a concert that is innately human, being around other people.' Phantom Island is out now on p(doom). King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard tour the US from 28 July, the UK and Europe from 31 October and Australia from 2 December.
ABC News
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard — Phantom Island
From Deep Purple and Metallica to KISS and even Sigur Rós, bands tapping orchestras for some added class is nothing new, and often to mixed results. But trust King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, arguably Australia's wildest and most prolific band, to put their unique spin on what is sometimes dismissed as bombastic cliché. Phantom Island is the group's 27th album in 13 years, (You do the maths!) What's more remarkable than the pace at which this six-headed beast pumps out new music is that the quality has rarely dipped with each release. Having restlessly switched through genre gears — power metal, psych jazz, microtonality, electronic pop, boogie rock, spoken-word Spaghetti Western — this time, King Gizz add symphonic strings, horns and woodwinds to their freewheeling mix of trippy riffs and jam-band glam. The spark for Phantom Island came from meeting members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on tour, leading to the band enlisting British conductor Chad Kelly. He added orchestral arrangements to 10 unfinished songs written and recorded alongside last year's bluesy, unruly Flight b741 . The resulting material is unlike any in the band's far-reaching discography, and has ballooned into a homecoming December tour of both rock and orchestral shows, where Kelly conducts a 29-piece ensemble. After the grandiosity of the opening title track, there's plenty of special moments that rely less on orchestral heft and more on unique fusions. The brass punching up the '70s choogle of 'Deadstick'; the eerie strings bookending 'Lonely Cosmos'. Lush flutes and acoustic interludes augmenting the Southern-fried twang of 'Sea of Doubt', while muted horns and romantic swells perfectly complement the sharper, psychedelic edges of 'Silent Spirit'. Matching these songs' mutating melodies and moods is an emphasis on passing the mic, with guitarists Cook Craig and Joey Walker trading verses with regular vocalists Stu Mackenzie and Ambrose Kenny-Smith. With so many voices and instruments jostling for space, it can make for busy listening. However, the production — more polished and cleaner than these wilfully woolly rockers typically sound — makes untangling the knotty textures and grooves easier and especially rewarding on a good pair of headphones. For all the record's sonic complexity, it's only a creative nudge forward compared to the bold leap in songwriting. There's nothing wrong with chanting about your creature of choice over gnarly riffs (Rattlesnake! Dragon! Balrog!), but Phantom Island allows some humanity to slip into the fantasy. Many years of being locked into a punishing touring lifestyle is beginning to take its toll on King Gizz, with lyrics reflecting on habitually leaving their partners and kids to meet the demands of their cultish, global fanbase. ' There's more to it now than just leaving/ 'Cause there's so much more to miss' , Walker confesses between sighing strings and slide guitar on 'Eternal Return'. ' I would say don't be a musician, my son / Be a doctor, lawyer, or a stand-up citizen, ' Kenny-Smith advises on 'Silent Spirit', words which hit all the harder given he followed in the footsteps of his dad, Dingoes frontman Broderick Smith. Touring burnout and fame fatigue, just like recruiting an orchestra, is another rock star cliché burnished into something more compelling through King Gizz's singular filter. They use crashing airplanes and voyaging ships, of both the sea-and-space-faring variety, as metaphors to layer some Gizzverse world-building into vulnerable, world-weary lyrics. Like 'Space Oddity' and 'Rocket Man' before it, 'Spacesick' uses an intergalactic trip as a metaphor for isolation. Mackenzie, lost in the orbit of the road, longs for the grounding gravity of dinner with the wife and kids. ' How did the little ones sleep? Did you make it to the zoo? … your brother told me they cried a lot when they saw a guy who looked like their pop.' Even as poignant lyrics express the interior melancholy of these intrepid travellers, the music conveys a sense of adventure. The 27th episode in the ongoing tale of King Gizzard's wild journey might leave lingering questions about the sacrifices and sustainability of their absurdly creative and successful enterprise, but as always, it's a thrill to be caught up in the ride.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard ‘Fly' High On New Single
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard soar heavenward with the smily, major-key jam 'Grow Wings and Fly,' which is the final track on and the third pre-release single from the Australian group's 27th album, Phantom Island. The 10-track set is due June 13 from (p)doom records. Filmed at Melbourne's Flinders Beach, the Hayden Somerville-directed video clip for 'Grow Wings and Fly' stars group member Ambrose Kenny-Smith as a washed ashore aquatic being who is lovingly returned to the water by fellow Gizzards Joey Walker, Cook 'Cookie' Craig, Michael 'Cavs' Cavanagh and Lucas Hardwood. Later, he appears in human form as a fisherman thinking back to prior expeditions with group member Stu Mackenzie, who is now seemingly a ghost. More from Spin: Left of the Dial: Memphis is Raised by WXYR's Sound Yusuf/Cat Stevens Is On The 'Road' To His First Memoir Queens Of The Stone Age Come 'Alive' In Paris Catacombs 'There are so many strange and beautiful ways to grow wings and fly,' Somerville says. 'We had a very special time down the coast with the band and our crew, releasing our sea creature — who somehow makes me feel a little ill and completely full of joy at the same time.' 'Grow Wings and Fly' will be familiar to sharp-eared Gizzard fans as a fragment initially tacked onto the song 'Shanghai' in live performances. It evolved into its own distinct song last year and was played in its more complete form on at least two occasions during the band's fall 2024 tour. The studio version features pedal steel guitar contributions from Gizzard's recording and front of house engineer Sam Joseph atop aspirational lyrics about the power of transcendence: 'you gotta stop the overwhelming self-doubt / catch me dancing in the summer rain with my tongue out.' The 10 cuts on Phantom Island, which are a companion of sorts to those on the 2024 album Flight b741, find King Gizzard enveloped in elaborate string arrangements and heavy orchestration — a first for the group. 'The songs felt like they needed this other energy and color, [and] that we needed to splash some different paint on the canvas,' says Mackenzie, who enlisted British conductor/arranger/keyboardist Chad Kelly to help flesh out the sound. 'He brings this wealth of musical awareness to his chameleon-like arrangements. We come from such different worlds — he plays Mozart and Bach and uses the same harpsichords they did, and tunes them the exact same way. But he's obsessed with microtonal music, too, and all this nerdy stuff like me.' Beginning Sunday (May 18) in Lisbon, Gizzard will play multi-show residencies in such off-the-beaten-path European venues as a former prison in Vilnius, Lithuania, and a 2,000-year-old Roman amphitheater in Plovdiv, and in late July, the band will be back in the U.S. for their first-ever shows backed by local symphonies. Perhaps best of all: Gizzard will debut their own festival, Field of Vision, from Aug. 15-17 in the beautiful outdoor setting of Buena Vista, Co., where they will play three distinct sets amid a lineup of friends such as Babe Rainbow, King Stingray and DJ Crenshaw. The band will then visit Europe again beginning Oct. 31 in Manchester, England, for shows divided between synth-powered 'rave sets' and local symphony-backed spotlights on Phantom Island. To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
New York Times
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
The Concert Cold War in a Quiet Enclave
When Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. designed Forest Hills Gardens, he was trying to bring the respite of an English village into the bustle of New York City. A landscape architect and city planner like his father, one of Central Park's designers, Mr. Olmsted laid out tree-lined alphabetical streets and open spaces in a pocket of Queens about nine miles east of Times Square. In 1909, these were not mere aesthetic choices: Forest Hills Gardens was an import of the English garden city, a turn-of-the-century movement in urban planning rooted in a utopian ethic. Mr. Olmsted planned for the Tudor-style houses to thoughtfully integrate with their manicured landscapes, for winding pathways to promote leisurely strolls and for curved residential streets to discourage vehicles from passing through. He did not plan, however, for the Australian rock band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Or for the sold-out shows by the Irish singer Hozier. Or really for anything about the concert venue that was once a storied tennis stadium and is now rattling both windows and nerves in the neighborhood. 'It does disrupt the calm,' Mitch Palminteri, a Forest Hills Gardens resident, said at a recent community board meeting. 'I don't want to close my window on a summer night.' Others like what the concerts represent. 'Music is about community,' said Joseph Cooney, who lives in adjacent Forest Hills. 'We have it in spades in this neighborhood. How can we ever let that go away?' What a 21st-century Forest Hills Gardens should be — A quiet haven? Or an occasional thumping concert venue that draws thousands of visitors? — and who gets to decide has turned neighbors into foes. Thousands have signed competing online petitions. Not long ago, when I was interviewing the main concert promoter, a passer-by interrupted to proclaim, 'Everything out of his mouth is a lie.' At stake is a popular concert season that provides entertainment and lifts the local economy, but also frustrates some residents who say the shows flout the city's noise code and pierce the sanctity of their summers. The feud, lingering for well over a decade, has grown more intense in recent months. A lawsuit by nearby homeowners failed to stop the concerts, so they came up with a novel legal strategy involving the New York Police Department. The bitter accusations being made include NIMBYism, corporate greed, bullying and too much electronic dance music. The Sound and the Fury Forest Hills Stadium hosted Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan and Diana Ross in the 1960s, and it is where the Beatles opened their 1964 U.S. tour after arriving by helicopter. But the concrete behemoth that opened in 1923 was not built to accommodate touring acts and music festivals. It was America's answer to Wimbledon. For decades the stadium hosted the U.S. national tennis championships, which became known as the U.S. Open when the tournament started welcoming professional athletes in 1968. Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson broke color barriers there. Rod Laver twice completed a Grand Slam — winning all four of the sport's major tournaments in one year — on its courts. Concerts continued after the U.S. Open moved to a grander site in Flushing in 1978, including stops in the 1980s from Talking Heads and Barry Manilow. But they slowed by the late 1990s, culminating with a daylong reggae concert in 1999 that resulted in noise and parking violations. The stadium grounds were quiet for a time beyond a colony of feral cats. Eventually, the promoter Mike Luba, a veteran of the jam band scene, had the idea of bringing music back to Forest Hills Stadium. The concerts resumed in 2013 with a performance by the folk rock band Mumford & Sons and have become a thriving business with a diverse lineup. Among the 37 shows last year were Kings of Leon, Tiësto and Pitbull. Residents of the Gardens and nearby Forest Hills who enjoy the concerts said they loved being able to walk home from the stadium, or even just sit in their yards with a cooler while enjoying the music for free. Doug Gilbert, who moved to the Gardens with his wife 30 years ago, would prefer the quiet. His beautiful lived-in Tudor, where light streams in through a multicolored diamond-paned glass window, is part of a small stretch of houses on Dartmouth Street with the stadium grounds in their backyards. 'When the concerts exceed the noise limit and the windows vibrate, you just can't do anything,' Mr. Gilbert said. He has data to prove it: An acoustic engineer took sound readings in Gardens homes, including Mr. Gilbert's, and found that 11 of the 13 measured concerts violated the municipal noise code. And decibel readings do not account for bass frequencies, so there is no record of the rumbling vibrations of electronic dance music, only neighbors' frustration with it. Mr. Gilbert said half the lightbulbs in his chandelier have shut off during a show after being jiggled loose. (The only show he has seen inside the stadium is the New York Pops.) That's not the half of it. The discordant riffs of sound checks start early, and even though the music has to end by 10 p.m., the trucks carrying equipment sometimes do not leave until after midnight. There is no dedicated location for Uber or Lyft, meaning that passengers roam the streets in search of pickup points. Trash is ditched in the grass, and some of the concerts are scheduled on religious holidays and school nights. Then there is the urine. 'I don't have a problem with the concert,' Sean Baker, who lives 250 feet from the stadium, told the community board. 'I have a problem with the fact that there's not a single toilet provided for the people in line, so they go into our backyards and use our yards for their toilet.' The team behind the stadium says there is more to the story. 'EDM Is What the Beatles Were' Whipping wind and the hammering sounds of construction rang in the background as Mr. Luba, the head of the company that runs Forest Hills Stadium, showed me its bass traps. The metal meshed-in corridors are designed to dampen bass frequencies and concert music. Walking through them as you ascend the stadium's stairs toward 13,000 seats is a bizarre experience, like someone is muffling your hearing with their hands. 'We had to put up the signs,' Mr. Luba said. 'People were freaking out. They're like, 'Something's wrong with my ears.'' The stadium received 20 citations from New York City between 2022 and 2024, most for noise violations and some for going past the curfew, said a spokeswoman for Mr. Luba's company, Tiebreaker Productions. It has paid the fines while appealing some of them. The spokeswoman said the stadium had no issues complying with the 75-decibel limit — about the equivalent of a vacuum cleaner or a barking dog — on the sound permits it received from the Police Department. But in 2023, the city also started to measure the concerts against a 45-decibel standard meant for noise from stores, bars and restaurants. In response to the noise complaints, Mr. Luba said, the stadium is reducing the size of its speakers and incorporating more of them. But he said efforts to install portable toilets and trash cans have been blocked by the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, a homeowners' association; Mr. Luba says it wanted a visible problem to rally behind, a contention the association said was part of a smear campaign to make the Gardens the villain. Mr. Luba disagrees with the noise code itself, saying that every Long Island Rail Road train that goes by the stadium breaks the municipal standards. He also questioned the veracity of complaints about EDM shows by artists like Sofi Tukker and Dom Dolla. As evidence, he produced a video of a cup of water — not frozen, he promised — whose surface was undisturbed by a recent concert. 'There was no EDM in 1960 or 1970,' he said. 'EDM is what the Beatles were when the parents that didn't want the Beatles were here. I'm not interested in culturally gatekeeping what people want to see.' Mr. Luba once managed the jam band String Cheese Incident and has worked for the large entertainment companies Live Nation and AEG. So when he had the idea of bringing concerts back to Forest Hills Stadium, he understood the risks. He even told one of his business partners to put $2 million in a suitcase and burn it to see how it felt. 'If you can do that, you can be in the music business with me,' he said. The first concert Mr. Luba oversaw at the stadium, by Mumford & Sons, did not go smoothly: Complaints included 'disgusting and miserable' conditions and the assertion that the frontman Marcus Mumford did not look as cute as usual. Mr. Luba said he gave back 'every single penny' to the concertgoers who requested a refund. Tiebreaker made changes that worked, and Forest Hills Stadium's concert season now runs from May to October, bringing in fans from New York's five boroughs and beyond. When there were about a dozen shows a year, the neighbors were relatively content. But as the frequency of the concerts has increased, so have the complaints. Mr. Luba maintained that he needed to schedule at least 30 shows a year for the endeavor to make financial sense. 'Our only way to pay for the stupid lawsuit is to add more shows,' he said. In a tour of the stadium, its tennis history is evident. Mr. Luba pointed out a framed photo of a teenage John McEnroe and a professional tennis player playing doubles against Santana and Meat Loaf. Of the touring musicians who have played at the tennis club, Mr. Luba said the British producer Fred again.. and the new wave band Tears for Fears stood out most. But, he said, the conflict with the neighbors has taken some of the fun out of his work. 'It was a vision quest, like a passion project,' he said. 'And now this has become this whole ordeal.' A Cultural Conflict When you cross beneath the railroad overpass that divides Forest Hills from Forest Hills Gardens, tightly packed businesses give way to airy roads and the sidewalks turn from standard New York cement to a scrubbed pebble finish. In the planned neighborhood, the roadways are owned by the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation. And this year, after growing frustration among some residents, the association announced it would bar access to the New York police officers who traditionally provide security for the long lines that form outside the stadium before concerts. (Police officers and ambulances are allowed to respond to emergencies.) The Police Department's legal bureau affirmed in a letter that the association had that authority, and that if the department could not ensure public safety at the venue, it would not issue the sound permits needed for the concerts to proceed. That raised fears that this year's shows — including Phish, Alabama Shakes and, yes, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard — could be delayed or canceled. The timing left only weeks for the sides to reach détente before Bloc Party and Blonde Redhead were supposed to open the season on May 31. Not all of the neighbors have issues with the concerts. Stickers in the windows of several small businesses in the area offer their support. The West Side Tennis Club, which leases the stadium to Tiebreaker and agreed to host the concerts to subsidize tennis, said in a recent newsletter that the effort to shut down the concerts was 'draconian.' Jillian Grancaric, who lives in Tennis View Apartments, used to be the building's liaison with the stadium and still manages the complimentary tickets for residents. She said there were plenty of takers among the 144 units and that she had had only positive experiences with the stadium. 'I feel that all the right things have been done, and it's just a bunch of grumpy people,' she said. During the public comment session at Queens Borough Hall this month, 31 people spoke in support of the stadium — or, in one case, sang and played acoustic guitar — while nine spoke against. Eleven people wrote letters against the concerts, with one in support. Matt Mandell, a Gardens resident along with his wife, Sandra, helped broker an uneasy peace while he was president of the homeowners' association but said in an interview that the increase in shows had pushed the group to the breaking point. 'There's a lot of people making this story complicated,' said Mr. Mandell, who now serves as the group's legal chair. 'But it's really about violating the law.' Andy Court, the president of Concerned Citizens of Forest Hills, agreed, saying that his group of homeowners and renters simply wanted respect for the neighborhood's regulations. Although they have been called complaining NIMBYs, an acronym for those who say 'not in my backyard,' he said it is the other side that is being unreasonable. 'I think there's cultural conflict here: It's between people who think you should work things out with your neighbors and follow the rules of the city you live in, and people who think they're so powerful and so cool, they can just do whatever they want,' Mr. Court said. Despite the letter from the Police Department's legal bureau, Mr. Luba remained optimistic that an agreement would be reached, and reassured touring acts it would be business as usual this summer. His faith was rewarded this week when the stadium announced it had reached a deal with the Police Department. The stadium will hire private security to monitor the streets outside, and the police will grant the sound permit for the season-opening concert on May 31. Mr. Luba is confident all the permits needed this year will eventually come through. But Mr. Mandell said the homeowners' association did not think the stadium had the authority to use private security on its streets. 'They went behind our backs,' he said. 'In doing so, they prevented meaningful long-term resolution.' For now, it looks like the shows will go on. When the band Crumb posted on social media about its scheduled performance on June 21, it included a 'Where's Waldo?'-style illustration of the stadium that asked fans to help the musicians find their instruments. The detailed backdrop features the Long Island Rail Road and Tudor-style architecture, showing frog and duck onlookers leaning out of apartment windows to gaze happily at the stadium. The illustration's only human character is so small he could be easily missed. In the top window of the apartment building, a lone face scowls.
