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      Why Can’t We Stop Quitting the Grateful Dead?

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      Jerry Garcia died in 1995. The band bid fans farewell in 2015. This weekend, Dead & Company will close out its Final Tour. Why can’t we stop quitting one of rock’s beloved acts?Dead & Company fans twirled on the floor of Citi Field in New York in June. The last shows on the band’s Final Tour are this weekend in San Francisco, where the Grateful Dead got its start.The first time Albie Cullen said goodbye to the Grateful Dead was on Aug. 9, 1995.A co-worker told Cullen, an attorney for a Boston-area music label, that Jerry Garcia, the Dead’s iconic lead guitarist, had died that day. Cullen had attended dozens of shows. He reveled in the Dead’s improvisational spirit, the way no two performances were alike: “When you saw the Stones a dozen times,” he explained recently, “it was pretty much the same show.”Despite the Garcia news, Cullen kept his plans to see RatDog, a side project of Garcia’s bandmate Bob Weir, play a concert in Hampton Beach, N.H., that evening. Weir, a rhythm guitarist, told the crowd that Garcia — who at 53 suffered a fatal heart attack at a drug rehab facility — “proved that great music can make sad times better.” During an encore of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” Cullen, 59, recalled, “There was not a dry eye.”“Everybody kind of knew that was the end,” he added.The Grateful Dead had replaced departed members before, but this was different. With his rootsy tenor, Santa-gone-gray beard and unmistakable plucking, Garcia had defined a touring juggernaut and its vibrant subculture, which had become synonymous with the ’60s. The band’s four surviving original members agreed they would never use the name “Grateful Dead” without Garcia.Fans at the band’s show in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., came decked out in a mix of tie-dye and ’60s chic.But the Dead did not die. The next year, several members participated in a tour. They maintained side projects that mainly played Dead songs. Different permutations toured together — as the Other Ones, as Furthur, as the adjective-less the Dead.Finally, in 2015, the band staged another goodbye, playing five shows with Phish’s Trey Anastasio on lead guitar. The mini tour was called Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead.That adieu, too, did not take. That fall, Weir and the Dead’s original drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, assembled a new act, Dead & Company, with the keyboardist Jeff Chimenti, the bassist Oteil Burbridge and the lead guitarist John Mayer (yes, that John Mayer).A funny thing happened as this new band wound its way across the United States: The Dead became a cultural touchstone again. Dead & Company attracted a new crop of younger fans, as did tribute bands like Joe Russo’s Almost Dead. Last August, the Dead had its largest week of record sales in 35 years, according to its publisher; in February, it won its first Grammy. Between 2012 and 2022, U.S. streams of Dead songs increased at nearly double the rate of the Rolling Stones, according to the tracking service Luminate.The Dead had found its moment again.The uniqueness of each Dead performance is crucial to the music’s lasting appeal.A young fan waiting for the Saratoga Springs show named a caterpillar “Bertha,” after the Dead song of the same name.“This could sound wildly corny, but I don’t care: The community of the Dead is a necessary community in a year like 2023,” said Bethany Cosentino, 36, of the indie rock band Best Coast. She became a fan just a few years ago thanks to her “Gen X boyfriend.”“There’s a real ethos of joy to be in a room with a bunch of people who are just connecting to music in their own way but having this communal, collective experience,” she added.Cullen said the Deadheads have taken note: “I joke with my friends — they’re bigger now than they ever were.”Now there is yet another farewell. After more than 200 shows, Dead & Company has sold out stadiums across the country with its so-called Final Tour. The run concludes this weekend with three shows at Oracle Park in San Francisco, the city where the Grateful Dead formed nearly 60 years ago.“It’s a part of the life cycle. In life, there’s death,” Hart said in a video interview. “But it all depends on what you call death. Because there’s life after death — in music, anyway.”What draws Dead fans to shows like the one that took place in Saratoga Springs? “There’s a real ethos of joy to be in a room with a bunch of people who are just connecting to music in their own way but having this communal, collective experience,” said the indie rocker Bethany Cosentino.Bands led by Weir, the original Dead bassist Phil Lesh and Kreutzmann (who was replaced for this tour by Jay Lane) all have concerts scheduled in the next couple of months. Hart allowed for the possibility of a future for Dead & Company, while confirming this was its last tour.“The music’s never going to go anywhere — and one of the brilliant things about the music is there are thousands of concerts we all have access to,” said Andy Cohen, the Bravo host and executive producer who has been a Dead fan since high school. “But the communal feeling of all of us being at Citi Field together and enjoying two banger shows,” he added, “that’s something I don’t envision we’re going to get again.”We are, it seems, always saying goodbye to the Grateful Dead. But Weir and Mayer warned fans not to expect a eulogy.“I think everyone’s had enough loss in their life to go to San Francisco and have this be funereal,” Mayer said.“I’m dead-set against that happening,” Weir added. “I’ll be stir-fried if I’m going to let that happen.”Mayer continued: “If I had my wish, it would be for people to say goodbye to Dead & Company without the pain of goodbye.”In the parking lot at Citi Field, where vendors hawked T-shirts, jewelry, fresh cooked food and less licit fare.Fans hoping for a spare ticket to the show outside the Saratoga Performing Arts Center.THE PROMOTER PETER SHAPIRO, who owns the jam band redoubts Brooklyn Bowl and the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, N.Y., and promoted the Fare Thee Well shows, observed that the true volume of people who would pay to see the Grateful Dead — a band that stopped touring the year before Ticketmaster sold its first ticket over the Internet — wasn’t revealed until 2015, when Dead fans broke the site’s record for most buyers in a queue.Ticket sales for the five concerts that year — two at Levi’s Stadium near San Francisco and three at Chicago’s Soldier Field — brought in $40 million. Nearly 71,000 people attended each Chicago show; many more viewed theatrical and pay-per-view simulcasts.“Fare Thee Well was supposed to be an ending,” Shapiro said, “and it was a new beginning.”Mayer was secreted away during the Chicago shows, already a planned addition. He had met Weir and Hart through Don Was, the producer and record executive. Mayer gushed to them about the Dead’s music, which he came to well after his formative listening years; he compared it in a recent interview to “cilantro, if all I’ve been eating is meat and potatoes.”A fan gets an impromptu (and not permanent) tattoo in the Citi Field parking lot.Hart had been only glancingly familiar with Mayer’s music, but knew he was an excellent guitarist. “On our stage, he’s not a pop star or anything like that,” Hart said. “He has so much respect for the Grateful Dead — I have much respect for him for that. He treated the music like his own.”While some purists grumbled at Mayer’s inclusion (as, indeed, some grumbled about the Fare Thee Well shows), most fans “made a decision,” said Dennis McNally, a former Grateful Dead spokesman and biographer, “that they were not in love with ‘the band’ — the people — they were in love with the music, and that it was to some extent a matter of taste regarding who was playing it. That it was its own genre, almost like jazz or blues.”While many classic rock artists spawned cover acts, a website dedicated to Grateful Dead tribute bands has more than 600 groups in its database, 100 to 150 of which, its proprietors estimate, are active.Some Dead tribute acts are straightforward and quite popular, like Dark Star Orchestra, which recreates specific Dead concerts by set list. Others employ the Dead’s music as a jumping-off point. There is a jazz band and an Afrobeat one. Brown Eyed Women is all female. Warlocks of Tokyo sing in Japanese.The electronic artist LP Giobbi, a Millennial daughter of Deadheads, uses sonic loops and stems over house beats to create what she calls Dead House. “I am blown away by how many ravers I meet who are also Deadheads,” said the artist, who played at after-parties following many concerts on this Dead & Company tour.“The thing about this music is it doesn’t take place at home — no one’s home. People are trying to get home,” the guitarist John Mayer said.The uniqueness of each Dead performance is crucial to the music’s lasting appeal. Al Franken, the author, former senator and longtime fan who once opened for the band, recently caught up with friends who had seen Dead & Company outside St. Louis. “I asked what they played, and I was striking out. ‘Did they do “China Cat Sunflower”?’ ‘No.’ This is a big, big body of music. You can go to four nights in a row and basically not hear the same tune. And they play things differently all the time.”The Dead’s eclectic songbook comes out of rock, folk, blues, country and bluegrass; its lyrics, many by Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow, tend to be ambiguous yet buoyant (“strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand,” “wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world,” “what a long strange trip it’s been”).“The thing about this music is it doesn’t take place at home — no one’s home. People are trying to get home,” Mayer said.“There’s something about the fantasy of transience for people who don’t necessarily have it in their lives, like myself,” he added. “The fantasy of the perpetual searcher, the person with the knapsack who can sleep on couch after couch. Most people who go to Dead concerts don’t necessarily live that life, but aspire to spiritually have this devil-may-care attitude.”Trey Pierce, 20, began discovering the Dead in middle school via CD boxed sets, DVDs and the Internet Archive, which hosts free tapers’ recordings of Grateful Dead shows. Now he is a die-hard who drove for hours from St. Lawrence University in northern New York to see Phil Lesh and Friends perform in March outside New York City.“That’s what’s gotten me through much of my life,” he said. “Any weird stuff I’ve had going on, challenges I’ve had, it’s been relating to those lyrics and Jerry” — who died eight years before Pierce was born — “belting into my soul.”A fan displays “Grateful” knuckle tattoos in the Citi Field parking lot.IN A PARKING LOT across from Citi Field in Queens before the second of two Dead & Company shows last month, car stereos blasted recordings of live Dead as the subway clacked over the elevated lines. Vendors hawked T-shirts, jewelry, fresh cooked food and less licit fare. Erin Cadigan, who specified that she had seen 72 Dead shows “with Jerry,” performed tarot readings on a licensed, Grateful Dead-themed tarot deck she created with a partner.The tour has tended to be well reviewed by fans. “Closest thing to the original I’ve seen,” Cullen wrote in a text message after leaving Fenway Park in Boston last month. “Ironically it’s ending just as they seemed to have figured it out.”Mariah Napoli, 45, a self-described “second-generation” Deadhead, said she had seen on this tour “a lot more people crying the last two songs than you usually do.”She added, “I’ve been doing it so long, I don’t see myself stopping until they’re all dead. At that point, it’ll be time for me to hunker down and start to grow older.”Why do we keep saying goodbye to the Grateful Dead … then welcome them back, and then do it again?Several generations of Dead fans attended Dead & Company’s most recent run of shows.Dustin Grella and a friend bought a used Kentucky school bus and turned it into a canvas for Dead fans to express their love of the band through art.“The Buddhists believe that knowing every minute you’re going to die is what makes life so precious,” said Elena Lister, a New York-based psychiatrist and grief specialist. “If you know you’re going to lose something of any sort, you treasure it all the more while you have it. If you deny it, you miss that opportunity.”Dustin Grella, 52, a professor of animation at Queens College, has a more dramatic Dead story than most. In the spring and summer of 1995 he was following the Grateful Dead on what would turn out to be its last tour. But he missed the final two concerts at Soldier Field after he sustained an injury to his spinal cord when a porch collapsed at a campground outside a show near St. Louis.“When you’re experiencing that kind of trauma,” Grella said of the recovery period, “you want just to go back to normal. For me, that was being a touring Deadhead.”In 2015, he saw in the Fare Thee Well shows in Chicago a chance for closure — “my opportunity,” he said, “to make peace with the Dead.”But that did not mean he would miss another occasion to say goodbye. For Dead & Company’s final tour, Grella and a friend bought a used Kentucky school bus, attached panels to both sides and covered them in chalkboard paint. Grella, who uses a wheelchair, parked the bus in the lot, put chalk out and encouraged passers-by to add their own designs. He had begun the spontaneous artwork by etching a lyric from “Scarlet Begonias”: “Once in a while you get shown the light/In the strangest of places if you look at it right.” More

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      Lisa Marie Presley Died From Bowel Obstruction, Officials Say

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      The singer-songwriter and only child of Elvis Presley died in January after she was found unresponsive, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office said.Lisa Marie Presley, the singer-songwriter and only child of Elvis Presley, died in January as a result of “a small bowel obstruction” caused by scar tissue that developed after bariatric surgery years ago, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s office said on Thursday.Ms. Presley had been complaining on Jan. 12 of severe abdominal pain, according to an autopsy report released on Thursday by the medical examiner’s office. Later that day, she was found unresponsive at her home in Calabasas, Calif., by her ex-husband, who was not named in the report. Ms. Presley, 54, was taken by paramedics to a hospital, where she went into cardiac arrest and died that afternoon. The report stated that although Ms. Presley had a previous history of drug use, she was sober “for the past few years.” Still, health problems appeared to have occurred after her bariatric surgery, which is generally considered a treatment option for people with a high body mass index who failed to lose weight with diet and exercise alone. Juan M. Carrillo, a deputy medical examiner in Los Angeles County, described Ms. Presley’s health problems after the bariatric surgery as a “known long-term complication of this type of surgery.”Ms. Presley was prescribed opiates after her surgery and after an infection, the report stated. She was then prescribed another type of medication so that she could be taken off the opiates. The report noted that Ms. Presley had a “history of overmedicating; she was known to forget she had taken her medications and would take them again.”The autopsy report said that toxicology results showed “therapeutic levels of oxycodone” in her blood. Buprenorphine, a medication to treat opioid addiction, was also present but did not contribute to her death, the report stated.For months, she complained of abdominal pain, fevers, vomiting and nausea but did not seek medical attention, according to the report.The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office had initially deferred ruling on Ms. Presley’s case. For months, officials said that a medical exam had been performed, but that a pathologist was awaiting further test results — including, potentially, a toxicology report — before releasing an official cause of death. Two days before Ms. Presley’s death, she attended the Golden Globe Awards, at which “Elvis,” a biopic about her father’s life, was nominated for multiple awards. Some of her on-camera interviews on the red carpet prompted concern from fans and others who said she had appeared unsteady. Ms. Presley was buried at Graceland, where a memorial was held in late January. Weeks later, Priscilla Presley, Lisa Marie’s mother, who had long helped administer Elvis’s estate, went to court to challenge the validity of documents that said Lisa Marie’s daughter, the actress Riley Keough, had become the sole trustee upon Lisa Marie’s death.In June, Ms. Keough agreed to provide Priscilla Presley, her grandmother and the former wife of Elvis Presley, with a lump-sum payment as part of a settlement that would resolve the dispute over control of the family trust, according to court documents.Lawyers for the parties had sought to keep details of their agreement confidential, but the papers listed what appears to be a payment of $1 million.The New York Times reported that although the Elvis brand today continues to take in more than $100 million a year as a licensing juggernaut, the family trust receives only a fraction of its proceeds. On Wednesday, Ms. Keough was nominated for an Emmy for best actress in a limited series or TV movie for her titular role as the wild child in “Daisy Jones & the Six,” an Amazon mini-series about the rise and fall of a fictional 1970s band. More

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      A Finnish Official Plays the Cello to Support Ukraine, Irking Russia

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      Anders Adlercreutz’s recording of a patriotic Ukrainian song was widely circulated online, and prompted a response from Moscow.Anders Adlercreutz, Finland’s minister for European affairs, has long been a critic of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, denouncing President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia for leading a “crazy war” and calling on Western governments to send tanks to Kyiv.On Sunday, Mr. Adlercreutz tried a different tactic: he posted a video of himself on social media playing a patriotic Ukrainian song on the cello to mark the conflict’s 500th day. The video also shows images of bombed buildings, juxtaposed with phrases like “unspeakable aggression,” as well as hopeful symbols like sunflower fields and a dove in flight.500 days of unprovoked aggression, countless war crimes, lost futures – but also of encouraging success. Ukraine fights for its independence, but also for Europe’s. Finland stands by you, today and tomorrow.В пам’ять про тих, хто віддав своє життя за свободу. pic.twitter.com/P5D9WpPH39— Anders Adlercreutz (@adleande) July 9, 2023
      “I wanted to provide comfort to Ukrainians here in Finland and in other countries,” Mr. Adlercreutz said in an interview, “and to make clear that they are not ignored, and their culture, their music and their language is not forgotten.”To his surprise, the video garnered more than a million views across a variety of platforms, and he received a flood of comments from Ukrainians moved by the performance.Russian officials tried to portray the video as part of an effort by Western countries to sway public opinion ahead of a NATO meeting this week that was attended by President Biden and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. (Finland became the alliance’s 31st member state in April, a strategic defeat for Mr. Putin.)In a television appearance this week, Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, denounced the NATO meeting as a “colorful performance” that was “in the worst traditions of Western manipulation,” according to Russian news reports. She went on to say that “Finnish government ministers are recording cello solos in support of Ukraine.” Russia has in recent months been highly critical of Finland for joining NATO, saying it has “forfeited its independence.”The video features the Ukrainian song “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow,” written during World War I, which has long been associated with Ukraine’s fight for independence.Since the invasion, the song has emerged as a popular anthem for the Ukrainian cause. A few days into the war, the Ukrainian musician Andriy Khlyvnyuk, from the band Boombox, recorded a defiant rendition with a rifle slung across his chest.Last year, Pink Floyd released a reworked version of the song, featuring Mr. Khlyvnyuk, to raise money for the people of Ukraine, its first new track in almost three decades.Since the invasion, Ukrainians have used music to bring attention to suffering, following in a tradition of impromptu performances by ordinary citizens in war zones, in the Balkans, Syria and elsewhere. A cellist last year performed Bach in the center of a deserted street in Kharkiv, with the blown-out windows of the regional police headquarters behind him.Mr. Adlercreutz, who began studying cello as an 11-year-old, said he had been inspired by Ukrainian musicians, including Mr. Khlyvnyuk. He recorded “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow” in February at the Parliament House in Helsinki, playing different musical lines that he later mixed together.He said it was important to use culture to bring attention to Ukraine.“I want to send the message to Ukrainians that we see you, we recognize you, we support you, and we don’t forget where you are coming from and what you are going through,” he said. “We can easily forget the war, but this is a message that we really have to repeat.” More

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      Popcast (Deluxe): Britney Spears’s Wembanyama Run-In and Taylor Swift’s ‘Revenge’

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThis week’s episode of Popcast (Deluxe), the weekly culture roundup show on YouTube hosted by Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli, includes segments on:The unfortunate incident between the pop queen Britney Spears and soon-to-be N.B.A. rookie sensation Victor WembanyamaTaylor Swift’s rerecording of her 2010 album “Speak Now,” an altered lyric and ongoing fan chatter about her songs’ true targetsThe new No. 1 album from Lil Uzi Vert, “Pink Tape”The latest Wes Anderson film, “Asteroid City”New songs from NewJeans and Rylo RodriguezSnack of the weekConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. More

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      A Revival of ‘The Who’s Tommy’ Seeks a New Generation of Followers

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      In staging the storied rock opera in Chicago, its creators argue that the show’s exploration of celebrity worship and childhood trauma is more relevant than ever.Thirty years ago, when the Who’s 1969 concept album “Tommy” was transformed into a rock opera for Broadway, it was hailed as a triumph of the form — a production that had finally managed to authentically marry theater and rock ’n’ roll.Fueled by the spiritual exploration of a 23-year-old Pete Townshend, the Who guitarist and songwriter, the original production of “Tommy” drew crowds of baby boomers primed with adolescent nostalgia for the story of a boy who discovers a superhuman aptitude for pinball despite not being able to see, hear or speak.The Broadway show raked in a record number of ticket sales the day after opening night, ran for nearly 900 performances and won five Tony Awards, including one for its director, Des McAnuff.With its depictions of rebellion against authority and analogies to spiritual enlightenment, the show was firmly rooted in the youth culture of the 1960s. So why would McAnuff, for whom “Tommy” was a career-defining success, take the risk of reimagining the work for today’s audiences?“Sometimes you just don’t get things out of your system,” McAnuff said in an interview shortly after his new production of “The Who’s Tommy” opened last month at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. “I felt like it was time to make it contemporary.”In resurrecting “Tommy,” McAnuff and Townshend, who wrote the book together, sought to prove that the work was not simply of an era, but carried the promise of timelessness.In 2023, McAnuff argues, Tommy’s transformation from catatonic schoolboy to a kind of charismatic cult leader resonates even more strongly when considering the modern-day culture of celebrity worship. And the show’s exploration of trauma — including post-traumatic stress disorder, sexual abuse and bullying — is something that audiences now have a much deeper understanding of.The reimagining of “Tommy” is not so much in story but in style, with McAnuff opting for futuristic austerity over 1960s nostalgia. Tommy displays his skill not on a kitschy pinball machine but a spare set piece (designed by David Korins) in which the outline of a machine is represented by narrow panels of light. The personality cult that encircles Tommy feels more sinister than in the original production.A 1972 concert staging of “Tommy” at the Rainbow Theater in London brought together, from far left, Merry Clayton (whose back is to the camera), Peter Sellers, Sandy Denny, Graham Bell, Steve Winwood and Roger Daltrey.Getty ImagesThe production, which runs through Aug. 6, has received rave reviews in Chicago, with the critic Chris Jones of The Chicago Tribune calling it a “ready-for-prime-time stunner.” The Goodman says the show is on track to be its highest-grossing production ever, a boon for the organization during a time of high anxiety around regional theater’s post-pandemic return. The show’s commercial producer, Stephen Gabriel, said several options for the production’s future are being weighed, including a Broadway run.The story at the center of this production is much the same as the one the Who told when it played its new album at Woodstock in 1969.A 4-year-old Tommy watches as his father — a British Army captain believed to have died while on duty — shows up at the family’s home, ultimately killing the mother’s new lover during the ensuing fight. Tommy then loses his senses, becoming the victim of sexual abuse by his uncle, relentless bullying by his cousin and medical exploitation by an army of invasive doctors. After the world discovers his stunning talent for pinball, he becomes a messiah-like figure with a band of devoted followers.Whether “Tommy” can become a national phenomenon again, and not just a nostalgic tribute, depends, in part, on its ability to capture a new audience.McAnuff sees Ali Louis Bourzgui, the 23-year-old lead, as the show’s “doorway to Gen Z” — though not long out of college and largely unknown, he is viewed by the director as a natural star who will be appealing to a new generation of prospective “Tommy” fans.To Bourzgui, Tommy’s meteoric rise has parallels to the frenzy over certain social media influencers, artists or tech gurus.“He gets filled up by his followers,” Bourzgui said. “He keeps feeding off that, getting more gluttonous with power, until he realizes they’re following him because they want to feed off his trauma.”Bourzgui was born 30 years after the release of “Tommy” the album, but he has his own memory of his first listen — to the vinyl, in fact — in a friend’s apartment his freshman year. He remembers feeling moved by the music, if not a little bit befuddled by the plot. (McAnuff likes to call the story a “fable,” gesturing at the suspension of disbelief required to accept Tommy’s arc from silent child to pinball wizard to cult leader.)In preparation for the role, Bourzgui pored over performance videos of the Who on YouTube, finding himself in awe of the band’s magnetism. Wary of falling into mimicry, he hasn’t watched videos of the earlier production.“We’re not in the business of presenting museum pieces,” said Roche Schulfer, the Goodman’s executive director, who was approached about staging “Tommy” before the pandemic upended the theater world.Schulfer was persuaded by McAnuff and Townshend’s ideas for an update as well as their consideration of how certain themes and language might translate onstage today.The Who performing “Tommy” in Los Angeles in August 1989. Des McAnuff developed the show for the stage in the early 1990s.Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe question is one that theater makers across the country are grappling with: Should revived works be altered to align with the worldviews and sensitivities of present-day audiences?In “Tommy,” McAnuff and Townshend’s answer was, largely, no.For example, the lyrics “deaf, dumb and blind” are central to some of the album’s hits, including its most famous: “Pinball Wizard.” When Townshend originally wrote “Tommy” in the 1960s, the word “dumb” was commonly used to refer to someone who was nonverbal, but it is now considered to be an offensive and archaic term. McAnuff said that he and Townshend did not seriously consider changing that language, viewing it as too much of a lyrical departure in foundational songs such as “Amazing Journey.”“‘Sensory impaired’ — I don’t think it would work,” McAnuff said. “I think it’s a song that has a certain amount of pedigree and dignity.”The story behind the concept, Townshend told an interviewer in the 1970s, came from his devotion in his early 20s to the writings of the Indian spiritual leader Meher Baba — also an inspiration for one of the Who’s biggest hits, “Baba O’Riley” — who taught, as he put it, that as humans, “there are whole chunks of life, including the whole concept of reality, which escapes us.”Over the years, Townshend has described the character of Tommy as autistic, explaining that his condition was a metaphor for humanity’s limited view of reality.Revivals over the years, including one by McAnuff a decade ago in Ontario, Canada, have given the book writers the opportunity to re-examine the show’s handling of sensitive issues. Around that time, Townshend acknowledged in an interview that the rock opera does not allow for explanation or discussion around serious issues such as sexual abuse, but that audiences can consider those topics themselves in a modern context.“We have to live with the rock opera version that we did 20 years ago,” Townshend said at the time. “We also have to live with the fact that ‘Tommy’ started as a rock opera in 1968, ’69. And yet times have changed. Attitudes have changed.”In the 1990s, McAnuff, who first developed the show at La Jolla Playhouse in California, staged the sexual abuse scene in such a way that had little need for alterations today. A revolving bed suggests the violation without any significant physical touch — an approach the director views as key to protecting the child actors involved in the show.After the Broadway debut, there were some complaints that the scene was less daring than the one in Ken Russell’s provocative 1975 film, to which McAnuff responded, “That’s a real little boy up there. Does anyone actually need me to abuse that child to get the idea across?”The most significant change in the Chicago production on the issue of abuse is the removal of a short song, “Tommy’s Holiday Camp,” that brings back the sexually abusive uncle in a way that no longer seemed necessary, McAnuff said. There is also some toned-down staging in “The Acid Queen,” the wailing barnburner — performed by Tina Turner in the film version — in which Tommy’s father takes him to a prostitute and con artist who promises to cure his condition with drugs.Without being too heavy handed in any moralistic messaging, McAnuff hopes the audience sees what the intent of the work has been since the beginning.“At the end of the day, we portray what happens to him not to condone it but to condemn it,” McAnuff said. “And I think that’s the point of view of the whole piece.” More

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      Zayn Malik Talks Life Since One Direction in His First Interview in Years

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      The “Pillowtalk” singer speaks candidly of his departure from the group: “We’d got sick of each other.”After a hiatus from public life and interviews, Zayn Malik, the former One Direction member, appeared on a podcast that aired on Wednesday and talked about his decision to leave the group, what life has been like since then and his new single in his first interview in years.“There were great experiences, I had great times with them, but we’d just run our course,” Mr. Malik said of his time in the band on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, hosted by Alex Cooper.Mr. Malik was the first to leave One Direction in 2015, after the group had steadily put out chart-topping songs like “What Makes You Beautiful,” “Story of My Life” and “Best Song Ever.” The boy band, assembled through the British musical competition show “The X Factor,” was together for about six years and developed a feverish following among its young fans, who were known for their shrieking and devotion to the five members.One Direction continued to make music after Mr. Malik’s departure, but the group officially disbanded in 2016. Mr. Malik put out his debut solo single “Pillowtalk” that same year.During the interview, Mr. Malik told Ms. Cooper that around the time of his departure, the bandmates were beginning to clash.“We’d been together every day for five years and we’d got sick of each other, if we’re being completely honest,” Mr. Malik said, adding: “I look back on it now in a much fonder light than I would’ve as I’d just left. There were great experiences, I had great times with them, but we’d just run our course.”He began to see signs that it might be time to go and that others might be doing the same, he said, and he wanted to “get ahead of the curve” and “be the first” to release his own record.“I don’t want to go into too much detail, but there was a lot of politics going on. People were doing certain things. Some people didn’t want to sign contracts, so I knew something was happening,” he said.Ms. Cooper also broached the topic of a reported confrontation between Mr. Malik and Yolanda Hadid, the mother of his former girlfriend, the supermodel Gigi Hadid, with whom he shares a daughter, asking about his decision to largely remain silent on the issue. In response, Mr. Malik said he believed that the issue should stay within the family.“I just keep to myself. I knew what the situation was, I knew what happened and the people involved knew what happened, too,” Mr. Malik said. “I just didn’t want to bring attention to anything.”In recent years, he has lived a much quieter life in suburban Pennsylvania, he said. He said he was happy to get away from the bustle of New York City, enjoying a life mostly free from paparazzi and spending many of his days in the studio, writing and making music.He said he enjoyed spending time with his cats, dogs, turtles and chickens. (Mr. Malik noted that he got too attached to one chicken that died and decided to stop naming them.)Being out of the public eye also allows for his daughter to live a more private life, should she choose to do so, he said.“I’m just trying to give her an option,” Mr. Malik said. “If she wants to be away from it, she can be out here.”Mr. Malik said there was a constant stream of fans following the band around when it was together. He recalled one day before the band had ever released a single when fans hid in trash bins outside of a studio in Sweden waiting for the performers to emerge, then popped out and grabbed at them. “I think I had a mini heart attack,” he said, jokingly.One Direction’s hit song “What Makes You Beautiful” was on Billboard’s Hot 100 list for 34 weeks, peaking at No. 4 in 2012. In 2013, “Story of my Life” had a similar staying power, with 32 weeks, and peaked at No. 6 in 2013. “Best Song Ever,” however, climbed the highest — it reached the No. 2 spot in 2013 and spent 21 weeks on the chart.The group held four world tours, performing in North America, Asia, Europe and South America, and sometimes sold out shows in minutes. More

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      Ticketmaster Pauses Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour Sale in France

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      Fans trying to purchase tickets to six of the pop superstar’s concerts faced long queues and technical issues before the company said that a new on-sale time would be announced.Ticketmaster has once again cracked under the weight of a Taylor Swift ticket sale — this time in France.As French fans prepared on Tuesday to purchase tickets to six concerts in May and June 2024 on Swift’s Eras Tour — four shows in Paris, two in Lyon — Ticketmaster’s website displayed a gigantic queue of customers ready to buy; one screenshot appeared to tell a fan that 1,023,504 shoppers were in line ahead of them.Soon, Ticketmaster announced that sales for those shows had been placed on “pause.” The company said that a new on-sale time would be announced, and that “all codes not already used will remain valid.” But some fans’ social media posts seemed to show technical errors on Ticketmaster’s website, including a progress icon that “keeps spinning and spinning and spinning,” as one fan — speaking English with an American accent, but with 762 euros’ worth of tickets in their shopping cart — put it.A few hours later, the French branch of Ticketmaster offered some more detail on social media, blaming the problem on a “third-party provider” that the company did not identify, and adding that tickets were still available. A representative of Live Nation Entertainment, Ticketmaster’s corporate parent, said that the provider works with Ticketmaster only in France.The situation in France appeared to be a frustrating repeat of the problems that plagued Swift’s North American presale in November, when an influx of millions of fans — and bots — overwhelmed Ticketmaster’s systems, and fans reported issues like tickets in their shopping carts disappearing before they could be purchased. Ticketmaster shut down its public sale as a result, though the company also said it had sold more than two million tickets to the tour in a single day.Problems like those at Swift’s presale in November — as well as long-simmering concerns over Ticketmaster and Live Nation’s market dominance — led to a brutal Senate Judiciary hearing in January. Senators from both parties flatly called the company a monopoly and were skeptical of an executive’s explanation that Ticketmaster was unable to defend itself against an onslaught of bots during Swift’s presale.“This is unbelievable,” Senator Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, said at the hearing. “Why is it,” she added, “that you have not developed an algorithm to sort out what is a bot and what is a consumer?”Yet the demand for Swift tickets has been extraordinary, with Swift selling out stadiums everywhere she plays and tickets going for thousands of dollars on the secondary market. She is scheduled to complete the North American leg of her tour next month, then play in Latin America, Asia and Europe.The Justice Department has separately been conducting an antitrust investigation of Live Nation. The Justice Department has not confirmed that investigation, but Live Nation’s chief executive, Michael Rapino, has spoken about it openly. More

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      Lil Uzi Vert and Olivia Rodrigo Oust Morgan Wallen From No. 1

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      After weeks of dominance on Billboard’s album and singles charts, the country superstar was bested by the rapper’s LP “Pink Tape” and the singer-songwriter’s track “Vampire.”Olivia Rodrigo and the rapper Lil Uzi Vert have shaken up the Billboard charts after weeks of dominance by the country superstar Morgan Wallen, with Rodrigo taking the top single and Lil Uzi Vert the top album.Rodrigo’s “Vampire,” the first new single in two years from the 20-year-old singer, songwriter and actress who was catapulted to music stardom in early 2021 with “Drivers License,” opens at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart. It had nearly 36 million streams and 26 million “airplay audience impressions,” a measurement of a song’s popularity on the radio, according to data from the tracking service Luminate.Rodrigo’s arrival bumps Wallen’s song “Last Night” to No. 2, after a total of 13 weeks at No. 1, the last 10 of them consecutive. “Vampire” is the first release from Rodrigo’s second studio album, “Guts,” due in September.On the album chart, Lil Uzi Vert scores the first rap No. 1 of the year with “Pink Tape,” a sprawling 26-track release filled with bits of rock and metal. “Pink Tape,” which Lil Uzi Vert — a 27-year-old from Philadelphia who emerged as part of the “SoundCloud rap” generation in the mid-2010s — has teased for more than two years, had the equivalent of 167,000 sales in the United States, including 210 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package.“One Thing at a Time,” Wallen’s latest album, falls to No. 2 in its 18th week of release. It has been No. 1 a total of 15 times, including the last three weeks. “Dangerous: The Double Album,” Wallen’s last LP, from 2021, is No. 5.Peso Pluma, a songwriter and performer from Mexico, holds at No. 3 for a second week with “Génesis,” the highest position ever for an album of regional Mexican music.Taylor Swift’s “Midnights” is No. 4, and Swift is favored to take over next week’s chart with her latest rerecorded album, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version),” which was released on Friday and instantly became a major hit on streaming services. More