Arthur Fogel on Bowie touring:”I hope he does.” Live Nation’s Arthur Fogel, the Chairman of Global Music and the CEO of Global Touring, has publicly joined the legion of David Bowie’s fans wanting the Thin White Duke to tour. Bowie surprised even Fogel when he released his first single, Where Are We Now, from his first album in a decade, A New Day, back in January. The album was released earlier this month. “(Someone who) I absolutely hope and pray will be working is David Bowie,” Fogel told a Canadian Music Week chat on Friday afternoon. “I will tell you I’ve tried every angle for eight years and he doesn’t seem to be interested. As recent as Christmas, I had just signed a new deal with Live Nation, so I thought I would send him an email saying, “David the only reason I signed a new deal with Live Nation was in the hope that you would tour in the next five years before I’m unemployable. And I got a response, ‘L-O-L.’ I said to my wife, ‘Wow! David Bowie writes LOL?’ OMG!’” Fogel was behind Bowie’s last tour, 2004′s A Reality Tour, which was cut short by the singer’s heart surgery. Later in an interview with QMI Agency, Fogel said he wasn’t sure what the hesitancy on Bowie’s part was but the fact that there was even new music was cause for hope. “I have tried or at least asked but to this point there has been no interest. Listen he played that whole record thing close to the vest. I’m not surprised that he delivered some new music. I will be surprised if he works but I hope he does.” Fogel was in town to attend the world premiere of a new documentary, Who the F–k is Arthur Fogel?, at TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday which documents his transformation from an Ottawa drummer to a Toronto club manager to the L.A.-based head of the largest touring company in the world. Beyond its Canadian Music Week screening it will have life on The Movie Network in the fall and hopefully HBO in the U.S. SPOILER ALERT: The film ends with Fogel playing the drums on U2’s enormous 360 Degrees “spaceship-like” stage at a stop in Mexico city in May 2010. Fogel told QMI Agency had to practise first. “I rented a practise kit for a couple of weeks while we were in Mexico City and I practised and then I did that (scene) and I haven’t played since,” he said . “It was very cool. I kind of got goosebumpy with that.” Otherwise, Fogel’s got an impressive roster of world tours currently up and running including Rihanna, Beyonce, Justin Timberlake and Jay Z, and Sting and he hopes that U2 will be back next year with a new album and tour. “It’s really preliminary,” he told QMI Agency. “I would hope sometime in the next 18 months they’ll be working. Probably realistically mid to end of next year.” And Fogel suspects when the Irish rockers do back on the road it’ll be on a more scaled-down stage. “I think you don’t want to in any way sort of compete or top that,” he told QMI Agency. “(I think that was Everest) at least as we know it today. So I think it would be very smart to switch it around.”
Posted on: Thu, 04 Jul 2013 00:54:13 +0000
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