Massive Attack have just dealt a blistering blow to anyone considering a Vegas residency or playing Coachella any time soon.
And while the band have been invited to play Coachella in 2025 – sadly for US fans – the band won’t be making an appearance on what's arguably the world’s most high-profile live stage.
Speaking to NME Robert Del Naja explained Massive Attack’s decision and stressed again their stance which has seen the band repeatedly and markedly reduce the carbon footprint of their live events, while encouraging other acts to do likewise.
The band recently played the Act 1.5 Climate Action Accelerator festival in Liverpool at the end of November (alongside IDLES and Nile Rodgers), a gig which marked the announcement that the city had been named the world’s first ‘UN Accelerator City’ by the United Nations.
Previously the band had worked in partnership with clean energy provider Ecotricity to dramatically reduce the level of carbon emissions and air pollution that would usually be produced at live events.
Act 1.5 took their initiative to the next level with an event site powered entirely by 100% renewable energy. The festival also sported 100% zero landfill waste removal, a ‘plug and play’ single technical set up being shared by each act to reduce waste, the gig ending soon enough for audiences to use public rather than private transport to get home, and an entirely meat-free arena.
It appears that Vegas residencies and Coachella don't quite measure up to the same high standards.
“We said no to Coachella for next year because again, we’ve been there once, and once was enough,” Del Naja explained. “It’s in Palm Springs. It’s a golf resort built on a desert, run on a sprinkler system, using public water supplies. Mental. If you want to see something that’s the most ludicrous bit of human behavior – it’s right there.”
Long-term collaborator Mark Donne said, of the Act 1.5 gig: “This was an artist [Massive Attack] and an industrialist [Dale Vince – founder of Ecotricity] sticking their neck out and saying, ‘We’ll take it’. The proof of concept is done. Like it or dislike it. You can’t say it doesn’t work. Or you can talk about numbers, that’s all right. You can talk about trying to do this stuff on dumb legislation and dumb regulation – which we’re talking to the government about right now.
“The UN announced this at New York Climate Week. Maggie [Baird, Billie Eilish’s mother] got hold of Mark Watts [executive director of science-based climate action group] C40 Cities and said ‘How do I Act 1.5 Billie’s European dates?’
It’s unsurprising therefore that the band has problems with gigs such as Vegas residencies…
Del Naja: “I’ve worked with Es [Devlin, collaborator on U2’s recent Vegas-based Sphere shows] and I greatly respect her work. At the same time it’s a head-scratcher because that’s an aviation destination. You can’t get to Vegas [without flying]. So if you’re doing a couple years in Vegas, you are the catalyst for all those emissions by playing. You can’t say it’s nothing to do with me, you’re in fucking Vegas, right? I scratch my head with that stuff.”
“Of course I’d love to get my hands on that much LED! Acres of spherical LED to play with. You’re not going to go to Vegas to do that are you? What a brilliant bit of infrastructure in the worst possible place it could be – in the worst setting in the world.”
So will the band be putting out new music and more environmentally focussed gigs? “We do have some new music which we’ve been sitting on for four years… dispute at the label – that’s a different article altogether,” Del Naja explains.
“Hopefully we’re going to be able to release it next year and do some gigs. Obviously we’ve set a standard for ourselves now, and we’re going to stick with it. To get given that Race to Zero artist recognition. We’ll stick with it.”
