Deceased Celebs are Hitting the Road
Whitney Houston is headed back on tour again later this year. Frank Zappa has just wrapped up the first round of dates of his revue, “The Bizarre World of Frank Zappa,” featuring most of his long-time bandmates. And they’ll likely be following Ronnie James Dio’s successful “Dio Returns” multi-continental outing that began back in 2017.
These are the marquee names on a live-show trend that began with the cognitively dissonant appearance of Tupac Shakur at Coachella in 2012. That, of course, was 16 years after the rapper had been killed on the Las Vegas Strip. In what seemed like a disturbingly clever one-off and using an updated version of the Victorian theatrical gag Pepper’s Ghost, “Tupac” — actually a videoed performer whose head was digitally replaced with Shakur’s face — was projected onto a snare-drum-tight sheet of Mylar as he sang his hits backed by a live band on stage. Hardly a hologram but you didn’t have to be that far away from the illusion to let suspension of disbelief take over.
A slew of other dead music celebrities, or more precisely their heirs and the equity firms that are increasingly taking financial stakes them, have been looking to take their shows on the road. Even as catalog titles continue to be reliable sources of revenue for record labels, everyone knows that the road is where the real money is these days. Even if you can’t take it with you.
Lately, It Seems, The Strange Becomes Normal
There is a certain disconcerting uncanniness to seeing someone you know to be deceased running around up on a stage. It’s possible that the phenomenon might become so common that we begin to process it the same way we do seeing Humphrey Bogart or Elizabeth Taylor on television in one of their films, appreciating the performances, rather than as some animatronic Disney version of Abraham Lincoln reciting the Gettysburg Address. It’s already a better experience than wax museums, which are downright creepy.
However, what’s perhaps most strange is that concerts in which the star is no longer among the living are otherwise fairly conventional propositions. They utilize the same P.A. systems and other live-sound infrastructure, there are live musicians on stage (who are often playing live, we should point out), and the lights, foggers and everything else that are part of concert technology today are in place. The only real difference is how the artist is presented. In some cases, it’s a version of Pepper’s Ghost: a projector located either below the front of the stage facing up or above the stage facing down illuminates a piece of Mylar or other translucent sheeting, which lets some of what else is on stage show through from behind the sheet, enhancing the sense that the artist is actually on stage with the rest of the musicians. Alternately, a production can use an actual hologram, which is more costly, harder to nail perfectly, but which presents the most realistic effect, as it is truly a three-dimensional image.
The OG production of this effect was Tupac at Coachella. The effect was so novel at that point that it could startle the audience enough so that they might not have noticed how the kick drum’s transient LFE would rattle the taut Mylar sheet. However, once this becomes a more common occurrence, audiences will likely start to notice artifacts like that, which can detract from the enjoyment of it. Holographic productions are harder and more costly to pull off. The few that have attempted it are the Ronnie James Dio tour two years ago and a limited tour of a Roy Orbison hologram, which used pre-recorded tracks, but utilized a live orchestra.
Significant Implications
However the fortunes of these zombie shows turn out, like any live-music event they require sound systems, consoles, power, and people to design and operate them. Short of resurrecting any of our own dearly departed colleagues (who are also dying too young), it will still take live mixers and systems techs to make these shows work. It’s just one more element making and keeping the live-sound business as robust as it is.
The phenomenon may also require a new category of technical specialist: a curator — someone who can assure the authenticity of a performance in the absence of the artists themselves. For instance, Eyellusion (eyellusionlive.com), the company that’s been at the forefront of holographic renderings, is planning to send classical-piano genius Glenn Gould out on tour. Gould, who passed away in 1982, famously demurred from touring, preferring the perfection of the studio. Getting his live show right will require someone who knows his details intimately.
What’s Next?
But take the idea out a few years further. We already see how classic-rock artists have dominated the Pollstar charts for much of this century. The Eagles, Journey, Def Leppard and Bruce Springsteen occupied last year’s top ten, with Billy Joel, U2 and Shania Twain making it into the top-20. Metallica, Roger Waters, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Garth Brooks were top-ten the year before. Paul McCartney is simply going to tour till he drops (which may not be anytime soon for that dedicated vegan) and the Rolling Stones are embarking on Steel Wheelchairs 5.0. And short of recorded music again becoming a viable economic vehicle for any but the top artists, it’s probably reasonable to assume that touring after the death of the artist could become an everyday occurrence. The implications are significant: Artists could plan for afterlives for their careers, to the benefit of their heirs and posterity (or even as a hedge against their own senectitude) by transferring their post-mortem rights to an AEG or Live Nation, just as they now sell rights to their future royalties. It would be no different than homeowners now selling their houses with reverse mortgages.
We might reach a point where the frisson of seeing Tupac “step” onstage becomes just another live-entertainment product. And the fact that we’ll likely be transported to these shows by self-driving cars and served there by robotic bartenders suggests that it’s not as strange an idea as it sounds. Maybe we can take it with us, after all.
