How long should a gig really be?

With Jack White coming under fire for his gigs being too short and everything from films to albums getting steadily longer, is there too much pressure on artists to deliver marathon shows?

Back in November 2024, satire site The Daily Mash ran a piece with the headline “Man enjoying gig but still wants it to be over”. Those ten words have occupied considerable brain space ever since. Two songs into Paul McCartney’s encore at the O2 in December, they may as well have been emblazoned across the stage. It was a tremendous gig, a life-affirming combination of heady emotion, musical prowess and slick stagecraft, but as it progressed into its third hour, intrusive thoughts surfaced: tube rides home… early starts the next day… how annoying it is to get out of the O2 at the best of times.

Earlier this year, Jack White received considerable flack from fans who felt that a man with his extensive back catalogue should be providing a lot more value for money. White was pretty put out by this, deeming his 90-minute sets more than sufficient. “The Beatles and Ramones played 30 minute (ish) sets,” he responded via social media, “and if I could, I would do the same at this moment in my performing life… I’ve seen a plethora of rock and roll gigs that lasted 45 minutes and blew my mind.”

Wrapped up in the incident is the assumption that a longer gig is a better gig. It’s tempting to lay the blame for this outside of the music industry altogether. In Hollywood, the average length of a film has been steadily increasing. Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit and The Lord Of The Rings films, Disney’s Pirates Of The Caribbean, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and Marvel’s Avengers films are trend-setters in this regard, clocking up a bum-numbing average of 159 minutes across all five series. This year’s Oscar nominees for Best Picture didn’t include a single film shorter than two hours. Intermissions are being re-introduced for the first time since the early 1980s. 

This kind of creeping extension doesn’t happen by accident. Somebody somewhere has cottoned on that audiences equate longer running times with value-for-money and that attitude is spreading to live music. Not that marathon sets are a new thing. The Grateful Dead managed a five-hour set at the 1972 Bickershaw Festival, which is probably easier to do when you’re so stoned that one song goes on for 30 minutes. For decades, Bruce Springsteen has traded on the legendary length of his live shows, which regularly stretch past three-and-a-half hours. Taylor Swift’s Eras shows averaged over three hours, while McCartney has abandoned The Beatles’ succinct set lists for something just shy of three hours.  

On the other end of the scale, The Jesus & Mary Chain had signs outside their early US shows warning the audience that the entire experience might be on the brief side. Long-time fan Keith remembers being at their 1986 show in Boston: “When you walked in they had a sign that J&MC would be playing from 11:50 – 12:10. That was a bit weird but they actually ended up playing more like 40 minutes. Great show!”

There’s a sense that the extremes on both sides of the equation are worn as badges of honour. Many of those extolling the virtues of marathon gigs aren’t a million miles away from those who boast about “rawdogging” eight-hour flights: “It was amazing. They played for four hours. I can’t move my knees today. One solo went on so long that seventy-three fans and two band members soiled themselves.”

A driving factor in expectations around gig lengths is the rising price of concert tickets. The average cost of a ticket rose 23% in 2023. Oasis charged £44 for a standing ticket at their 2009 Wembley show, which is still only £69 once adjusted for inflation. This summer’s shows started at £135, almost twice that. When LCD Soundsystem played Brixton Academy in 2005, tickets were £15 (£26 adjusted for inflation). This July, you can bag a standing ticket for £61 plus fees.

Of course, paying £60 for a 30-minute set would be pretty poor economics, by any standard. In the era of austerity, inflation and price gouging, the only way to convince gig-goers to part with their money is to promise more bang for your buck. That viewpoint has some validity, but does a longer bang equal a bigger bang? Is a night of high-octane, thrilling musicianship from someone at the top of their game only worth your money if it goes on for longer than two hours?

Folk punk troubadour Frank Turner feels around two hours is the sweet spot. “Personally, I think if a band has a lot of records, a longer show is more justified,” he says, “I don’t think much more than two hours holds people’s attentions, though of course it depends on the artist and the genre. I tend to play for just under two hours at a headline show. But it’s not my place to have opinions about other people’s methods of presenting their own art. I think bands can play for however long they want to play for.”

Mark Davyd, CEO and founder of the Music Venue Trust says, “I’ve always been drawn to the point that if you don’t like the band after 30 minutes you’re unlikely to like them two hours later. I think for legacy artists there is a sense of value for money, which is partly driven by the wish of long-standing fans to see and hear their favourite song. I would encourage artists to think about the length of their performance based on where they are in their careers, and what audience expectations might be.” 

Tim Perry, booker at Brixton’s The Windmill, the fertile indie breeding ground that spawned the likes of Shame and Black Midi, agrees that value plays a big role. “Even at this level, if a band is headlining, people expect 40-45 minutes as opposed to the usual half an hour,” he says. “With the Jack White story, 90 minutes sounds fine to me but with my short attention span, I can only think of Neil Young keeping me transfixed for longer. Or possibly Carly Rae Jepson.”

So much of today’s popular culture is crafted around the idea that you’re going to lose people’s attention at some point. Second screen syndrome means TV shows can’t be too complicated. At a live show that goes on for three hours plus, everyone (except the die-hards hemmed in at the front) will wander off at some point to get more beer or food or go to the loo. The BST shows in Hyde Park each summer are akin to a gigantic village fete, where you can go shopping and eat some churros and stroll back when you hear the band break into one of your favourites.

As Davyd says, there’s much to be said for grabbing the crowd by the lapels and holding them rapt for 60 relentless minutes. Even if Jack White was to play for three hours, there’d be someone disappointed that he didn’t play their favourite song off De Stijl. You can’t keep everyone happy all the time. White’s stubbornness is its own wisdom; the first mistake is to try.

Jamie Lee Curtis set off a debate two years ago when she said that gigs should have matinee performances. Curtis had a point. The older your audience gets, the less likely they are to want to be making their way home at 1am, but if they’re expecting a three-hour set to get their money’s worth, then something has to give. 

Really, it seems we’re trying to fix the wrong problem. Instead of marathon performances and earlier start times, perhaps the more pertinent question is: how do we fix the broken economics of the live music industry? A sensible model where fans aren’t overcharged and artists aren’t underpaid would pave the way for bands to create the live experience they want to deliver, whether that’s a blistering 45 minutes or a three-hour immersive performance, without any undue pressure to perform the impossible.

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