Cheap Trick Lobbies For Stage Regulations

Cheap Trick recently visited Congress to call for increased regulations on temporary stages, following the band’s near-death experience this summer at the Ottawa Bluesfest in Ontario.

Guitarist Rick Nielsen and band manager Dave Frey hit the Hill Oct. 3, according to the Chicago Tribune, where the pair urged lawmakers to consider new legislation.

“We want to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again,” Frey said during a panel at the Future of Music Coalition, according to the Tribune. He added that they hope legislators will consider a “standard certification process as you would have with elevators or a ferris wheel at a carnival.”

Cheap Trick and its crew narrowly escaped tragedy at the Bluesfest when the roof collapsed on the main stage during the band’s set July 17. While several people were injured and the band’s equipment was destroyed, no one was killed.

Two other stage collapses this summer proved fatal, however.

Seven concertgoers were killed and dozens more injured at the Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis and five people were killed and 140 others injured at the Pukkelpop Festival in Belgium in weather-related stage collapses.