Mad Cool Festival Spain: QOTSA Gives Fans VIP Status, Massive Attack Cancels Performance

Mad Cool Festival, which took place July 12-14 in Madrid, Spain, had two acts in particular make headlines.

Juan Aguado/Redferns – Mad Cool Festival
General atmosphere at the festival’s first edition in 2016 in Madrid, Spain

During their set on Saturday, Queens Of The Stone Age demanded that their fans be let into the VIP area in front of the Mad Cool main stage.  “Security, you’d better let those people in,” frontman Josh Homme reportedly said, adding, “I’m not playing until you let them in. You’d better let them in because you work for me tonight.”

“It’s a Queens Of The Stone Age concert,” he said, “and you can do whatever you want to do. Let them in. Look at my face. Let them in or I will walk down there and let them all in.”

A day earlier, Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos had also voiced his contempt for VIP sections, reportedly telling the crowd he despised this area.

Franz Ferdinand was also the band that caused Massive Attack to cancel their entire show. Apparently the sound spill from the Madrid Te Abraza stage, where Franz Ferdinand was scheduled to play on Friday from 1.30 a.m., over to the Loop stage, where Massive Attack were scheduled for 1.45 a.m., was so bad that the British band didn’t go on stage at all.

Thousands of fans waited in vain for around two hours, only to be told that the gig wasn’t happening. A message from the festival’s organizers released after translated along the lines of: “Mad Cool Festival and Massive Attack want to apologize to the thousands of fans who patiently awaited the performance of the British group in the tent The Loop.

“The band and the festival are aware of the great disappointment caused by the cancellation of the concert.

“Unfortunately the band could not play at the scheduled time due to the sound interference of the nearby stage, which, due to the technical nature of the in-ear monitors system of the band, resulted in the concert not being able to take place.

“They tried to resolve the situation during the next hour but it was finally impossible.”

The third edition of the Live Nation-owned event had sold out 80,000 tickets. According to local news reports, this year’s edition experienced some technical issues at the gates and bars during the opening hours on Thursday, causing long queues in 86 degree temperatures, and preventing guests without cash from making purchases.

These and other alleged organizational shortcomings caused Spain’s consumer rights association FACUA to demand an explanation from organizers.

Pollstar has reached out to promoter Javier Arnaiz and Live Nation Spain for clarification.