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MUSIC

Police investigate if U2 gig ‘gunman’ was officer

UPDATED: A suspected gunman forcing a U2 concert to cancel in Stockholm on Sunday night has been identified as a police officer, Swedish media are reporting.

Published: 21 September 2015 09:09 CEST
Updated: 21 September 2015 19:02 CEST
Police investigate if U2 gig 'gunman' was officer
Police talk to fans outside the venue on Sunday. Photo: Pontus Lundahl/TT

Hundreds of fans spent several hours queuing outside the arena in southern Stockholm before being informed that the Irish rock legends would not be appearing on stage. Others who had arrived early and already taken their seats were escorted out of the arena by security guards.

Organisers initially said that technical issues meant that the gig could not go ahead and promised fans that the gig would be rescheduled for Tuesday.

“We apologize for the inconvenience and hope for understanding from fans. Safety is our top priority,” said Live Nation in a statement.

Disappointed fans took to social media to hit out at organisers, saying they had been left queuing for hours outside the arena without receiving any information.

But it later emerged that police were investing suspected gun crime at the venue after fans inside the building said they had spotted security guards searching the floor around the stage.

According to Sweden’s Aftonbladet newspaper, the incident began when it became known to guards that a man with a gun had been let into the arena after showing the weapon at the security checks.

The tabloid wrote that the man had been allowed to enter after claiming he was an off-duty police officer and had forgotten to leave his gun at work.

Later on Monday reports emerged in Swedish media suggesting that an officer was facing an internal probe over the incident.

Jan Friberg at the police's internal investigation unit was unable to give a detailed comment but confirmed to The Local that he had received a report which had been handed on to the investigating team.

“It could be that there has been some form of mistake,” he told Aftonbladet earlier in the day.

CULTURE

New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday’s death

Fans of the late Johnny Hallyday, "the French Elvis Presley", will be able to commemorate the sixth anniversary of his death with two songs never released before.

Published: 17 November 2023 09:05 CET
New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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