In a new interview with Audacy, GHOST leader Tobias Forge discussed the band’s announcement last fall that their 2025 world tour would be a “phone-free experience,” allowing guests to keep their phones with them but secured in Yondr pouches.
“It’s an experiment. And to be perfectly honest, my 16-year-old daughter was very, very, very, very skeptical of this idea,” Tobias said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “And then she was, like, ‘No one’s gonna buy a ticket.’ And I was, like, ‘I don’t know. I have no idea what people [will do].’ I just know one thing, and that is that over the years it’s gone absolutely insane. If you have 10,000 people at a concert and 8,000 of them are holding a phone, there’s something deeply disconnected. And, obviously, this implies that I had this conversation with my daughter, but we talk about a lot of things and we speak openly about things. But I was saying, like, ‘That’s like having an intimate moment with someone and that person would just take out the phone like that.’ ‘Oh, hold on. I’m just gonna take a photo.’ I know some people do that.
“If I’m just speaking for myself — I know a lot of artists don’t care and I know that there are plenty of upsides, especially commercially because you want people that… The whole thing in the business is, basically, ‘Yeah, we want people to film because we want people to see the show, and that will sell more tickets.’ Fine. I understand that there’s a promotional tool with social media,” he explained. “I’m not gonna neglect that. Part of our success is obviously from social media… We started on MySpace. That was the root cause for our success at the time. I don’t know if we would ever become anything if it weren’t for MySpace. And, obviously, our TikTok has played a huge part.
“I’m not saying that all social media is bad. I’m just saying that when it comes to the actual live show, my calling, my reason for being there is the connection between myself and everybody that I brought with me that are working in tandem to give you an experience, that experience is completely decocked if everybody’s just filming. Am I wrong? Am I right? I don’t know. That’s how I, and we, felt.”
Using Yondr pouches, fans can easily store their phones, which will stay locked until they leave the phone-restricted zone or visit designated unlocking stations inside the venue.
GHOST is set to release their new album, Skeletá, on April 25 through Loma Vista Recordings. The official music video for the album’s lead single, “Satanized,” can be seen below.
Source: metaladdicts.com
