Rosanne Cash on Paris: ‘We Have to Book the Bataclan This Year’
Concert calendars throughout Europe continue to shift this week, while musicians and booking agents struggle with major security concerns raised by the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.
But for Rosanne Cash, who performed 25 years ago at the Bataclan, where nearly 100 music fans were killed during a massacre at last weekend’s Eagles of Death Metal concert, the horrific tragedy only increases her desire to make a return appearance. “As soon as this happened, I called my manager and said, ‘We have to book the Bataclan this year,'” she told The New York Times.
Cash first performed at the venue in 1990, during her Interiors tour. “It was one of those nights when every moment was beautiful,” she tells Rolling Stone. Her then-husband Rodney Crowell was with her that night too, and the couple ended the evening with a late-night dinner at a nearby restaurant, where they received a standing ovation from other hungry patrons who’d just left the same concert hall.
Members of the Cadillac Three, who wrapped up a short U.K. tour just one day before the Parisian attacks, echo Cash’s sentiments. Drummer Neil Mason says the guys have no plans to scrap their return trip in January.
“I think it’s important that everyone comes together and and says, ‘This is not the way the majority of the world wants to treat each other,’ and music is a good outlet for that,” he tells Rolling Stone Country. “To see people coming together and being part of a crowd again, right after those attacks — that’s standing up to it. Because the truth of the matter is, what terrorists want is for people to hide. They want people to cancel shows. And we’re not gonna do that.”
Country headliner Brantley Gilbert, however, has pulled the plug on his Black Out Tour, returning home after just three shows in Germany and the Netherlands, while artists like Kacey Musgraves and American Aquarium are moving forward with their own overseas runs. And once January hits, the Cadillac Three, John Moreland, Jason Isbell and Rod Picott will all kick off European tours, with one show — Isbell and Moreland’s January 18th engagement at La Maroquinerie — occurring less than 1.5 miles from the Bataclan.