George Michael’s ex-manager says a hologram tour will never happen.
David Austin has revealed there were talks of using a hologram for part of the late music legend’s performance of ‘Fastlove’ at the legendary Royal Albert Hall, but the plans were scrapped because they didn’t feel the technology could do the Wham! star justice.
Speaking at a screening of the new documentary film ‘Freedom Uncut’ at Soho House in London on Monday, David responded when asked if it’s a possibility: “Never. A few years ago, way before all that started happening while George was with us, we were thinking about doing something at the Royal Albert Hall.
So around the release of ‘Listen Without Prejudice’ [anniversary set] that we initially made this film for, we were going to do a live event, it was going to be orchestral or something like that, we were trying to work out how we could do this.
“We had an idea that in the middle of ‘Fastlove’, that bit where the rain comes down, we were going to see if we could do a hologram idea in the middle of the RAH which we thought would blow people away.
“We went around and had all these people sort of courting me – they did Tupac , they did this, they did that. I went to look at a load of them and they were s***. They were really, really poor. There were some people who were ahead of the game with it, some who weren’t but it just didn’t work.”
ABBA recently opened their own arena to host their first-of-its-kind ‘ABBA Voyage’ avatar show, and although he’s not seen it himself, he can understand why it’s popular.
David saw the Roy Orbison one, however, and he doesn’t feel the audience can fully engage with it and see it as anything more than a tribute.
He added: “The thing is, I was talking to somebody and I want to go and see the ABBA thing because everyone is raving about it, they’ve obviously thrown loads of money at it and it’s jammed full of hits. That’s the real driver, if it’s full of hit records, that sort of thing works.
“I saw the Roy Orbison thing here. The problem with holograms is people just don’t engage subconsciously. They know it’s a hologram and 20 minutes into it, once they’ve seen it, people are on their phones, there’s chit chat, this level of murmur going on.
“The ABBA thing probably works because it’s jam-packed with hit-after-hit.”
‘Careless Whisper’ hitmaker George died aged 53 in December 2016
‘George Michael Freedom Uncut’ is in cinemas for one night only on June 22.