Front Burner - What went wrong at Travis Scott’s Astroworld

Episode Date: November 11, 2021

As lawsuits, a criminal investigation and social media try to assign blame for the fatal crowd surge at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival, a look at the warning signs before the concert, and the long history of festival disasters.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello. That's okay, let me see you real quick. Say, who's this doing? Hello, I'm Angela Starrett.

30 minutes before Travis Scott came on, people were dropping to the floor. I screamed, there's a girl, there's a girl on the ground. And I try everything in my powers to bend down. And I lift up her head, like her head drops back to the ground. She unfortunately did not make it. She was one of the victims. Right before I passed out, I tried to turn my head to tell my boyfriend. I couldn't turn my head, but I tried to tell him to tell my son that I loved him, because I honestly did not think I was going to make it out of there.

I'm not trying to be dramatic. I straight up thought I was going to die. When Travis Scott was on stage at his Astroworld Festival on Friday, a crowd of some 50,000 people in Houston's NRG Park surged forward. The pressure rendered many immobile or unable to breathe. Some passed out, and instead of chanting for Scott, others chanted for the show to end. But as ambulances entered the crowd and Scott himself noticed unconscious fans, the show continued. We need somebody to help him. Somebody passed out right here.

Local officials say even after declaring a mass casualty event, the show continued for 40 minutes. Eight people are now dead and hundreds are injured. Lawsuits, investigations and social media hellfire ensued. With blame hurled at everyone from Scott to fans to organizers and even Satan, which I will get to. to organizers, and even Satan, which I will get to. So today on FrontBurner, we're putting Astroworld in context with Scott's chaotic career and the long history of disasters at music festivals. I'm joined now by Tom Bryan. He's the senior editor at Stereogum. Hey, Tom.

Hi. So, you know, obviously neither of us was at the concert in Houston on Friday, but based on the huge amounts of video and audience accounts we've seen, what do we know about what was happening in that crowd? The term, I guess, that people have been using for what happened was a crowd crush, which is when there's way too many people pushing forward in a contained space. And so the people who were at the front, they all get smushed up to the point where they can't breathe. If people fall down, then they can't get back up. Nobody can move. And it started around the time Travis Scott came on stage. The way this festival was set up, they had two stages, but everybody who was on earlier in the day played on one stage.

And then the other stage was just Travis Scott's own stage. And half an hour before he came on stage, there was a countdown clock on the screens near the stage to let everybody know that it was starting. So I think when it was about to start, more and more people ran over and just kind of jammed in together in these like metal barricades. I think a lot of people, you know, who've been to festivals have experienced being kind of crushed in the crowd to various extents, although obviously not to this extent. I'm wondering if you've experienced that feeling of being crushed in a crowd at a concert. Yeah, absolutely. It is a scary feeling. The time where I felt it the most was I was 15 in the 90s at an all-day alternative rock radio station

festival. Courtney Love came out and gave an unannounced performance and I was already near the front when that happened and a whole lot of the crowd pushed forwards and just the whole crowd became this sort of like moving flowing organism where I felt like I had no control over where I was or where I was going and I was young then but I was already taller than most of the people around me so I was doing better than most people there but I was still then, but I was already taller than most of the people around me. So I was doing better than most people there. But I was still like, I'm having trouble breathing and I don't know how I'm getting out of this. And the idea of people dying like that, of that getting so bad that people actually didn't get out is really horrifying. Like it's, it's nightmare fuel. Yeah. That sounds terrifying. And just to understand what happened here and the controversy over,

over who is to blame for it. I want first to go back to the early days of Scott's career, almost a decade ago when he was still playing side stages at festivals, what got fans so excited about him? Well, Travis Scott isn't exactly unique in this respect, but he is someone who performs as a conductor of energy. The first time I saw him live, which was around the time he was starting, what really struck me about his performance was that he didn't do much rapping while he was on. He kind of like chanted his choruses, sort of, but he was much more involved in the crowd participation aspect

and in getting people to sort of mosh the way he wanted. Mosh pits are not a new phenomenon at rap shows, but they have sort of exploded in popularity in recent years. And that has always been Travis Scott's thing. When he talks about raging, he's talking about moshing. You know, raging and having fun and expressing good feelings is something I plan on just like doing and spreading across the globe. I was talking about this sort of like convulsive, exciting, physical crowd atmosphere that can get out of hand if it's not handled right. of hands if it's not handled right. Right. And I guess, too, there's also a video from GQ back in 2015 called How to Rage with Travis Scott, where he says he took inspiration from wrestling. Since I was six, I wanted to be a wrestler. The Hardy Boys, X-Pac was like my idol.

So performances, I always wanted to make it feel like it was the WWF. And, you know, I'm wondering, as Scott grew throughout the 2010s, what kind of indications did we get that these performances could get out of hand or even be dangerous? People have been hurt at his shows before. Somebody was partially paralyzed at a show at Terminal 5 in New York, which is this really tall sort of concrete box of a venue with a bunch of balconies going up. My understanding is at some point in that show,

the spotlight, the stage lights focused on somebody who was hanging from a second floor balcony. And Travis Scott said to that person on the microphone, go ahead and jump. They'll catch you. They'll catch you. Don't be scared. Don't be scared. Boom!

Boom! Yeah! And then shortly thereafter, somebody fell or, according to this person, was pushed from a third floor balcony and then was put on stage. And that person is now suing Travis Scott. Travis Scott's been arrested a couple of times in past years for telling people to, you know, break through barricades. He's got a song where he says, it ain't a mosh pit, it ain't no injuries. I got him stage diving out the nosebleeds.

So he's taken a certain level of pride in his ability to summon chaos. And I understand there's even footage. I was watching this last night from Scott's 2019 Netflix doc, where we can see a manager for his live show talking about those dangers, right? Yeah. They push up against the front and spread all the way across that and fill in the whole front floor. So the pressure becomes very great up against the barricade. You will see a lot of crowd surfers in general,

but also you see a lot of kids that are just trying to get out. So that stuff is relatively routine. So that stuff is relatively routine. And honestly, watching him discuss this in such a sort of a blithe, conversational, offhand way is a little jarring, but it's also like, that's the conversation that security people and people holding the show should be having beforehand if they're going to contain a Travis Scott show

and make it safe for everybody involved. So Scott eventually broke through as a recording artist. He got his first of several number one hits in 2018 with Sicko Mode featuring Drake. But despite his chaotic shows, Scott also really proved himself, you know, as a corporate darling. He got Nike collabs, a Hot Wheels car, his own McDonald's meal, complete with a commercial.

I'm Travis Scott. This is my McDonald's order. Follow me. He had virtual concerts in the game Fortnite that drew almost 28 million people. And so that brings us back, I guess, to Scott's much hyped festival in Houston last week. Scott had his own custom built stage called Utopia Mountain that reportedly cost five5 million U.S. But early on, on the first day, that's Friday, what kind of warning signs did we see that that might have indicated that the event might have not been safe? Okay, so there are videos that have been going around about people

rushing the gate and knocking gates down on their way into the festival, in some cases, trampling over people on the way in. So, but I don't even think that's necessarily a warning sign. If you are someone who's been to a lot of music festivals, those sort of like gate crashes are relatively routine in a big festival environment. I think when you look at the setup of the way Travis Scott's performance was

presented with him being the only act on this stage every single person in this venue immediately turned their attention to this stage and ran over to it and the the presentation of it was all about this sort of like excitement and catharsis of the moment like creating this big dramatic cinematic moment for the people there. And also presumably for the people watching the Apple music live stream or whatever, or like taking videos of it, it was sort of engineered to be viral. Certainly not as it became, you know, it's, it's hard to tell with all these things. If you weren't there, you can look at videos, you can read accounts, but it really seems like the venue was in no way equipped to handle this sort of firestorm that the event was engineered to create.

It seems like the people who were hired to be the medical staff were not remotely prepared. They were completely overwhelmed. The security... This is Jackson Bush when he showed up to work Astroworld as a security guard. It wasn't just his first time working security at a concert. It was his first time ever at a concert. Do you feel like you were qualified for this situation? I do. I don't believe I was prepared. You don't think you were prepared? I was qualified because I believe that if we were all prepared the right way, that stuff wouldn't have happened the way it did, you know?

The way it did. People filming it. There's a video of somebody climbing up on a ladder to a camera platform and yelling to the cameraman that the show needed to be stopped because people are dying. And the cameraman just sort of goes on filming. And it seems like it's a massive institutional failure at every conceivable level. But when we're speaking about kind of like the warning signs,

I know that Houston's police chief said he personally visited Scott. What do we know about that conversation that they had? Well, he has said that he said it could get crazy out there, be ready or whatever. I read this as people trying to cover for themselves. I think the Houston police, any way you want to look at it, they don't come out of this looking great. Basically, the fire department knew within half an hour that things were completely out of control. The police...

You cannot just close when you got 50,000 and over 50,000 individuals, okay? We have to worry about rioting, riots. I think that that time that I gave you from just a little bit after 9 930 to 10 minutes after 10 to get that closed down. And it was a cooperation and discussion between promoters, my fire department, the police department and an NRG official. So I think that part was pretty good. part was pretty good. Based on everything that I've read, it seems like when a show like that gets dangerous, stopping it or at least pausing it is exactly what you need to do. And just when

we're thinking about like the warning signs, we also know that just over a week before Astroworld, fans knocked down metal detectors and moved barricades at a Playboy Cardi concert at the same venue. And organizers actually canceled that show. I mean, why was the same not done for this show if it was kind of the same kind of with those warning signs? That's a great question. My only best guess is that there was a lot more money put into this Travis Scott show. There were more people there.

There were corporate partnerships to consider. We've seen the videos of fans, you know, chanting for the show to stop. You just mentioned there the woman climbing up on the ladder, fans pleading with crew members for help, and stuff like this was happening as soon as Scott's first song played. But what did Scott do on stage as the show progressed? Well, he did a lot of things there. You know, he did what he always does, which is tell everybody to rage and tell everybody to make the ground shake.

There were a few times where he seemed to notice that things were going awry to some extent. There's a video, there's an ambulance out in the middle of the crowd, and Travis Scott stops and says, oh, there's an ambulance there. Everybody put your middle finger up if you're okay. And then he sees middle fingers, I guess, and starts the show again. There's another video of him seeing somebody passed out near him and telling security to, you know, help this person.

Somebody passed out right here. Hold on, don't touch him, don't touch him. Everybody just back up. Security, somebody help jump in real quick. Keep going, just keep it, just keep going. My best guess is that Travis Scott played the show that Travis Scott regularly plays, that what he saw when he looked out in that crowd was chaos,

but it was the same sort of chaos that he always encourages. A Travis Scott show that looks badly, if you're Travis Scott, probably doesn't look that different from a Travis Scott show that is going completely according to plan. that different from a Travis Scott show that is going completely according to plan. There was also a moment late in the set when Travis Scott brought Drake out on stage. And Drake is the biggest star in the world. He was a surprise guest. I am imagining that that made things way worse. And when Drake came out, it was after the Houston Fire Department had determined that the show was dangerous. It boggles my mind that anybody let that Drake thing happen. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection.

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That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. I mentioned that hundreds of people were injured, 25 were hospitalized. The Houston Chronicle says that a nine-year-old boy is in a medically induced coma and eight people have died. Can you tell me a bit more about who the deceased were?

Kids, basically. It was everybody who died. They ranged in age from, I believe, 14 to 27. There was a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old who died. The 27-year-old, the story that I saw was that he was trying to get his fiancée to safety when he died. The story about the 9-year-old, his father had his son up on his shoulders to protect him, but the crowd crush got so bad that the father passed out, and so the kid fell. And they were both hospitalized, and they ended up in separate hospitals.

It's obscene what happened at this show, the level of personal devastation to these people. It's hard to contemplate. It's really heartbreaking, the nine-year-old one, just so hard to think about. And Scott says he'll pay for the funerals. He also says he's partnering with a U.S. company to get free mental health services to those affected. But before that, Scott put out this video where, you know, he's rubbing his forehead. I just want to send out prayers to the ones that was lost last night. We're actually working right now to identify the families

so we can help assist them through this tough time. He's saying he didn't know how bad the situation was. He didn't apologize. And some fans who were at the concert have slammed that video for seeming fake. What did you make of Scott's statement? Well, I think his remorse is genuine. I think he really is upset about what happened. He would have to be some sort of monster to not feel that way. It's terrible. I'm sure everybody involved at every level of this feels awful about what happened. Feeling awful, you know, isn't

enough. And the fact that Travis Scott did not apologize, I am very certain was, I'm sure he got legal advice not to do that. Travis Scott is being sued. There have been a number of lawsuits filed already. So the promoters have been sued, the venue's been sued, Drake has also been sued, and nobody has apologized. And I'm sure there are legal reasons for that, which has the effect of making it all seem terribly insincere. And there is a criminal investigation underway in Houston. You mentioned the lawsuits piling up. But out of the courts, I'm also seeing a lot of people on social media, you know, blaming the crowd itself. on social media, you know, blaming the crowd itself. And we know Houston police say they're investigating whether someone was injecting and suspecting people with drugs. There's also users on TikTok pushing this conspiracy theory that the festival was a satanic ritual and the

deaths were sacrifices. I mean, there's no real evidence for it. But what do you think is driving those conspiracies what what you're describing here is teenage oral tradition it is the rumor mill that starts up around every concert it happened when i was a kid i remember hearing about people running around in the crowd festivals with needles and injecting people with aids like it it's absurd, but that's what happens when kids talk. They tell these like boogeyman ghost stories. I guess the idea that these rumors would have us believe is that either Travis Scott was performing a satanic rite up on the stage

and that is what got these people killed, or it is that there was a sort of a whole-blooded evil person out in the crowd randomly injecting concert goers and security the willingness of the houston police to take that rumor seriously and to be like oh yeah we're investigating that that seems awfully convenient to me and it seems like if uh if we're blaming these demonic figures, that means that we're not blaming the people who put the festival together and who hired security who couldn't handle it and medical people who couldn't handle it. I put no stock in that story at all. I mean, this isn't the first time this has happened. There's been a number of large concerts that have resulted in deaths going all the way back to the 60s.

How does the fallout from those shows compare to what we're seeing here? About a decade ago, The New Yorker published a piece on the phenomenon of crowd crushes, which is not unique to concerts. You know, the story focused on a Walmart Black Friday sale that killed somebody. It's happened in staggering numbers at religious ceremonies. But the coverage surrounding Astroworld is pretty similar to the coverage surrounding something like what happened with The Who in Cincinnati in 1979, where there was a crowd surge outside the venue

and 11 people died. Where were you and what happened? I was standing right here. I've been here since 6 o'clock this evening. And when they opened the doors tonight, everybody just went crazy. There was a girl in front of me. She fell down and people were stamping on top of her and everything. And I was trying to help her up. They were just hitting everybody and just trying to kill to get into the concert. There was a newspaper columnist quoted who purely blames the crowd,

says they were all hopped up on pills in Southern Comfort and that they stomped 11 people to death. And that's not what happened. Although I'm sure plenty of people were on Pills in Southern Comfort at that Who show. I'm sure plenty of people were high at the Travis Scott show. The idea of blaming the victims

and also blaming the performers is a pretty convenient way to present the whole narrative. Whereas what really happens is it's usually about people cutting corners in the planning and not being ready for the types of things that can happen when you get a whole bunch of people together into one space and charge them a lot of money. And I know you saw an analog to this in the recent Woodstock 99 documentary. Absolutely. The Woodstock 99 documentary that's on HBO,

one of the promoters of that festival was a man named John Cher. And he is all through this festival documentary talking about how the sexual assaults were the fault of the women who weren't wearing enough clothes. Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit is an idiot who made everything go bad because he was out there yelling to Break Stuff. Whereas, like, if you were the festival promoter and you book Limp Bizkit and they have a song called Break Stuff, you need to be ready for the things to happen that you have set into motion.

So we know that CNN got a copy of an event plan that says to refer to deceased concert goers as quote-unquote smurfs and to never say dead or deceased over the radio. The plan also didn't include crowd surge responses. So, you know, we're still sorting out exactly what went wrong at Astroworld. But I'm wondering, you know, given the problems we've talked about with festivals in the US, are festivals being done more safely elsewhere in the world? Well, yeah, there are things that can be done at a lot of festivals

in Europe and also in the US. There are things like the T-shaped barrier that is in front of the stage where it doesn't just run along the stage, it goes out into the crowd, it kind of divides the crowd into two, gives security more space to pull people out. I read one article where an expert was calling for, and in a lot of situations, they'll have trained spotters in the crowd with noise-canceling headphones on, letting them know if things are going badly so that they can stop the show if they need to. There are certainly measures that can be put into place. But there's also, like, the size of some of these festivals is crazy. The best experiences I've had at music festivals have all been in relatively small scale ones where there's room to breathe and where you also kind of feel more of a connection to

the people around you. It doesn't mean they all have to be like that, but those from my experience tend to be a whole lot more pleasant and a whole lot safer. We'll have to wrap it there. But thank you so much, Tom, for your time today. Really appreciate this. Thanks so much for having me. During our conversation, Tom and I mentioned the report of a security guard being injected with an unknown drug,

and that Houston police said they were investigating. Well, since we spoke with Tom yesterday afternoon, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner provided an update. Now, Finner says they've spoken to the guard, and the report is false. Also, before we go today, an update on the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. Yesterday, Annamie Paul formally resigned as the party's leader. She also says she's ending her membership with the party. Paul led the Greens through September's federal election where she failed to win herself a seat. But her campaign was marred by party infighting, which led to calls for a

leadership review and the party executive trying to rescind her membership just weeks before the election call. Paul announced she was quitting a week after the election, calling her time in leadership the worst period of her life. Her departure was delayed until now because of a legal conflict with the party. And that's it for today. I'm Angela Starrett. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner.