Live (ish) at a venue near you: Are miming rock stars undermining the music experience?

The rock band that plays completely live, with no pre-recorded backing tracks or extended samples, is becoming rarer and rarer

The Red Hot Chili Peppers perform during the Pepsi Super Bowl XLVIII Halftime Show at MetLife Stadium on February 2, 2014 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images) (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

Tickets went on general sale this week for U2’s 2015 global tour.

But how many fans wonder just how “live” that experience will be? Because the rock band that plays completely live, with no pre-recorded backing tracks or extended samples, is becoming rarer and rarer. And although sound engineers, producers and other musicians will tell you in private what is going on, hardly any band, particularly among older and established acts, will admit to enhancing their live output in this way.

Paul McCartney and Elton John have criticised the practice, McCartney alleging in 2012 that many acts were using tapes at concerts. Unfortunately the subsequent London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony dented his credibility – he missed his cue but the pre-recorded vocal came in regardless. Then again, maybe one can understand in such a tightly cued slot, as when Red Hot Chili Peppers mimed their instruments at this year’s Super Bowl. It’s at a proper live gig – when McCartney is insistent that everything he does is “live” – that things are less clear.

Miming has been a part of dance pop for years, where audiences don’t seem to care. It’s when it happens at the supposedly credible end of the business, as when Rihanna mimed at last year’s T in the Park, that fans are affronted – just as they were in the late 1970s when ELO, then one of the biggest bands in the world, were revealed to be “playing along” to recordings, and audiences couldn’t be sure what they were hearing.

Recently I saw psychedelic wall-of-sound rockers Coves (whose debut album had rave reviews a few months ago) play a superb, soaring, set at London’s Roundhouse. I found myself looking for the keyboard and backing vocalists. Of course, there weren’t any, and the band weren’t trying to hide that. Singer Beck Wood tells me: “We’d love to have a full band but it costs a lot of money.” They started as a duo, as a bit of fun, she says, and didn’t see the problem at the beginning, though “we did get haxed for it a bit”.

Chris Martin of Coldplay performs live for fans at Enmore Theatre on June 19, 2014 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images) (Getty Images)

“Now we have a drummer and a bassist… but I don’t think I’d ever rule out backing tracks because there are these little tiny bits of noise that would cost an absolute fortune with all the people we’d have to have on stage.” And she sees a bigger picture: “It’s not just about the music when you’re at a gig, it’s what show [people] put on and what lights they use.”

Nevertheless she has seen how upset people can get: “We were on tour with the Raveonettes. Someone shouted to [the guitarist], ‘are you going to play guitar tonight?’ Because he does mime – he’ll stop playing and the guitar will be on the backing track. But, he told me, ‘I’m making it so obvious that they can’t have a problem with it!’”

Brian Travers, songwriter, co-founder, and sax player with multi-million-selling band UB40, is one of an older generation passionately against backing tracks. “We’re a nine-piece band and we all play live,” he tells me. Nevertheless, UB40 have had to face up to reality: “There isn’t enough money to take extra musicians when there’s nine of us already.” So UB40’s drummer uses “triggers”, electronic pads by his drums that each fires a different chord, “if there’s a figure that the keyboard player needs three arms for”. It’s a widely used technique. And UB40 even use “a few bars” of pre-recorded pedal-steel guitar: “That irks because we’d love to have a player on stage but it doesn’t irk as much as the part not being played… You have to use the technology.” There’s resignation in his voice when he adds: “Maybe it’s time to be honest.”

Honesty is a policy that Ellie Goulding and Ed Sheeran have signed up to by adding their names to the “Live Means Live” campaign run by Ivor Novello-nominated songwriter and composer David Mindel. It offers stickers and a downloadable logo, and the idea is, he tells me, that when people see the logo they know, “there’s no Auto-Tune, nothing that isn’t 100 per cent live. A lot of people go to gigs thinking they’re seeing a completely live band, but without the badge of honour they’ll never know. Our wish is that it’ll become big enough that everyone will know that if that logo isn’t on the ticket and the poster then that band is using something that isn’t on stage.”

Ellie Goulding performs during the Bacardi Triangle event in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. The event saw 1,862 music fans take on one of the most mysterious forces of nature in a three day epic music adventure. (Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for Bacardi)

But even Travers accepts times have changed: “In certain cases the band are playing live and there are added instruments, but maybe the audience still gets the excitement.”

I asked students at a London university: “Does it matter to you if a rock or indie-type act uses pre-recorded tracks when playing live?” The fact that 77 per cent said, “yes”, suggests that, if there is a generational shift, it is slow in coming.

How many of them are U2 fans I didn’t ask, but on online U2 fan-forums there is an acceptance that the band uses pre-recorded sequences. And a 2009 Santa Maria Times interview with Terry Lawless, keyboard player and technician who has been on every U2 tour since 2001, reveals he runs “extra sound effects that are used to make the live music sound exactly like what is on the album”.

At time of writing, I was still waiting for a reply from U2’s spokespeople about what pre-recorded elements they use live. Their forthcoming tour is called iNNOCENCE and eXPERIENCE. These seem appropriate watchwords for live audiences for many bands nowadays.

Coves tour the UK in March (covesband.co.uk); UB40’s tour returns to the UK in May (UB40.co.uk); U2 tour details are at U2.com; Live Means Live is at livemeanslive.com