‘You had to swim to the stage’: why guerrilla gigs are on the rise again

As the crowd of baying teenagers drew closer, clambering up on to the pool table and bar in scenes the NME compared to zombie film World War Z, I wondered if my mum hadn’t been right after all that this was “very ill-conceived”. It was 2020, we had just announced the debut Sports Team album Deep Down Happy, and our latest single, Here’s the Thing, was Radio 1’s Hottest Record in the World.

We were celebrating with an impromptu gig, announced via a tweet, in an old-school Camberwell pub, the Nag’s Head. A few songs in, things were getting out of hand. I spied our bass player seeking refuge atop his amp, only to lose balance – tumbling into a crash cymbal that collided with the head of our drummer. A trickle of blood ran down her forehead. The show went on. It was perfect.

From the Beatles in 1969 on the roof of their Savile Road HQ to Prince playing to fans in Lianne La Havas’s living room in 2014, the concept of a “guerrilla gig” – a free concert in an offbeat location – is nothing new. But at a time when stadiums are full of the same superstar names, and smaller venues are shutting, they are enjoying a resurgence. As Margate-based promoter Sammy Clarke puts it: “Nothing is as exciting as the idea of having a space for just one night.”

The last year has seen guerrilla gigs put on by everyone from French electronic act Air to American pop-punk band Blink-182.

“It’s definitely about seizing back space for people,” says Clarke , who has staged shows in bowling alleys, abandoned buildings and an underground network of chalk caves. He seeks “a sense of belonging that isn’t overly commercialised with adverts all over the venue and extortionately priced alcohol”.

Fans are sometimes left feeling powerless in the face of ticket-company monopolies, whose surge pricing led to Oasis tickets costing upwards of £350 for the reunion tour. Bands are also feeling the pinch, frequently walking away from touring after making a loss. According to figures from the Music Venue Trust, artists are playing an average of 11 shows on the UK grassroots circuit in 2024, compared with 22 in 1994.

Sometimes the chance to play a particular location is just too alluring to turn down. London post-punk quartet Dry Cleaning had planned to take the summer off to focus on writing. That was until an opportunity came along to play the Minack Theatre – a rocky granite outcrop on the Cornish cliffs. “There’s an air of excitement that builds throughout the day, more so than a regular show,” says drummer Nick Buxton, who recalls looking out and seeing a “sheer drop over the edge”.

“An ‘off-piste’ show is likely to present certain financial and logistical issues, so realistically they cannot happen too often. But once in a while a special show like this can make a tour, and maybe prove to be something definitive for an artist.”

Spare a thought for the crew, too. “Many hands and a lot of time was required for the backbreaking load-in and load-out, up and down the cliff basically,” winces sound engineer Frank Wright. “I can still feel the aches!”

This summer, Air were joined by indie band Phoenix for a free concert on the roof of Paris’s Charles de Gaulle airport. “Planes were taking off and landing 100 metres away, but they didn’t disrupt the music. They added to the spectacle,” says Air manager and Record Makers label founder Marc Teissier du Cros.

The production team had to deal with many constraints – from what equipment could be brought up to where to safely place 2,000 spectators. Air have played some prestigious venues this year, from the Royal Albert Hall in London to the Fillmore Miami Beach, so why bother jumping through the many logistical hoops for a guerrilla gig?

“Because our jobs need challenges,” says Teissier du Cros. “Because it’s remarkable and generates beautiful images that will be shared widely. The public has seen and experienced everything these days. Offering a different musical, architectural or social adventure is a sure way to sell tickets and gain visibility on social networks.”

Few bands have done it better, or with more regularity, than the Libertines. Notorious for off-the-cuff concerts in squats and their own front room during the mid-00s, the band sought to remove barriers between “the famous people and the not-so-famous people”.

Dominic Masters, singer with the rock band the Others, allegedly had the numbers of more than 1,000 hardcore fans programmed into his BlackBerry, ready to show up at his beck and call. The band played gigs on dodgems, in the lobby of Radio 1 and on a Circle line tube train. (Years later, we’d plough a similar furrow with a Sports Team “community WhatsApp group”, bussing “lucky winners” down to Margate for an annual day festival).

“Oh, the halcyon days of guerrilla gigging,” says the Libertines singer and guitarist Carl Barât. “One was on an island in the Serpentine and you had to row or swim to it. Pretty fucking off-piste, I’d say.”

The band also played for residents at a nursing home. “I think they were expecting a sort of Val Doonican skiffle act. When we turned up, a lot of them had their hands over their ears. There was one old dear who just kept asking us for pints. And someone died, actually, while we were playing our song Music When the Lights Go Out . I mean, what a song to go out to!”

Barat believes “cameraphones have kind of fucked” the spontaneity of old-school guerrilla gigs, pointing out that musician Jack White – who’s played everywhere from YMCA day care centres and public buses with his band the White Stripes – asks the audience to put their phones in a bag to preserve what he calls “the 100% human experience”.

Shareability is another reason why artists are turning to shows in offbeat spots – both for word-of-mouth marketing to promote the event and for every label’s obsession: social media “content”.

Little-known Texas hardcore band Live Without went viral for a gig at their local branch of fast food chain Denny’s, inspiring a copycat show by Blink-182, who then invited them to support them on an arena tour this year.

New York group Fcukers launched their debut EP in front of 1,000 people inside an abandoned dim sum restaurant last month at the East Broadway Mall. “The location, the New York party history there, the ‘abandoned mall’ vibe… it all felt truly perfect,” says Fcukers keys and bass player Jackson Walker Lewis. The gig was a nod to in-crowd New York pop-ups of the mid-00s like Madame Wong’s and China Chalet.

Their performances are a far cry from the “toilet circuit”. Few bands can claim to have played across four continents in their first 10 shows, including a rooftop pool and a Paris fashion week party.

“I think that putting the extra effort into creating a unique experience is totally worth the hassle,” says vocalist Shanny Wise, calling every show “an opportunity to do something creative… that will always be special for that specific audience”.

“If a party is theatre, the audience are actors and the venue is the all-important stage set for which the play will take place,” says Walker Lewis.

Clarke puts it more sentimentally: “There’s a magic in the air in some places. You feel like this could be the place that lovers meet; where people form enduring friendships and have their lives changed by music.”