While Mars is accustomed to live performances, the Olympics’ closing ceremony was a different kind of gig, he told French radio France Inter on Monday morning, due to the overjoyed crowd of athletes who were out of control during the musical act.
“We were told that generally at closing ceremonies, the athletes are very happy with the pressure from the Olympics coming down so they let loose,” said Mars. “But there, they got up on screens, they broke the screens,” he said. “In fact, we were afraid for them because we had been told for the last two weeks of rehearsal ‘Above all, don’t get on the screens, it will fall out!’ And there (at the Stade de France) we saw 400 on a screen,” he said with a laugher.
“So we continued playing and we tried to not see what was happening,” he said. At some point during the performance, the athletes also came on stage in what looked like a rehearsed scene. But Mars said it wasn’t planned. “We’re a little used to who invade the stage. As Branco (Laurent Brancowitz, the group’s guitarist) says, ‘It’s a thing that happens.’ But there have been bad situations in the past with falling through the stage. There, everything went well anyway, but we just had sweaty hands!” he said.
Brancowitz, who was also interviewed by France Inter, said Phoenix was given “carte blanche” for their live show. “The only thing we were asked was to ‘make the concert for the athletes, because they’re the heroes.’ But we didn’t imagine they would be a meter away,” he said, adding that it was a “magnificent experience.”
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