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Artist News Gigs & Festivals
Backstreet Boys to headline Indian metal festival
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 29 January 2010
Metal fans in India have expressed anger after organisers of the Rock In India festival booked The Backstreet Boys and Richard Marx to headline this year’s event, which takes place at two sites in Dehli and Bangalore on 20 Feb and 22 Feb. Launched in 2008, past festivals have had a heavier rock music policy, with previous headliners including Iron Maiden, Megadeth and Machine Head.
Despite the complaints that metal has been entirely cut out of this year’s line-up (more mainstream Indian acts complete much of the rest of the bill) and calls for different headliners to be chosen, organisers seem to be in no mood to add some last minute metal, arguing that they are responding to fan demand in making their event more mainstream, and that the name ‘Rock In India’ was never meant to imply their event was about, erm, rock, in India.
They said in a statement: “There has been a long-standing request from many music fans to our website that they would like to see mainstream music and also classic rock. Rock In India is a ‘music’ festival.Rock In India does not mean the genre rock only. Being a fan, you have right to an opinion. [But] being a promoter, no artist is big or small to us. All artists are respected equally and not looked down upon just because they are a pop artist! We respect their music!”
