American band The Killers carry out the Saturday headline slot at Glastonbury Pageant in Somerset, Britain June 29, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls/File Photograph Acquire Licensing Rights
Aug 16 (Reuters) – An American alternative-rock band, the Killers, has apologised for bringing a Russian drummer on stage throughout a present in Georgia and for describing followers as “brothers and sisters,” which prompted boos from the viewers.
Georgia has an extended historical past of stress with its northern neighbour, exacerbated by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and a subsequent massive inflow of Russian emigrants escaping their nation.
The band, seven instances nominated for the music business’s Grammy Awards, carried out on Tuesday within the Black Sea resort of Batumi throughout a European tour.
“Good folks of Georgia, it was by no means our intention to offend anybody!” the band stated in a press release on its Fb web page, including that it had a longstanding custom of inviting folks to play the drums.
“We recognise {that a} remark, meant to recommend that the entire Killers’ viewers and followers are ‘brothers and sisters,’ may very well be misconstrued,” it added.
The reference was to a comment band chief Brandon Flowers made to the group, saying he didn’t need the scenario to show “offended”.
“I see you as my brothers and my sisters,” Flowers added to the sound of boos and whistles in a video printed by the Russian state RIA information company.
Movies on social media confirmed folks leaving the present, along with the booing.
Georgian public opinion is overwhelmingly pro-Ukrainian.
The band has offered hundreds of thousands of albums, with many songs topping the charts because it shaped within the metropolis of Las Vegas within the early 2000s.
(This story has been refiled to right the spelling of “Georgia” in paragraph 1)
Reporting by Lidia Kelly in Warsaw; Modifying by Clarence Fernandez
Our Requirements: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
