Iconic rock band the Foo Fighters will reopen Madison Square Garden on June 20 for the first concert at the famed venue in more than 15 months. The 100% capacity night of entertainment will exclusively be open to fully vaccinated fans, the music group and arena jointly announced on Tuesday.
The Father's Day show will mark MSG's first concert in more than 460 days. Tickets go on sale to the general public Thursday at 10 a.m. via Ticketmaster.com and Ticketmaster Charge by Phone (1-866-858-0008). Prices range from $50 to $119.
Foo Fighters first headlined a sold-out Garden in February 2008 on their “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace” tour, returning to rock the venue for another sell-out show in November 2011 on the “Wasting Light” tour.
Most recently, the band sold out two nights at The World’s Most Famous Arena in July 2018, on their “Concrete and Gold” tour. The announcement of the June 20 MSG show follows the news of Foo Fighters’ first six U.S. dates on their “25th 26th Anniversary” tour taking place later this summer.
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More on NY's Pandemic Recovery
The Foo Fighters show is the first full concert at the Garden but is just the latest to be announced by MSG Entertainment as it looks to return a semblance of normalcy to the city's vibrant live entertainment scene. It will also host the closing night of the Tribeca Festival before a fully vaccinated, 100% capacity audience at Radio City Music Hall. That night will feature "Untitled: Dave Chappelle Documentary."
Later this month, MSG Entertainment will also host "Two Evenings With Trey Anastasio" at the Beacon Theatre. Both events, on June 19 and June 22-23, respectively, are already sold out.
“The Garden is ready to rock," James Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of MSG Entertainment, said in a statement. "We’ve been waiting for this moment for 15 months and are excited to finally welcome a packed house of roaring, fully-vaccinated Foo Fighters fans to Madison Square Garden."
The wait has been equally long for the Foo Fighters, band founder Dave Grohl said, "and Madison Square Garden is going to feel that HARD. New York, get ready for a long ass night of screaming our heads off together to 26 years of Foos."
The announcement comes a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio set Aug. 21 as the date for a mega-concert in Central Park to celebrate the city's recovery from the pandemic. The mayor enlisted veteran music producer Clive Davis to help pull it off.
Although no lineup has been set yet, de Blasio said he wants a three-hour show for 60,000 fans and eight "iconic" musicians performing. There will be both vaccinated and non-vaccinated sections; at least 70 percent of the tickets will go to people who can prove that they got the shot, however. Most tickets will be free.
All of the reopening developments come as New York's core viral rates continue to improve while vaccinations trend up, albeit at a slower pace. The state is in the midst of a 64-day stretch of decline in its rolling positivity rate, which is at an all-time pandemic low and is the lowest in the country, Johns Hopkins data says.
Statewide hospitalizations have fallen below 800 for the first time since Oct. 8, while daily death tolls are in the low double digits or high single digits on a regular basis. Cuomo and de Blasio both credit vaccinations for improved public health.
On Monday, the governor said he would lift virtually all remaining COVID restrictions once 70% of adult New Yorkers have at least one vaccine dose. As of Tuesday, 68.9% of them have had at least one job, Cuomo says CDC data shows. The state's number is slightly lower (66.4%), though there was no clear reason for the discrepancy. Either way, the governor expects it to take another week or so to hit that 70% benchmark, given recent stalled interest in vaccinations among adults.
Tourism has improved in accordance with the numbers. De Blasio said Tuesday that 72% of city hotels were booked as of last weekend. He has declared this upcoming season the "summer of New York City" as it rebounds from the pandemic.
