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Artist News
Chris de Burgh shelves plans to perform in Iran
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 12 October 2012
Chris de Burgh has abandoned plans to perform for his sizeable fanbase in Iran until president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is ousted from power.
As previously reported, in 2008 de Burgh announced plans to become the first Western musician to play in the county since 1979, with a run of ten shows with Iranian band Arian at the 12,000 capacity Azadi Indoor Stadium in Tehran. However, he was forced to cancel when he was not granted a work permit.
So, bad luck for de Burgh. Though in the subsequent years, while possibly wondering how to overcome the issue that it’s illegal to sing in English in Iran, the singer has had a change of heart about performing in the country anyway, certainly while Ahmadinejad is in charge.
Asked if he still had plans to attempt to perform in Tehran, De Burgh told Sky News: “At the moment, unfortunately, because I have very strong feelings about the current regime, particularly what everybody now agrees was the fraudulent election of Ahmadinejad and what happened subsequently and what’s happened to the protesters… No, absolutely not. I don’t think I would be safe, to be honest – I’m a vocal critic of what’s going on over there at the moment… What I am doing is tiny compared to what the politicians are trying to achieve with the whole thing, but one day I will return”.
De Burgh’s new album, ‘Home’, is out this week in the UK.
