In 2014, TIME dubbed Damon Albarn “The Hardest Working Man in Rock.” The Blur frontman lived up to that title on Sunday when he played a whopping five-hour set at the Roskilde festival in Denmark and only stopped because he was carried off the stage.
Albarn headlined the music festival as part of his Africa Express project, a critically acclaimed collaboration between African and Western musicians. During his set, he was joined on stage by Nigerian artist Seye Adelekan, Malian band Songhoy Blues and Western artists like Laura Mvula and Yeah Yeah Yeah’s Nick Zinner. Albarn was having so much fun playing that he kept going and going until 4 a.m. when the plug was finally pulled.
After playing The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” Albarn encouraged the crowd to protest the forced end of the set. “You want more, we’re going to give you more,” the singer declared before a man, who The Guardian reported is appropriately known as “Big Dave,” came on stage, put the singer’s jacket over his shoulders and lifted him off stage.
While both the crowd and the musicians wanted the show to go on, Roskilde has cracked down on crowd control after an incident in 2000, when nine people died and 26 were injured during a Pearl Jam performance.
Luckily for the fans and the artists, just because the show was over didn’t mean the music had to stop. According to The Guardian, Albarn and the rest of the collective continued to make music backstage, as did the crowd, who drummed “on the poles of the tent” and kept chanting for an almost an hour.
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