And Magic For All...

Last week, I was one of 75,000 metal-heads at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff, watching (and loving) Metallica. It was an epic experience, and I could also see those same 75,000 people, thinking the same thing.

Then, I suddenly realised. Over the 23 years I have been doing magic for, I’ve worked out that I have entertained around 150,000 people. Nearly double that of the people in the entire stadium.

I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it at first, I certainly couldn’t imagine doing that all in one go, let alone even begin to fathom the sheer number of people in that stadium I’d be looking at. Maybe not all in one go, but across nearly a quarter of a century, yes. I’m scratching my head, have I entertained that many people?!?! The scale of it bends my mind even as now as I write this.

In a weird way, it made me think about the different scales of space and time. A stadium gives you the scale of space. You see it, feel it, and hear it instantly. One single moment shared by masses of people, compared to many people over years.

Maybe you don’t realise it at first, but eventually, upon realising it, you understand that you have achieved something quite remarkable.

Each one of those tens of thousands of people are spread across weeks, months, and years. Every reaction, every laughter, every gasp of exasperation, and every “how did you do that?”. It certainly adds up over time, you just don’t realise it.

So while it is perhaps difficult to visualise this grand inversion of scale at first, especially in the form of the stadium I was standing in, when you do realise, it truly is quite extraordinary to take in. It took one stadium experience for me to realise the surreality of it all.

It brings us back nicely to the Metallica concert. I thought, “Would I trade places to entertain them all at once, like Metallica does, or would I keep doing what I’m doing now?”

Well I have to say, in all honesty, the answer is Yes. Having played lead guitar in a metal band some 30 years ago now, the original goal was always the same, to be a successful band playing to the masses of metal-heads, and eventually, stadiums like Cardiff’s Principality Stadium. It was a dream, a big dream, unfortunately it did not come to fruition. Not in this life anyway…

But I hold no regrets, and I quietly accept that the roll of the dice that is life didn’t take me down that path. In fact, I say also that I wouldn’t trade what I have either. Thought it would have been nice to go down that path, I’m in a happy place and I really do, truly love my job.

Although entertaining 150,000 people all at once would have been an incredible thrill, there's something just as rare and rewarding about having had the chance to entertain 150,000 individuals, group or one table at a time. Each performance was personal, shared between just me and the people in front of me.

Entertaining so many individuals has also restored my faith in humanity. Almost everyone I've had the pleasure of performing for has been kind, warm, and genuinely wonderful. Truly bad people are remarkably rare... but perhaps that's a blog for another time.

Throw up the horns!!!