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Camden New Journal - by CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 21 February 2008

Madonna

You’d have to be Koko to pay £300,000 for a song...

IT was the exclusive gig that had pop music fans pleading and begging for tickets, all of them desperate to see a legend at work under the unmistakable glare of a giant, shimmering glitterball.
But Madonna doesn’t come cheap – and the New Journal has learned that the singer’s fleeting appearance at the Koko nightclub cost a whopping £1.5 million, thought to be the most expensive gig ever staged in Camden Town. As she only sang five tunes, that works out at £300,000 per song.
Madonna played at Koko – the former Camden Palace music hall – in November 2006 to launch her album Confessions on a Dancefloor. She had not played a concert in Camden Town for 23 years and the booking was considered a musical coup.
But while the disco excitement helped put the landmark venue back on London’s musical radar, Koko’s head of music Daveid Phillips reveals in today’s New Journal that he doesn’t rate the show as the best concert held in the club since it was refurbished and given its new name. He said: “It was five songs, a £1.5 million budget on five songs. There have been better gigs at Koko.”
Mr Phillips’s first interview in three years came as Koko announced plans to fit a smoking roof on the flat terrace above the entrance.
Designed to fit 40 smokers, leaseholders of the venue, the Mint Group, hope the terrace will be open before July. They mapped it out after facing problems in the wake of last year’s smoking ban.
Mr Phillips said: “The smoking ban did present a big problem to us because we’re a Victorian theatre with no extra spaces and no courtyard. We have to put smokers out the front of the building which isn’t ideal.”
Koko came under fire after the smoking ban for fingerprinting clubbers heading out for a cigarette break – and ravers got even hotter under the collar over the imposition of a strict “five-minutes only” regime.
Mr Phillips added: “It’s not 30 people who are quietly chatting to each other – they’re having their night out. It causes a lot of problems.”
– See Music section, for full interview

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