TO RUSSIA WITH LOVE
The first time Airbourne came to Russia, they went to a remote spot in the Krasnodar region, just across the Black Sea from Crimea. It was 2014, the fraught first year of Russian military intervention in Ukraine. The Crimean Peninsula had been seized a few months previously. The BBC have since called it the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War.
It was here that the annual Kubana rock festival was due to take place, and the area looked like a war zone. But, frightened (not unreasonably) by media coverage of the conflict, lots of bands billed to appear at Kubana cancelled, especially those from overseas.
Today, in a much mellower Moscow, Airbourne remember being driven from a tiny local airport along dirt roads, crammed into two vans with all their gear, and arriving at scenes that resembled a war-torn Beirut. Not far from the stage, refugees arrived in boats at the beach.
“I still remember the hotel when we got there,” singer/guitarist Joel O’Keeffe recalls. “It looked like it had been bombed; the windows were blown out, curtains were blowing out the window, there was a dead dog lying at the door of the hotel – it was like it had been eaten by something. It was pretty brutal.”
Yet when it came to the actual concert, the reception they received was warm. It didn’t matter that it was sparsely attended, or that Airbourne weren’t exactly about to solve the world’s problems. That wasn’t the point.
“Rock’n’roll is a universal language,” Joel affirms. “Wherever you go in the world they all speak it. They all know AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Motörhead. You go to
