After Liam Payne’s death, fans remember his last concert in KC with One Direction
In the hot, sticky summer of 2015, a British boy-band known as One Direction performed in front of nearly 44,000 adoring fans at Arrowhead Stadium, one of the last times the group performed together.
Well aware that they were in the home of the Kansas City Chiefs, band member Harry Styles took a shot at an NFL rival of the hometown team. But it backfired in spectacular fashion.
The joke involved the Oakland Raiders (now Las Vegas Raiders) and bandmate Liam Payne, whose death Wednesday shocked fans.
Payne, who was 31, died after falling several stories from a balcony at a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Though none of Payne’s former One Direction bandmates — Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson — commented immediately, fans and other celebrities posted tributes and remembrances on social media.
The group performed at Arrowhead on July 28, 2015 as part of its “On the Road Again” tour, which turned out to be its last. Kansas City was the fifth stop on the North American leg of the tour.
It was a big deal at the time for the Chiefs, who were working to bring marquee-name concerts back to the stadium. The band performed in 17 North American stadiums on that tour.
One Direction performed here without Malik, who unexpectedly quit the band earlier that year. Ticket sales subsequently lagged, prompting giveaways and two-for-one deals for the tour.
But Kansas City showed up in force.
“If enthusiasm for the quartet of 20-somethings is waning, it wasn’t evident at Arrowhead Stadium on Tuesday night, when nearly 44,000 fans waited in oppressive heat for a show that exceeded two hours and roiled with relentless energy and noise,” The Star wrote that summer.
“The floor of Arrowhead was a sea of signs, many of them proposing marriage or some teeny-bop sentiment to the 1Ds. This wasn’t a typical boy-band crowd, however.
“There were plenty of swooning young girls, pre-teens and adolescents, and they were the ones doing most of the screaming. But there were lots of high school- and college-aged guys and gals in the place, too, and plenty of adults, and not all of them were chaperones or had children in tow.”
A few interludes, The Star noted, slowed the show’s momentum, like Payne pausing to read some of the many signs in the crowd and Styles stopping “to preach or chat with fans up front.”
At one point, Styles, a noted Green Bay Packers fan at the time, yelled out to the crowd: “I support the Raiders — said no one ever!”
“That’s a low blow to a fan base that hasn’t seen its team make the playoffs since 2002, but the Raiders were ready to go with a comeback directly involving Styles’ band mate, Liam Payne,” Sports Illustrated wrote of the diss.
The Raiders fired back by posting a photo of Payne wearing one of their iconic black hats.
“Well this is awkward, right,” they tweeted.
Just a few months after the Arrowhead concert, the band went on indefinite hiatus and never performed together again.
In June 2022, Payne criticized his former bandmates. But he later walked back those comments as he also revealed he had spent 100 days in rehab.
“My own frustrations with my own career and where I kind of landed, I took shots at everybody else which is wrong,” Payne said in a YouTube video. “So obviously, I want to apologize for that because that’s definitely not me.
“When I needed them most they kind of came to my rescue.”
Payne is survived by his 7-year-old son, Bear Grey.
This story was originally published October 17, 2024 at 11:20 AM.
.jpg)