Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Imagine Dragons playing a Las Vegas festival would be … Beautiful

Imagine Dragons-Vegas Mazagine

Erik Kabik / ErikKabik.com

Imagine Dragons, from left, Wayne Sermon, Dan Reynolds, Daniel Platzman and Ben McKee, attend Vegas Magazine’s party Monday, March 30, 2015, at the Four Seasons.

Click to enlarge photo

Imagine Dragons, from left, Daniel Platzman, Wayne Sermon, Dan Reynolds and Ben McKee, attend Vegas Magazine's party Monday, March 30, 2015, at the Four Seasons. The cover story about the Las Vegas band is written by the Las Vegas Sun's John Katsilometes.

Imagine Dragons at Vinyl

Imagine Dragons perform during their Destinations Dragons Tour stop presented by Southwest Airlines at Vinyl on Monday, Feb. 23, 2015, in Hard Rock Hotel Las Vegas. Launch slideshow »

One of the hottest rock bands on the planet is from Las Vegas and as such has become a huge festival draw.

Concurrently, Las Vegas has become a hotbed of festivals and is hungry for any huge festival draw.

At the center of this rock-festival reality stands Imagine Dragons.

We will see the band playing outside, in Las Vegas, before year’s end. Members have already said as much, as frontman Dan Reynolds told the audience at Vinyl in the Hard Rock Hotel on Feb. 24 that a date in Las Vegas was to be announced and “the best is yet to come!”

We’re zeroing on the when and where of it all, too.

Imagine Dragons’ upcoming world tour opens April 12 in Santiago, Chile, and runs through the end of November. The dates on the schedule are consistent but for a gap between a Sept. 10 stop in Addington, New Zealand, and an Oct. 11 show in Oberhausen, Denmark.

And the third Life Is Beautiful festival falls conveniently in the middle of that gap, from Sept. 25-27. It makes perfect sense for the band to headline LIB again.

Imagine Dragons played the first festival in 2013 and also are familiar with such downtown Las Vegas haunts as Hennessey’s Tavern and Beauty Bar, venues they frequented before reaching international fame.

The band was on hand Monday night at the Four Seasons celebrating the spring edition of Vegas Magazine. The band is featured on the cover of that edition, and I was honored to write that piece.

After performing the requisite red-carpet interviews, Reynolds sat and fielded a few questions.

Such as, “Are you guys playing the Life Is Beautiful festival this year?”

“You never know — hahahaha!” Reynolds said. “If I could say, I would tell you.”

Same question went today to Life Is Beautiful founder Rehan Choudhry, whom I reached by phone as he was visiting Chicago. Choudhry did agree with the opening in his own schedule and used the word “convenient” to describe that opening as it related to Imagine Dragons.

But there is no confirmation from him, anyone in the band or the band’s management that an appearance will be locked in.

So lock it in, I say.

Speaking generally of rocking out in the open air, Reynolds said, “We always love playing festivals. They are some of the greatest shows we do, and we love it because we get to meet other bands that we look up to.

“We can check out other acts, and there is something special about a festival and being outdoors and seeing more than 100,000 in front of a stage.”

Las Vegas has become a festival mecca with the maturation of LIB, the development of MGM Resorts Village across from Luxor and Mandalay Bay, and the launch of MGM Resorts Festival Grounds.

Not many bands can satisfy the need to sell tickets to fill those vast venues, and Reynolds sounds like a guy willing to support the city that propelled Imagine Dragons to the big time.

“We are so grateful. We have an album that we are proud of, that our fans like and that went to No. 1 — I can’t even conceptualize, still, what that feels like to have a No. 1 album — and I’m sure we’ll try to hang on to this for the rest of our lives, this incredible thing,” he said. “And I always say, we wouldn’t be here without Las Vegas.”

Maybe, or likely, we’ll hear a version of that sentiment from a stage in downtown Las Vegas in a few months.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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