Frank Ocean has cancelled his second performance scheduled for this weekend at Coachella, a week after his first performance – his first live show in six years – left many fans disappointed and confused.
A representative for the musician confirmed to Rolling Stone on Wednesday night that the upcoming performance had been cancelled because singer had suffered a leg injury during the festival’s first week.
The singer has received medical advice not to perform again due to two fractures and a sprain in his left leg, the representative added.
Ocean said: “It was chaotic. There is some beauty in chaos. It isn’t what I intended to show but I enjoy being out there and I’ll see you soon.”
Blink-182 is lined up to take Ocean’s headlining spot, Variety has reported.
Ocean’s headliner performance at Coachella last Sunday was his first show since 2017. He was originally set to headline the festival in 2020 before the pandemic hit and it was rescheduled for 2023. But the highly anticipated performance began to provoke anger when it was announced that it would not be livestreamed on the Coachella YouTube channel, unlike other performances.
The singer took to the stage an hour after his scheduled start time, at about 11pm local time. He left out several hit songs and used a vocal track for others, openly miming along.
The show then abruptly ended due to the festival’s strict Sunday midnight curfew, with Ocean briefly walking offstage before returning to announce that the show was over.
Since then reports have emerged that Ocean was originally set to perform on a custom-built ice rink with more than 100 skaters around him. But the stage was dismantled just hours before the performance when it became apparent Ocean’s injury would not allow him to safely perform on the ice. Instead, 30 of the skaters paced the stage in custom Prada outfits and face paint.
Dan and Chris Powers, brothers and former hockey players who say they were hired to skate in the performance, said on Thursday that they had spent a month rehearsing for the show with about 120 other skaters in Los Angeles and had taken part in a successful dress rehearsal at Coachella, only for most of them to be told their services were no longer required hours before the show.
“Those figure skaters got cut not because there was an ice issue, not because there was something wrong,” Dan Powers said on the brothers’ podcast, Empty Netters. “There was no malfunction. [Ocean] just straight-up was like, ‘Fuck this. I’m not doing this any more.’ And [to] these 120 people [he] had bused out here, he was just like, ‘You guys aren’t doing shit now.’ So it was just like a wild flip.”
When the brothers arrived for wardrobe and makeup they ran into some Olympic figure skaters. “They have a disgruntled look on their face, and they casually mention to us that they just got a phone call and they’ve been cut from the show. So we’re sitting there, like, what the fuck is happening right now?
“These Olympians just got cut from this Coachella performance with Frank Ocean, and they think that we’re gonna go on? You’re saying goodbye to these skaters, but a bunch of dipshit former hockey players are gonna go up on that stage and buzz around? So we’re already getting bad vibes here.”
The brothers said they had been told at 4pm that organisers were “trying to undercover rip out this ice rink stage because they don’t want anyone to know it was there”.
But both praised Ocean’s commitment during rehearsals, with Chris Powers saying: “He really cares about the production. He had a very clear vision, and even though that vision changed a lot, he was always on us, helping us, making sure everyone hit what he was picturing in his mind.”
Ocean and his representatives have not responded to questions about the original plans for the show. The singer, who released his last album, Blonde, in 2016, last released new music in 2020: two tracks, Dear April and Cayendo.
• This article’s headline and subheading were amended on 20 April 2023 to include information about Frank Ocean’s injuries.
