Wasserman on Lewis Capaldi’s emotional return

Wasserman Music’s Alex Hardee and Ryan Penty have given the inside story on Lewis Capaldi’s triumphant live comeback in an exclusive interview with IQ.

Capaldi, who had recently been diagnosed with Tourette’s, took a two-year break from touring to focus on his mental and physical health after struggling to finish his Glastonbury set in June 2023.

The beloved 28-year-old picked up where he left off by making a surprise return to the Pyramid Stage last month.

“We had a really nice email from [organiser] Emily Eavis straight away after the last Glastonbury which said, ‘Whenever he’s ready, he’s got our full support,'” says Penty.

According to Hardee, Eavis told him that Capaldi’s short mid-afternoon set attracted as big a crowd as she had seen at the festival, on a par with Elton John’s legendary swansong two years ago.

“I’ve never heard a cheer like it at Glastonbury when Lewis came on stage,” says Hardee. “Everyone knew it was going to be him, but I think doing it the way we did it has amplified everything.”

“We were like, ‘If we do warm up shows, how do we keep them secret, but still get people to come?”

Agents Hardee and Penty, who represent the 28-year-old singer-songwriter in Europe, South America, the Middle East and Africa, explain how Capaldi’s reintroduction to the stage was carefully managed.

“We’d seen the signs [in 2023] and he wanted to carry on playing shows,” remembers Hardee. “So he took three weeks off before that Glastonbury, but he just wasn’t ready. It became obvious after the Glastonbury performance that he needed to have an extensive break.”

Hardee reveals Capaldi’s 2025 slot at Worthy Farm was booked six months out, with a wider plan involving secret shows in the Scot’s home country then taking shape around it.

“We started thinking about this year’s Glastonbury in ’24,” says Hardee. “Everyone said, ‘You’re mad to go back with that as his first gig,’ so Ryan, Lewis and his management [Ryan Walter, Interlude Artists] thought up doing warm-up shows without anyone knowing, which is quite hard with Lewis Capaldi.”

“Once Glastonbury became a thing, we didn’t just want to chuck him back out on the stage,” adds Penty. “So we were like, ‘If we do warm up shows, how do we keep them secret, but still get people to come?’ So we had three shows in Stirling, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and we asked six of Lewis’ artist friends to come and play.”

“No one in the audience had a clue that Lewis was going to come out at the end”

Capaldi’s name was left off the billing for the trio of intimate charity nights in May for CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably).

Headlined by Tom Walker & Nina Nesbitt at Edinburgh Assembly Rooms, Declan McKenna & The Vamps’ Bradley Simpson at Stirling Albert Halls, and Nathan Evans & The Saint Phnx & Caity Baser at Glasgow Old Fruitmarket, the shows were phone-free to ensure footage of Capaldi’s performances did not make it onto social media.

“Everyone had to put their phones in Yondr pouches,” says Hardee. “No one in the audience had a clue that Lewis was going to come out at the end.”

While the news reached outlets such as the BBC in the wake of the gigs, the lack of recordings meant that media coverage was minimal.

“Having no phones at the shows made them really special,” says Penty. “When he came on at Edinburgh and played Before You Go, people were crying and hugging each other, just living in the moment. It was really nice, and Lewis loved it. He played four songs and then before he played Someone You Loved at the end, he realised how much he’d missed it and started crying on stage.

“I’m so glad we did that then, rather than at Glastonbury, and I think those three shows prepared him for what was to come. Speaking to him before the show at Glastonbury, he was genuinely buzzing. He couldn’t wait.”

“We thought it would be nice for him to do something that people really didn’t expect him to”

The day after his Pyramid Stage triumph, Capaldi played another surprise slot – this time at Switzerland’s OpenAir St Gallen – to repay the fans who sang Someone You Loved in his honour when he had to withdraw from the event at the 11th hour in 2023.

“We thought it would be nice for him to do something that people really didn’t expect him to,” says Penty. “I texted him the day after and said, ‘How was Switzerland?’ And he was like, ‘It was incredible.’ So I think to be able to go and do it twice in a row was really good as well. He really enjoyed it.”

Capaldi subsequently announced a UK & Ireland arena tour for September, which sold out in minutes. The hitmaker, who is booked by WME for the rest of the world, also heads to Australia and New Zealand in November/December.

His UK run includes three nights in London at The O2 and two nights apiece in Scotland at Aberdeen’s P&J Live and Glasgow’s OVO Hydro.

“I can give you some stats: over a million people were redirected on the Ticketmaster landing page,” says Penty. “The total event page views, which includes all the presales, was 3.7m, and it had 500,000 fans on the Glasgow page alone. It’s crazy.”

He’s an arena act in Europe, but he has the demand to play stadiums now in UK

Hardee describes the response as “heartwarming”, suggesting that Capaldi’s travails have endeared him to the public even more.

“He’s an arena act in Europe, but he has the demand to play stadiums now in UK,” he says. “The waiting list for Lewis was one million people, which is massive demand for 200,000 tickets. Lewis is a great artist with some great songs, but people have bought into the story as well. And you get very few moments in your careers to tell those stories. And when they get told, it’s a perfect storm.

“Oasis had the biggest demand ever on Ticketmaster. They are a great band with an amazing catalogue, but one of the reasons why it was so big is because of the story of the brothers getting back together, which amplifies it. With Lewis, it was storytelling as well – this is a place he left off at, and then he comes back triumphantly – and it’s a story everyone wants to hear.”

While 2026 plans are still being finalised, the agents insist that Capaldi’s wellbeing is the priority.

“It’s step by step, but at the moment he’s in good spirits and good health,” says Hardee. “He’s saying he’s in the best space he’s ever been.”

“It would be irresponsible for us to not move forward without some kind of caution,” concludes Penty. “We don’t want to just put him straight back into a busy touring schedule – everything has to be run by Lewis and considered, like days off – and the tour is routed with that in mind. But he’s ready to go and he’s back in the game.”

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