It was mighty dark in TD Garden at Monday night’s Ghost concert, and not because fans of the Swedish metal band dressed almost exclusively in black.
Thousands — many in flowing robes, hoods, and taut lace — merged into shadows across the arena, their faces and costumes obscured without the omnipresent glow of cellphones brightening the venue. Because for the first time at a TD Garden concert, cellphones had to be secured in magnetic pouches during the performance.
No using the flashlight function in lieu of lighter during power ballads; no scrambling to post updates to every social media platform; no recording (and therefore, watching) a supersize experience through a 6-by-3-inch screen. Ghost’s ongoing “Skeletour” was billed as a “phone-free experience,” and fans who wanted to attend the Boston date had to consent to their phone being locked in a small pouch that they carried or wore on lanyards during the concert.
All 11,000 of them.
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It’s a big ask for 2025’s perennially plugged-in society, not unlike asking someone to forfeit a limb or a lifeline. But the policy ultimately proved to be a minor inconvenience that yielded a meaningful return to tradition: You and countless strangers surrendering to the same spectacle in real time, relieved of the looming specter of mobile technology.
Ghost’s new policy places them alongside artists like Jack White and Bob Dylan, who have implemented similar no-phone policies for past tours. The process of handing out magnet-locked pouches caused lines of up to 90 minutes at Ghost concert venues overseas but in Boston only caused mild bottlenecking. The entire process of securing a phone — assuming a concertgoer didn’t give any flak to the attendant — was a whopping 10 seconds per person. The same procedure was even quicker exiting the venue, even though a fleet of workers for the pouches’ maker, Yondr, had to individually unlock every case.
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If guests needed to access their phones at any point during the performance, they could visit one of five “phone use” areas spread across the arena’s halls, where an attendant would unlock the pouch for them. Anyone caught using their phone outside of the designated areas would be escorted out of the concert.
It was really that simple. The only troubling aspect of the entire process was that guests were forced to tote their phones around like a security blanket all evening — even to the bathroom — and the case’s fabric was noticeably … porous. But the constant contact was a small price to pay to assuage any separation anxiety, and if anyone felt fidgety without a batch of apps to toggle between, they must have hid it behind a hearty headbang.
Similarly, the highest concentration of raised fists was located in the same place that would typically contain a thicket of phones in the air: the general admission pit abutting the stage. And despite Ghost’s heavy metal theatrics— like frontman Tobias Forge clad in his gothic papal regalia, singing atop a thin pedestal as if he were levitating — the 21st-century urge to record a video I would likely never revisit dissolved gradually over the course of the show.
“Maybe I’m old school, maybe I’m old-fashioned,” Forge said in an episode of the interview series “METALXS,” explaining Ghost’s choice to implement the phone-free policy. “I just feel that we’re having an intimate moment, and it disturbs me that you’re filming while we’re doing this together. I’m doing something for you to respond to me.”
Phone-free concerts are not entirely new in Boston. Other artists have already enforced similar experiences at venues like the House of Blues. TD Garden has previously used Yondr for comedy performances from Dave Chappelle, Joe Rogan, and Kevin Hart.
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But the impact of the policy at an arena concert, specifically, magnified the visible dearth of screens in the cavernous venue — an unironic replica of the “not a cellphone in sight” meme poking fun at ubiquitous cellphone use.
When I checked out the nearest “phone use” station toward the end of the show, only one person lingered in the area, texting a friend from the peace of an alcove. This area’s Yondr attendant said common complaints from visitors that evening stemmed from staying in contact with their children and checking the time to ensure they didn’t miss the train (for this dilemma, there is a fabulous accessory called a watch that I highly recommend).
While I was making the rounds to survey these phone use areas, Forge apparently reminisced to the crowd about Ghost’s earliest shows in the area, tracing the band’s growth by mentioning past shows at The Middle East and the Orpheum Theatre. It was likely a treasured moment for longtime fans, although I’ll never know for certain.
I guess I just had to be there.