That was FANTASTIC!<\/p>\n
Metallica lacked the bottom, that visceral pounding on your chest that you get at a live gig.\u00c2\u00a0 They proved conventional wisdom, that rock and roll doesn’t work on TV.<\/p>\n
I stumbled into last night’s 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert during Paul Simon.\u00c2\u00a0 When Crosby & Nash joined him to sing "Here Comes The Sun" I felt warm all over.\u00c2\u00a0 I remembered playing the track two months after "Abbey Road" was released, when it finally stopped snowing after two days and the glowing orb emerged.\u00c2\u00a0 George Harrison seems to have been forgotten, this was a fitting tribute.\u00c2\u00a0 And it reminded us of a time when rock and roll drove the world, when nothing more important was happening than the Beatles.<\/p>\n
Everybody took up a guitar.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody listened to the radio.\u00c2\u00a0 We needed to get closer.\u00c2\u00a0 This was no Facebook, this was something fully alive, that got inside and made you feel powerful, allowed you to transcend your problems, you just wanted to get closer.<\/p>\n
And when Art Garfunkel came out and joined his old partner I marveled that "Sounds Of Silence" was a hit fully forty four years ago, at this exact time of year.\u00c2\u00a0 To listen to the two men sing was to feel young and old at the same time.<\/p>\n
Then the rockers hit the stage.\u00c2\u00a0 Ray Davies was out of voice, the Lou Reed number didn’t quite come together and Ozzy was hilarious but he looked younger than anybody on stage, having had way too much work.\u00c2\u00a0 They all tried.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was what it appeared to be, a special event, pairing buddies both old and new and leaving us…sadly somnambulant.\u00c2\u00a0 We were watching TV, we weren’t feeling TV!<\/p>\n
Then came U2.\u00c2\u00a0 "Vertigo" was botched so badly at first I wasn’t even sure what song it was.<\/p>\n
But one thing was clear.\u00c2\u00a0 In this context, where you could see him, it was indisputable that Bono was a phenomenal front man.\u00c2\u00a0 The moves, the words, they were beyond charisma.\u00c2\u00a0 Charisma is what an actor has, something surface, something vapid.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas we want to get inside our rock stars, we want to see what makes them tick.<\/p>\n
And when the number ended, Bono started to rap.\u00c2\u00a0 About going to Yonkers, to Queens.\u00c2\u00a0 But then he and his band took us higher than that, lifted us up over Madison Square Garden to the point we were hovering over the entire isle of Manhattan.<\/p>\n
This was the treated guitar intro introduced on "Achtung Baby".\u00c2\u00a0 The dark sound that dared us to come inside, to join the experience. And then the twiddling lead, like a blinking star in the sky inviting our attention.\u00c2\u00a0 Then the rat-a-tat-tat of Larry Mullen, Jr.’s\u00c2\u00a0 drums. Eventually I saw Vinnie Colaiuta pound the skins behind Jeff Beck, but I enjoyed Mr. Mullen more.\u00c2\u00a0 Because just like Ringo, he perfectly complemented his band’s sound.\u00c2\u00a0 This was an attack, Larry was pounding bullets, imploring us, driving us forward.<\/p>\n
And then Bono starts to sing like he means it.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re his words, not the rhymes of some hack in a back room.\u00c2\u00a0 He was feeling it, and as a result we felt it too.<\/p>\n
Everything I thought I knew was wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only soft music could work on TV, U2 was killing it!\u00c2\u00a0 Unlike what had come before, this was not nostalgia, but alive and kicking.\u00c2\u00a0 This was rock and roll!<\/p>\n
Bono wasn’t playing to the back row of a stadium, seeming miles away.<\/p>\n
He wasn’t playing for the YouTube audience.<\/p>\n
He was playing just for us.<\/p>\n
But it was better than that.\u00c2\u00a0 He wasn’t trying to convince the audience, he was showing the audience.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what the Who specialized in, a veritable assault.\u00c2\u00a0 You didn’t nod your head and smile, singing along, your hair was blown back, you couldn’t believe what you were seeing.<\/p>\n
This number was brand new.\u00c2\u00a0 But it fit perfectly in U2’s canon, with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Until The End Of The World".<\/p>\n
Mick Jagger took the stage and one could see the lineage, of someone who took over and demanded your attention, Bono was in a long line…well, maybe a short line of commanding performers.\u00c2\u00a0 And Fergie was better than could be imagined, but "Gimmie Shelter" never gelled, because unlike "Magnificent", it was never haunting, it lacked the ethereal quality of the original.<\/p>\n
And Bono’s duet with Mick fell flat too, the song just wasn’t good enough.<\/p>\n
But "Magnificent" was.\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t speak.\u00c2\u00a0 My eyes were glued to the tube.\u00c2\u00a0 I remembered what made me a believer.<\/p>\n
From there it was downhill.<\/p>\n
Until Sam Moore took the stage behind Bruce Springsteen’s amalgamation and took a bizarre victory lap that rang so true, as he poured out "Hold On I’m Comin’" and "Soul Man".<\/p>\n
But it’s "Magnificent" that stuck with me.\u00c2\u00a0 Because it encapsulated exactly Bono’s description of rock and roll.\u00c2\u00a0 Liberation!<\/p>\n
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That was FANTASTIC! Metallica lacked the bottom, that visceral pounding on your chest that you get at a live gig.\u00c2\u00a0 They proved conventional wisdom, that rock and roll doesn’t work on TV. I stumbled into last night’s 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Concert during Paul Simon.\u00c2\u00a0 When Crosby & Nash joined him […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-shows","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-Di","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}