The 10 best rock concerts I ever saw at Vancouver’s BC Place Stadium

By Steve Newton

Vancouver has been all abuzz lately after the Rolling Stones announced that the only Canadian date on its 2024 North American tour will be a show at the city’s downtown stadium, BC Place, on July 5. 

Even local politicians got in on the act, with Mayor Ken Sim recording a welcoming message to the Stones while an image of their iconic lips-and-tongue logo was projected onto City Hall.

“Vancouver has the biggest Rolling Stone (sic) fans and they are going to lose their shit next summer when you guys are rocking it out at BC Place,” said Sim on social media.

The Stones have played the stadium three times before–in 1989, 1994, and 2006–and two of those gigs are among the best concerts I’ve witnessed at the venue, which can pack as many as 65,000 people in for shows. 

Here’s my reviews of the 10 most memorable BC Place rock concerts I’ve seen to date:

Paul McCartney, November 25, 2012

rebecca blissett photo

Pretty well all of the world’s biggest pop and rock acts have played Vancouver since the ’60s. The Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, U2, Guns N’ Roses—our city has played host to all of them over the last four decades or so. The only huge name that hadn’t made it here since the decade of discontent, it seems, was Paul McCartney.

That all changed last night,  of course.

For the first time since the Beatles played Empire Stadium in August of ’64, McCartney’s violin-shaped Hofner bass was visible to the hordes of Vancouverites who’d followed every moment of the music legend’s life since the Fab Four released “Love Me Do” back in ’62.

To make things even more special, rumours were rampant that Springsteen himself was going to fly in in advance of his show at Rogers Arena tonight (November 26) so he and his pal could finish the set they started in London’s Hyde Park last July before being silenced by plug-pulling authorities who forgot that curfews don’t count when it comes to the Beatle ‘n’ the Boss.

As it turned out, though, Springsteen was a no-show—damn those rumour-mongers!—but it didn’t matter all that much. What the concert lacked in additional star power it more than made up for with additional song power. During his marathon three-hour set McCartney performed no fewer than 38 songs, the majority stone-cold Beatles classics.

And you know that can’t be bad.

The Beatles tunes chosen tended, obviously, towards the ones McCartney sang lead on and/or had the main role in composing, the universal “Lennon-McCartney” songwriting credit notwithstanding. But he didn’t forget his old bandmates, inserting a snippet of John Lennon’s “Give Peace a Chance” into “A Day in the Life”, and pulling out the ukulele George Harrison once gave him for a version of the latter’s beloved Abbey Road hit, “Something”. There was no mention at all of Ringo Starr, although the famously affable drummer’s happy-go-lucky spirit was felt in the positive vibes put out by McCartney’s ace skin-basher, Abe Laboriel Jr.

The most “McCartneyish” Beatles numbers were the ballads he performed solo on acoustic guitar, including “Blackbird”, “And I Love Her”, and, of course, “Yesterday”, which kicked off his second encore, and was followed by the Wings hit “Mull of Kintyre”, which featured an appearance by the Delta Police Pipe Band. The evening’s other Wings songs were “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, “Junior’s Farm”, “Mrs. Vandebilt”, “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”, “Live and Let Die” (which boasted stunning pyrotechnics), and “Let Me Roll It” (which included a few bars of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxy Lady”). Conspicuous by their absence were any songs from Wings’ follow-up to Band on the Run, Venus and Mars.

Besides Laboriel, McCartney’s touring band includes keyboardist Paul Wickens and guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray, all of whom provided plenty of strong backing vocals. The big concern of the night was whether or not the 70-year-old frontman’s singing would be up to snuff, but for the most part it was. There were definitely moments that it lagged—McCartney shook his head, displeased, when his harmonies on “Paperback Writer” swerved out of tune—but he was still hangin’ in there near the finale when the raging “Helter Skelter” called for everything he had.

By the time the show ended, aptly, with Abbey Road’s “The End”, there wasn’t a lot any true-blue Beatles fan could complain about.

Roger Waters, May 26, 2012

photo by the newt

When Roger Waters brought Pink Floyd’s The Wall to Rogers Arena in December 2010, he delivered nothing short of a prog-rock spectacle for the ages. His mastery of live sound, lighting technique, state-of-the-art video, and immense staging combined to bring that monumental 1979 concept album’s themes of isolation and oppression to life in a show that was truly unforgettable.

It didn’t seem like there was any way in hell that Waters could have made his performance of The Wall any better than it already was, so when he came back to town last night (May 26) he just made it bigger instead.

A lot bigger.

For the large stadiums, like B.C. Place, that are part of Waters’s latest North American tour, the centrepiece of the show—an enormous wall of white “bricks” that is built up during the performance and then torn down at the end—was drastically enlarged. Up to 500 feet wide, the wall constructed for the big stadium shows is double the width of that used for arena gigs, and—according to the bumf provided by promoter Live Nation—is “the largest projection surface ever toured in live entertainment”.

Size does matter. Especially when it comes to the music of Pink Floyd.

Apart from the much bigger wall—and the additional 22 video projectors required to fill it with the biting sociopolitical imagery Waters is known for—not much else seemed different from the 2010 show. The highlights were the same, including the part during “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” when a group of kids wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the message “FEAR BUILDS WALLS” railed against a giant puppet teacher wielding a pointer.

And the video shown during “Bring the Boys Back Home” of children breaking down when their returning soldier dads surprise them in their classrooms is still as heart-wrenching as ever.

Then there was the plane that soared over the heads of the floor crowd, crashed into some bricks at stage left, and “exploded” during the opening song, “In the Flesh?”. That little spectacle never fails to get your attention.

But with all the emphasis on effects and staging, one thing that can get overlooked when Waters builds The Wall is the stellar band that helps him do it. And it doesn’t help that the musicians spend so much time hidden behind the wall itself, of course.

But Waters would be the first to acknowledge the contributions of the 12 singers and instrumentalists who accompany him. For the record, they include backup vocalists Jon Joyce and Mark, Michael, and Kipp Lennon (all cousins); second lead singer Robbie Wyckoff (who handles all the parts David Gilmour used to sing); keyboardists Jon Carin and Waters’s son Harry Waters; drummer Graham Broad; and guitarists Dave Kilminster, G.E. Smith, and Snowy White (he was in Thin Lizzy! Yeah!).

Actually, even though he’d be the first to acknowledge their contributions, Waters wound up doing it last, when the tuckered-looking players were brought out in casual duds to perform the closing number, “Outside the Wall”. Then they all just stood there, soaking up the wild cheers of the crowd, until Waters decided the adulation was sufficient.

It seemed like a long time, but hey—they’d earned it.

The Rolling Stones, December 17, 1994

kevin statham photo

There was one nagging question on my mind after the Rolling Stones’ show last Saturday (December 17) at B.C. Place, and it kept elbowing for space in there with about a thousand Chuck Berry guitar riffs.

I couldn’t stop wondering just how in hell the Spin Doctors, of all bands, managed to scoop the opening spot on the extremely high-profile Voodoo Lounge tour. Could it be that when the Stones deserted Sony for Virgin Records, a contractual obligation meant they had to help a worn-out Sony act revive its plummeting career?

At any rate, the Spin Doctors’ 40-minute “warm-up” set was a tiresome exercise in lame pseudofunk that no Stones freak (or rock fan in general) should have had to sit through. It did help make the headliners sound even more impressive, though, which could have been the idea all along.

As if to drive home the fact that it has been around for more than three decades, the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band (next to the Who) kicked things off with a tune from 1964, the Bo Diddley–inspired “Not Fade Away”.

Mick Jagger looked sharp in a two-tone, grey Sgt. Pepper–style coat, but Keith Richards had him beat in the footwear department, sporting bright-yellow runners. The flashy leather shoes seemed to incite Richards to shimmy and shake to the next half-dozen tunes, which were mostly fast-paced rockers from the past (“Shattered”) and present (“You Got Me Rocking”).

One new boogie tune, “Sparks Will Fly”, was accompanied on a giant screen by bizarre computer graphics of a spiky, flailing tongue, not to mention some of the rudest Jagger lyrics ever. I know it’s only rock ’n’ roll, but there’s still something mildly disconcerting about a 51-year-old bellowing “I wanna fuck your sweet ass!”

Although he may be in dire need of a good soapy mouthwash, Jagger is certainly looking healthy these days. By the time the band had ripped into “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”, he had peeled off the grey coat, a purple vest, and a blue silk shirt, and was down to a tight black tee.

When he scampered along the stage-left ramp above where we were located on the floor, it was clear the sinewy rock god has been taking care of himself. Richards, on the other hand… Well, he had Jagger beat in the footwear department.

“Any requests?” asked Mick after tinkling the keyboards on “Far Away Eyes”, one of the set’s rare mellow tunes. A partially zonked-out guy behind me screamed “Brand New Car!”, but Jagger must not have heard him, because he sang “Heartbreaker” instead—which was all right by me.

“We’re gonna do a really ancient one for ya,” he announced before returning to ’64 for another cover, Bobby Womack’s “It’s All Over Now”, which the band played while televised live in black-and-white for that archival feel.

It wasn’t quite the same seeing the Stones minus Bill Wyman’s standoffish demeanour, but new bassist Darryl Jones handled himself admirably, knowing better than to get too involved in the onstage antics of Jagger, Richards, and Ron Wood.

The Stones got plenty of strong backup from vocalists Lisa Fischer and Bernard Fowler, and a killer brass section also earned its keep. Longtime Stones saxophonist Bobby Keyes was a particular crowd-pleaser, putting his jugular vein to the test during a frantic solo on “Miss You”.

The high point of the show came when Richards banged out the opening chords to “Honky Tonk Women”, the slinky classic that most typifies what the Stones are all about. During that number, film clips of such femmes fatales as Greta Garbo, Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Betty Boop, and Queen Elizabeth II (!) were flashed on the huge screen—along with live shots of various local honky-tonkers shuffling in the crowd.

The most elaborate visual effect was saved for “Sympathy for the Devil”, when an array of giant inflatables—including a guitar-strumming Elvis, a nun, a goat’s head, and a punk baby—came to distended life across the top of the stage.

While the Stones cranked out “Street Fighting Man”, various stagehands tugged on the backs of the balloons to get them bobbing along, then in a matter of seconds all were deflated, yanked away, and tucked out of sight.

Tidy folk, those British.

Two hours after it started, the Stones’ set rumbled to a close, but the crowd of 50,000 brought the band back for an encore of (what else?) “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”. Somebody in wardrobe must have had a Phyllis Diller flashback, though, because Mick returned wearing a knee-length black skirt over his pants and Keith had on a pink plush jacket.

Are those guys wacky or what?

Pink Floyd, June 25, 1994

As streams of perked-up Pink Floyd fans strolled north across the Cambie Street bridge en route to the big white marshmallow of B.C. Place last Saturday (June 25), a lot of them were eyeing the sky. It was a fine time to revel in the postcard beauty of orangy pre-dusk clouds floating in a blue-grey sea, but this night there seemed to be a special reason for scanning the heavens.

I, for one, was hoping to spot one of those flying pigs that Floyd is famous for, or maybe the world’s largest blimp—the 61-metre-long Pink Floyd airship—which has been cruising around North America since the announcement of the British prog-rock titans’ first tour in six years.

But the only unnatural item gracing the airspace around the dome was a wimpy Province balloon in the shape of a blimp that was tethered in an adjoining parking lot.

Fortunately, that was the only bogus, unspectacular thing I would see during the next four hours; everything that followed would slip easily into the mind-boggling, unforgettable, and hard-to-believe categories. (Mind-boggling because of the astounding laser-and-light show, unforgettable because of the CD-quality sound production and David Gilmour‘s sparkling guitar work, and hard-to-believe because Ryan O’Neal was beside me in a media suite shouting things like “‘Magic Bus’, motherf***ers!” and “‘Satisfaction’, you idiots!”)

Although the concert was slated to begin at 9:30 pm, it didn’t actually start until 10, when the hordes of stragglers outside the gates had finally been filtered through the turnstiles. In that intervening half hour, all it took to get the packed house howling was for someone to push the button marked “Sounds of a Whirring Fan” for a few seconds. The crowd was obviously stoked and ready, and Britain’s kings of prog-rock didn’t keep them waiting for what they had come to see.

Near the start of the set, during the soaring “Learning to Fly”, the group kicked in its legendary laser show. Green and yellow blasts of pure brilliance tore across the expanse of the stadium, and the beams looked solid enough to walk on. They came to a searing point just above the folks in the nosebleed seats, who were lucky that there were no miscalculations made by Pink Floyd’s Technical Director of Where the Lasers Gotta Go.

Catch one of those suckers in the head and you’ll definitely see the light.

The centrepiece of Floyd’s stockpile of visual weaponry was a 40-foot circular movie screen onto which typically bizarre Floydian film clips and mind-blowing computer-animation bits were flashed with amazing clarity. Watching that strange cinematic world unfurl, you could easily get wrapped up in the dreamlike images of humans thrashing about in water, balloons, and balls floating across barren landscapes, and guys in suit coats and top hats on stilts—but trying to make sense of it all could drive you nuts. Better just to surrender to Gilmour’s magical palette of sounds and let his state-of-the-art guitars, complex amplification, and high-tech effects loops outline the story for you.

Although spectacle certainly plays a major part in any Pink Floyd show, it doesn’t—at least on this Division Bell tour—overshadow the musical presentation. And although its members may have resembled insignificant insects in relation to their vast surroundings, the band—composed of Gilmour, second guitarist Tim Renwick, bassist Guy Pratt, keyboardists Richard Wright and Jon Carin, drummers Nick Mason and Gary Wallis, saxophonist Dick Parry, and backup vocalists Durga McBroom, Sam Brown, and Claudia Fontaine—was monstrous in its own right.

With the exception of a speedy, jazzed-up version of “Money”, they performed the old classics exactly as they were recorded, and if you closed your eyes you could imagine being at home with your own copy of Dark Side of the Moon. The group’s quadrophonic sound system gave the football stadium the sonic ambiance of a living room, and the only chink I detected in the mighty Floyd’s aural armour came during “Wish You Were Here“, when a short squeal of feedback caused Gilmour to scratch his grey-haired head.

As expected, the three-hour show focused on the enormously popular Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall recordings, as well as the new Division Bell. Instrumentally, the most exhilirating moment for me came during Gilmour’s incendiary lap-steel blast on “One of These Days”; vocally, it had to be the gut-wrenching solos by McBroom, Brown, and Fontaine on “The Great Gig in the Sky”; lyrically, I’d have to go with “Wish You Were Here”.

Thanks, Rog, wherever you are.

Other highlights of the night? Well, there was the biggest damn mirror ball a man’s ever seen, which turned the dome into a crystalline love palace during “Comfortably Numb”. And I finally got to see my flying—well, falling, anyway—pigs. Oh, yeah…and Farrah Fawcett borrowed my binoculars a couple of times. Ooo-wee. I’m never gonna wash ’em. Ever.

Guns N’ Roses, March 30, 1993

from the newt’s collection

The first time I saw Guns N’ Roses perform, the band was opening for Iron Maiden at the Pacific Coliseum, shortly after the release of 1987’s Appetite for Destruction debut. This was several months before tunes like “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine” would become radio and video staples, and well before singer Axl Rose would claim his notorious reputation as a riot-inducing, show-canceling bad-ass.

But even at that stage I remember a ticked-off Rose threatening the nonchalant Coliseum crowd with a walk-off if it didn’t “make some fucking noise!”

With all the highly publicized problems that have dogged the band’s touring schedule in the last couple of years, it came as somewhat of a surprise that Tuesday’s (March 30) show at B.C. Place went off without a hitch. As far as I could tell, there was no riot. Rose didn’t assault anyone, and Slash didn’t fall off the stage trying to look through his hair.

All in all, it was just a very consistent and impressive performance by an explosive hard-rock band at the peak of its career.

“Do you people feel like screamin’ a little?” hollered Rose, after the opening tune, “Nightrain”, had dug its savage hooks into the 20,000-plus crowd. Sporting a pair of black bicycle shorts and the ever-popular Charles Manson tank top, the tattooed millionaire was a whirling dervish of rock energy, leaping about the stage and spinning around whenever he damn well felt like it.

But the real star of the show was guitarist Slash, whose skills never faltered, whether he was tearing out raunchy lead riffs, laying down bluesy lap-steel slide, toying with a talk-box, or tackling Spanish guitar.

Slash’s talent kept the show rolling on a high note—while Rose may be the visual focus of the band, Slash is undoubtedly its musical heart. Without him Guns N’ Roses would be nothing special, sorta like Van Halen without Eddie.

Thanks mostly to a poor sound mix, opening act the Brian May Band didn’t fare nearly as well as expected, but by tossing in the occasional tune by his old band Queen, guitarist May still managed to win over the masses by set’s end.

The Rolling Stones, November 1, 1989

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In what was surely the biggest Vancouver concert event of the ’80s, the Rolling Stones hit Vancouver for two nights last week amid a flurry of hype and much groveling for tickets. Now that Jagger and the boys have gathered up their money-bags (they play the Cotton Bowl in Dallas this weekend), one can take the time to analyze their local shows and come to a decision.

Was it all bloody worth it?

Let’s weigh the pros and cons. First off, on the downside, there’s the venue itself. If any group can make the dome sound decent, it should be the world’s greatest rock and roll band, but the sound was still weak–it’s been much better for bands like U2 and Supertramp. And though lacklustre sound might be forgiven in a venue built for football, what’s not so easy to ignore was the incredible deadness of the crowd.

After hearing all about the riot that occurred the last time the Stones played here, I was expecting the crowd to be bristling with wild enthusiasm and on its feet from beginning to end. But on Wednesday it was just a one-way street. The Stones rolled down it and the crowd of 53,000 politely watched from the sidewalk.

Now for the good stuff, the thumbs-up material. When it comes to songs, you can’t beat the Stones’ repertoire, and their choice of 25 tunes left little to complain about (although my older sister did beef about the exclusion of “Angie”). From their best-known tunes like “Brown Sugar” and “Satisfaction” (which finally got the crowd mildly riled up), to more obscure numbers like “2,000 Light Years from Home” and new ones from the band’s 29th album, Steel Wheels, the Stones’ set-list was a winner. It showed the band’s great emotional and musical range, from the opening stomp of “Start Me Up” to the show’s biggest lyrical highlight, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.

Next to the super songs, the stage itself was a big–and I mean BIG–part of the Stones’ show. With some 800,000 pounds of black and orange scaffolding, two huge silver smoke-chutes, and silver netting draped over mountains of amps, the stage resembled the interior of a high-tech steel mill.

The 250-foot wide, 130-foot high structure was augmented by a colossal lighting set-up that included 80 spinning Varilites (computerized spotlights), 100 animated color changers, and 22 man-operated followspots. According to the Stones’ fact sheet, a half-million watts of power are consumed by the system each show.

Also quite amazing were the show’s two main effects–a pair of 55-foot, inflatable tarts that came out of nowhere to bob up and down at either side of the stage on “Honky Tonk Women”. A massive fan filled the giant dolls with air in roughly half a minute; it took about twice that time to deflate them.

But perhaps the most impressive part of the Stones’ show was the performance of the band itself–and in particular that of Jagger. All the fancy effects and classy tunes in the world could have been for naught if those songs weren’t performed with the verve and style that the Stones are famous for. Jagger strutted and pranced through every song, displaying a rippling stomach that men half his age would envy.

Guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood were happy to hang out in front of Charlie Watts’ vintage drum-kit, smoking ciggies and stumbling around while casually chopping away at their axes. Bassist Bill Wyman, the oldest Stone at 53, kept to himself at stage left, expressionless and still.

All in all, just being able to see this craggy-faced crew of legendary rockers do their thing was an enormous experience. And, on reflection, things like muddy sound and a dull crowd weren’t enough to spoil that satisfaction. The sheer fascination so many people have for the Stones was mirrored in the starry orbs of Vancouver’s own Colin James, who just before the show had been backstage rocking out with Richards and Wood. “I’m buying,” he announced, all bright-eyed as he swaggered up to the media bar. “I’ve just been jamming with Ron and Keith!”

And while I was happy for the upcoming young blues-rocker, the only sad part was, I’d just finished buying my own beer.

AC/DC, June 13, 1988

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The would-be gatecrashers throwing rocks and bottles outside B.C. Place last Monday night (June 13) may have thought they were having fun, but if they’d had any sense at all they would have saved those bottles, cashed them in, and collected enough money for a ticket to get inside.

That’s where the real fun was happening–the kind of deafening good time that only rock’s premier boogie-metal band, AC/DC, can deliver.

No, lead guitarist Angus Young was not wearing long pants. And no, he didn’t have a crewcut. He hasn’t been working out at the gym either. The heart and soul of the band was the same scrawny, long-haired demon in schoolboy shorts that his fans idolize and pay $20 for life-size posters of. They wouldn’t have it any other way.

Young opened the show by leaping from a missile-shaped device for “Heatseeker”, one of only two tunes the band played from its latest album, Blow Up Your Video. It was their old hits that the Aussie fivesome relied upon to get the crowd all riled up, and rile them they did.

During the second tune, “Shoot to Thrill”, dozens of fans charged the floor from the bleachers, hoping to get closer to their heroes. Most of them made it past the skimpy security, but the poor unlucky ones who got caught were treated to a headlock or two and dragged kicking and screaming away.

Before long the entire floor was covered with a seething mass of fist-thrusting bodies, and the security guys gave up their posts and took to keeping fans away from the sound- and light-system enclosure on the floor. One thing you don’t want to do is deprive 20,000-plus AC/DC fans of the electricity they’re thriving on by having the power supply disrupted.

Then you’d really be talkin’ trouble.

With steel-throated screamer Brian Johnson roaming the stage like a brawny thug in sleeveless denim jacket and cloth cap, the band belted its way through songs of sex (“You Shook Me All Night Long”, “The Jack”), rock ‘n’ roll (“Let There Be Rock”, “That’s the Way I Wanna Rock and Roll”), and the place you might end up if you have too much of both (“Highway to Hell”, “Hell’s Bells”).

Angus did his obligatory mooning of the crowd on “Jailbreak”–a quick down-and-up of the shorts that you’d have missed if you blinked–before playing a solo on his back while his kicking little legs spun him around in a circle.

For their last song–the 16th in an almost two-hour show–the band brought out two long-barrelled cannons for a 21-gun salute on “For Those About to Rock”. Talk about going out with a bang.

Pink Floyd, December 10, 1987

Seeing Pink Floyd live is a luxury that every rock fan should allow him or herself at least once. Yours truly took advantage of the opportunity to do just that last Thursday (December 10), along with about 44,000 other lucky dogs at B.C. Place.

It was my first Floydian experience, and one that won’t be soon forgotten, Roger Waters or no Roger Waters.

As you probably already know, Waters is no longer a part of Pink Floyd. Many people seem to think that the former bassist/lyricist/co-lead vocalist was the heart and soul of the band, and that the group is lost without him.

I don’t know. I’ve always been more a fan of guitarist/co-lead vocalist David Gilmour myself. At any rate, Pink Floyd is his baby now, and it’s Gilmour’s distinctively laid-back vocal style and scintillating guitar that command attention these days.

He used both to good effect on the opening tune, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”, and was backed up by a wicked band that included original Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright and drummer Nick Mason (who was himself backed up by another drummer).

Through the night saxophonist Scott Page shook things up with stirring, go-for-broke solos. And a trio of fabulous female back-up singers provided the necessary vocal oomph to drive home the band’s repertoire of new and old material.

“We’re gonna save the older stuff for later on,” announced Gilmour, after the band had played “Learning to Fly”, the first single from its latest album A Momentary Lapse of Reason. A huge circular screen at the rear of the stage projected landscapes and psychedelic images, and then the show’s first laser effects kicked in.

As the solid rays of green and red painted squiggly lines on the ceiling of the dome, Gilmour put his white Stratocaster into overdrive on such new tunes as “The Dogs of War” and “A New Machine”.

By the time the band took a break, about halfway through the show, it was like “Roger who?”

As expected, most of the real treats had been reserved for the second set, like the enormous inflatable pig with glowing red eyes that came flying out on wires from stage left and dangled above the crowd at centre field. The familiar opening chimes of “Time”, from the band’s historic Dark Side of the Moon LP, got the crowd all riled up as did Nick Mason’s laser drumsticks.

Instead of segueing into the reprise of “Breathe”, as “Time” does on the album, it ran into the spacey synth and computer-effect intro of “On the Run”, and when that song’s crashing-airplane effect was about to happen, a hospital bed came zooming down on wires from the far end of the dome, colliding at stage right with a ball of flame, which made it appear that the bed had exploded.

While a lot of concert light shows become repetitious and predictable, Pink Floyd’s never did. Robot-type laser columns rose from the stage floor and shot off streams of lasers before disappearing again, while underneath Dave and the boys gave the crowd what they came for with faves like “Wish You Were Here”, “Welcome to the Machine”, “Us and Them”, and, of course, “Money”.

And what’s a Pink Floyd show without that old standby, the mirror ball? It showed up for “Comfortably Numb”, turning the stage into a Milky Way of twinkling effects. The band’s two-song encore ended with “Run Like Hell”, a song from The Wall, and a high-flying eruption of sparks on both sides of the stage.

It was an appropriate finale to one of the best sound and light extravaganzas I’ve ever witnessed. Now at least I won’t feel like a chump when my buddies start bragging about having seen Pink Floyd.

David Bowie, August 15, 1987

Fans of the Georgia Satellites who were expecting to see the hard-rocking Atlanta band open for David Bowie at the scheduled time of 7 pm last Saturday (August 15) were in for a rather nasty surprise. The Satellites’ gig was pushed ahead to 6:30 pm so patrons of the scheduled 5 1/2 hour concert would have time to catch public transportation before the midnight cut-off.

Despite the efforts of the promoters to let ticket holders know about the last-minute change through radio, TV, and the daily papers, Georgia Satellites fans who didn’t hear about the time change got shafted.

I was one of them.

Oh well…

On the positive side, the Duran Duran set was actually quite good–a lot better than I thought it would be. From the press box the sound in the dome still resembled a cheap ghetto blaster, but at least there wasn’t that irritating echo you usually get up there, thanks to careful speaker placement.

Duran Duran started off with the James Bond track “A View to a Kill”, and headed through such hits as “Union of the Snake”, “Hungry Like the Wolf” and “Wild Boys” (during which Simon Le Bon pulled off a rather nifty handstand). They also did a couple of tunes from the band’s splinter groups, Power Station (“Some Like It Hot”) and Arcadia (“Election Day”).

At about 10 o’clock the 35,000 fans finally got what they’d been waiting so long for, and as the lights went down Bowie’s spikey-haired rhythm guitarist Carlos Alomar came strolling out, knocking off Van Halen-type guitar licks, while a voice from the scaffolding high above kept yelling, “Shut up!”

That voice belonged to Bowie himself, who descended from the belly of a huge, translucent, glowing spider while reciting the poetic opening lines of the song “Glass Spider”. Dressed in an oversized red jumpsuit and matching suede boots, the 40-year-old pop star was joined by the rest of his band and five dancers.

In no time at all, a huge throng of fans had assembled at the front of the stage, leaving those who had paid upwards of $300 for front row seats to think about other ways they could have spent their money. From across the stadium, the performers looked like insects, but thanks to two massive video screens, most of the on-stage action was visible.

With Peter Frampton‘s inspired guitar freak-outs leading the way, the Bowie band made its way through new material (“Time Will Crawl”, Iggy Pop’s “Bang Bang”) and older stuff (“Heroes,” “Rebel Rebel”) before the marathon night of rock and roll came to an end, just before midnight.

The Jacksons, November 16, 1984

The biggest show in the history of pop music came to Vancouver last week (November 16), in the form of the Jacksons’ Victory Tour.

It was a dazzling display of lights and lasers, mechanized staging and slick choreography, available to anyone who wanted to shell out $40–and in three nights 107,000 fans did just that.

As expected, Michael Jackson stole the show from his brothers, spinning, leaping, and ‘moonwalking’ to the tune of “Beat It” and “Billy Jean”–from his multiplatinum album Thriller–and other songs from his years in the Jackson Five.

Two of the show’s most magical moments were the opening segment–in which four computer-controlled “Kreetons” (camel-like monsters) prowled the stage in a medieval “Sword in the Stone” fantasy skit–and Michael’s vanishing trick, in which he was corralled into a silver box by two huge, black automated spiders and then lifted into the air and blown up–only to reappear on a platform stage left.

A seven-story, 44-metre stage–that takes 240 workers five days to erect–housed over 2500 lights and 240 custom-built speakers. But for those who went to hear as well as see the shows, the sound system was a disappointment. With ten musicians playing and the five Jacksons singing, the result was one shrill barrage of sound.

The Jackson’s six-month North American tour should prove the most lucrative in music history, with an estimated gross income in excess of $70 million. In Vancouver alone, ticket sales grossed about $4.5 million.

To read more than 300 of my other Vancouver concert reviews go here.