By Steve Newton
The name of Vancouver’s major downtown hockey and concert venue was changed from GM Place to Rogers Arena in July of 2010, and two months later I was rockin’ out with Aerosmith at the newly-christened joint.
I’ve seen a few other decent shows at Rogers Arena since then as well.
Iron Maiden, September 3, 2019
Your first concert is a big deal–or that’s what my nephew Jeff says, anyway. Thirty-five years ago I took him to his very first rock show, at the Pacific Coliseum.
It was Iron Maiden on the Powerslave tour. He was 14. It ruled.
Last night (Sept. 3) at Rogers Arena it was payback time, as Jeff bought me a ticket to see Maiden on their Legacy of the Beast tour. Coincidentally, last night was 35 years to the day since the release of Powerslave, so the stars were aligned for a memorable reunion between our aging ears and the thrashy yet melodic metal we adored back in 1984.
As has been the case for years, Iron Maiden warmed up for its show with a recording of “Doctor Doctor” by one of the few hard rock/metal bands I like more than them, UFO. Then came Winston Churchill’s famous World War II speech about Britain not giving that dick Hitler the satisfaction of seeing them surrender, which led into Powerslave‘s monumental opening track, “Aces High”.
With a life-size replica of a British Spitfire dangling over their heads, the six band members–singer Bruce Dickinson, bassist Steve Harris, drummer Nicko McBrain, and guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, and Janick “I’ll Toss My Guitar Around As Much As I Friggin’ Want” Gers–went to town resurrecting the glorious headbanging noise of the ’80s. Nobody does it better (except maybe Metallica, but I don’t feel like getting into a big argument about that right now.)
Fifteen more songs followed, only five of which weren’t from the ’80s. Judging by the setlist, Piece of Mind is the group’s fave album, because four tunes-“Where Eagles Dare”, “The Trooper”, “Revelations”, and “Flight of Icarus”–were culled from that 1983 earbuster. Coming in a close second was 1982’s The Number of the Beast, which was plundered for the title track and encore numbers “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and “Run to the Hills”.
The show itself was mighty impressive. The group’s perennial mascot, Eddie, made a comical appearance, and there was not shortage of shooting flames–including the ones that burst from Dickinson’s shirt sleeves. His vocals held up extremely well, considering he runs around hollering most of the time. The entire band sounded incredibly strong throughout, and the sound itself was spot on. Somebody buy the soundman one of those premium Trooper beers.
Thanks for the ticket, Jeff. Not to mention the cool photos.
Foo Fighters, September 11, 2015
Nobody really expects a millionaire rock star to, after breaking his leg falling off a stage, design a special chair–or “rock throne”, if you will–that allows him to get around like royalty on stage. Is it a burning need to rock out that compels a fellow to go to such lengths? Or is it more to do with an outta control ego?
Who cares, really, when the result is stunning gigs like the one the injured Dave Grohl and his band the Foo Fighters delivered at Rogers Arena last night. It was the type of fist-pumping, hellraising, anthem-blasting loud-rock show not heard in the ole hockey rink since Metallica blazed through on its Through the Never tour of 2012.
“I like it with the lights on!” Grohl randily announced when the house lights illuminated the crowd after the Foos had opened with “All My Life” and continued the pummeling pace with “Times Like These” and “Learn to Fly”. “We’re gonna be here a long fucking time!,” he told the near-sellout crowd, “are you cool with that?”
They were.
During the marathon, 2-1/2 hour riff-fest Grohl rocked about as hard ‘n’ heavy as you could ever expect from a guy seated firmly on his ass. As well as hits like “My Hero”, “Big Me”, and “Arlandria”, the group–which includes lead-guitarist Chris Shiflett, rhythm-guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel, drummer Taylor Hawkins, and touring keyboardist Rami Jaffee from the Wallflowers–paid homage to some of its musical heroes and influences.
During the band-member introductions Shiflett made some righteous Van Halen racket with a snippet of “I’m the One”, and then Jaffee followed up with a flurry of organ notes that didn’t impress Grohl in the least. “That was some Wallflowers shit,” the bossman whined, “give me some Foo Fighters shit!” So Mendel tried again, and seconds later the whole band jumped in for a beautiful few bars’ of Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl”.
At certain times during the show Grohl’s rock throne was propelled along a catwalk that led out to the middle of the arena. The third time it happened he took an extended solo on his gorgeous, light-blue, signature Gibson ES-335 that included prolonged scraping of its neck against his damaged right leg.
“Tonight was the first part of the tour with Gary Clark Jr. opening,” he explained shortly after. “Kinda makes it hard to do a guitar solo after that fucking guy, so I did it on my cast.”
Just before the band reeled out a version of the 1981 Queen & David Bowie hit “Under Pressure”, Grohl urged everyone in attendance to stand on the shoulders of the person next to them, so dozens of concertgoers immediately clambered up on other folks. “You guys’ll do anything!,” he hollered in response to the quick action, “I like that!”
At one point Grohl told a little story about how, when he was in Nirvana, they traveled from Seattle to mix an album at a residence in Vancouver. All over the house were photos of Bryan Adams, so he asked who the owner of the place, the “stalker” of Bryan Adams, was. “It was Bryan Adams!,” he declared, before his band banged out a cover of “Summer of 69” that didn’t get the crowd nearly as worked up as you would have thought.
“Who’s never seen the Foo Fighters before?” asked Grohl at one point, and when a horde of hands went up he made a bewildered face and said, “What the fuck is that all about?” It was my first Foo Fighters show too, but, considering how wicked it was, hopefully not the last. I’m dying to see what godly heights rock monster Grohl can reach on two working legs!
U2, May 14, 2015
Near the very end of U2’s show in Vancouver last night–during the fourth and final song of the encore, “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”–aptly named guitarist The Edge was strolling casually along the edge of the catwalk when he stepped out into thin air with his right foot and went down in a tumble–the headstock of his black Strat slamming the corner of the stage with a bang.
Fortunately he was alright–unlike U2 singer Bono when he wiped out on his bicycle in New York last November and required major surgery. But the top brass at concert promoter Live Nation–like Arthur Fogel, the CEO of its Global Touring division, who Bono had profusely thanked just seconds before–must have damn near died.
It was the very first stop on the band’s capital-letter-heavy iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour, which has multinight stands booked–and in many cases sold out–across North America and Europe until the middle of November. The prospect of The Edge with his fretting hand in a sling would not be welcome at this point.
The 53-year-old guitarist’s little run-in with the forces of gravity wasn’t the only threat to the Irish juggernaut’s latest attempt at box-office supremacy. Four days earlier drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s 92-year-old father passed away, leaving fans to wonder whether the grieving timekeeper would be emotionally ready to handle the demands of the tour.
But Mullen soldiered on, and 45-minutes after last night’s scheduled showtime he, The Edge, Bono, and bassist Adam Clayton took the stage at Rogers Arena and launched into “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)”, the so-so opening track off that album they downloaded into your iTunes library last year, whether you wanted it or not.
“This is the Apple commercial song!,” my wife enthusiastically observed, and indeed it was.
U2 would return to that album, Songs of Innocence, six more times during its 24-song set, leaving longtime fans to no doubt wish the band had cut back on the newer material to make room for unplayed gems like “New Year’s Day” and “One”.
“Cedarwood Road”, one of the stronger Songs of Innocence tracks, benefited greatly from the use of the show’s main effect, a massive rectangular structure dangling from the roof that served as both a catwalk and, with its perforated metal sides, a video screen that allowed you to see Bono amid the gorgeously animated street scenes reflected on it.
Before the less impressive 2014 song, “Invisible”, the screen was used to show snippets of vintage interviews with various punk and glam-rock stars of the ’70s, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, the Clash, the New York Dolls, and the Sex Pistols. But this sequence dragged on too long, and half the time you couldn’t even make out what the artist was blabbing about.
As for the reportedly “special sound system”, which had numerous banks of speakers hanging from the arena ceiling, the overall quality of the sound was not any better than it usually is in the hockey rink.
For his part, Bono didn’t seem to be showing any ill-effects from the accident that broke his arm in six places, among other injuries. He’s still very good at lifting up said appendage whenever a rock-star pose is in order–or when it’s time to pull off those slinky belly-dance moves of “Mysterious Ways”, during which he thanked the doctor “who put me back together”.
For “Sweetest Thing”–a 1987 b-side that the band hasn’t done live since 2001–Bono pulled a young woman up from the crowd and gave her a phone to film the band playing the song, her footage appearing on the big screen. It was like a greatest hits of the crappiest YouTube concert clips you’ve ever seen.
“Technology has its uses,” declared Bono when the song was over, “but we gotta get better at this.”
The encore featured a recording of Stephen Hawking emoting on power and politics and Bono promising an end to the scourge of HIV/AIDS before The Edge comically forgot that you can’t walk on air.
For anyone hoping to have a chuckle at the high-and-mighty U2’s expense, it was clearly a “Beautiful Day”.
The Tragically Hip, February 6, 2015
Gordon Downie is famous for his wacky stage moves and bizarre gestures, but last night (February 6) at Rogers Arena he ramped up the oddness big-time. I’ve seen the Tragically Hip numerous times over the years, but never witnessed him being quite so wonderfully nutzoid. The fact that it was his 51st birthday might have helped.
Downie laid the screwiness on thick from the get-go. In the opening song, “Grace, Too”, from the 1994 Day for Night disc, he pranced around giddily and pulled off that I’m-rowing-a-canoe trick that Conan O’Brien does so well. Other times he would pretend he was casting a fishing line and reeling the audience in. You get the impression that he’s pining for a lake in Ontario or something.
Near the beginnning of “My Music at Work”, the lead-off track from 2000’s Music @ Work, Downie bellowed “Here’s my music at work!” while grimacing and squeezing the bejeesuz out of his left tit for reasons that were strictly his own.
Shortly thereafter about a dozen see-through banners were lowered to the sides of the stage and distorted visuals from the Fully Completely cover projected on them, signaling the start of that album’s complete performance, from “Courage (for Hugh MacLennan)” through “Eldorado”. For “Courage” Downie appeared sporting a white cowboy-hat and set out to madly stamp his shiny black-leather boots like a demented flamenco dancer.
While Downie has always been the visual focus of the Hip, the slash ‘n’ burn guitarwork of lead player Rob Baker and rhythm ace Paul Langlois remains its musical core. You could spend hours debating which Fully Completely tracks boasted the deadliest riffs, but you’d still wind up with a three-way tie between “Looking For a Place to Happen”, “Locked in the Trunk of a Car”, and “”Fifty-Mission Cap.”
And of course no Tragically Hip review would be complete without mention of the flawless rhythm-section of drummer Johnny Fay and bassist Gord Sinclair, neither of whom appear to have lost their respective gifts for fierce beats and propulsive bottom-end.
During the encore, when the Hip played “Poets”, I started thinking that a tour where they perform the 1998 Phantom Power album in its entirety would be in order, since it would have to include that provocative gem as well as the gorgeous “Bobcaygeon” and blistering “Fireworks”.
But by the time the quintet finished off with “Blow at High Dough”–which garnered the night’s wildest crowd response by far–I was pondering how sweet a live reproduction of the 1989 Up to Here disc would be, boasting other choice cuts like “Opiated”, “Every Time You Go”, and “When the Weight Comes Down.”
Sometimes it just boggles the mind how many incredible songs one band can have–even with a nutzoid frontman.
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, August 14, 2014
Along with the obligatory old hits, and tunes from his new number-one album, Tom Petty has been including some choice covers on his current tour. As well as opening shows with the Byrds’ riotous “So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star”, his last three West Coast dates have seen him separately cover Big Joe Williams (“Baby, Please Don’t Go”), the Grateful Dead (“Friend of the Devil”), and Ray Charles (“I Got a Woman”).
Pondering which cover the 63-year-old Petty might pull out along with the Byrds’ tune at Rogers Arena last night, I wrote a fun little blog suggesting Bruce Cockburn’s “If a Tree Falls” might be a nice Canuck-flavoured choice, but apparently Petty didn’t get the memo.
He went with the Ray Charles tune again, prefacing it with childhood reminiscings on buying Elvis 45s. And he threw in a third cover to boot: Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone”, which is best known as a Monkees hit.
I don’t think anybody saw that coming.
And I don’t think anybody complained, either, because Petty’s crack band, the Heartbreakers, makes everything sound awesome. Guitarist Mike Campbell, keyboardist Benmont Tench, bassist Ron Blair, multi-instrumentalist Scott Thurston, and drummer Steve Ferrone are one helluva combo. Throw Petty’s monumental songwriting talents and expressive vocals into the mix and you really can’t go wrong.
That was clearly evident when the sextet followed “Rock ‘n’ Roll Star” with “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”, a 1993 tune so obviously great that it first appeared on Petty’s Greatest Hits. Two songs in and the Heartbreakers had the crowd joyously swaying and hollering its approval of that supposedly weed-themed number. The only thing missing was a dedication to Marc Emery.
Petty’s 20-song set included four tracks from his new Hypnotic Eye album, including the catchy “U Get Me High” and one of his heaviest songs ever, “Shadow People”, which rides a rugged riff similar to that on John Lennon’s “Cold Turkey”.
The audience seemed quite taken by the fresh material, although they forgot all about it when the group launched into Petty’s 1991 hit “Learning to Fly” and one gesture from him led the crowd to intercept its chorus for a mass singalong.
A typically exhilirating version of Petty’s stone-cold ’76 classic “American Girl” ended a night that had opened with a strong set by Steve Winwood, who blended solo hits like 1986’s poppy “Higher Love” with meatier tunes from his previous bands Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group. Winwood deftly handled lead-guitar on “Dear Mr. Fantasy” before switching to organ for the set-closing “Gimme Some Lovin’”.
He didn’t have to ask for the lovin’ twice, either; the audience was more than happy to oblige.
Metallica, August 24, 2011
Metallica put on a stunning show at Rogers Arena last night (August 24), but, man, did it ever take them a while to get going.
The L.A. metal legends—who play the same venue tonight (August 25) and again on Monday (at a special $5-per-ticket film shoot)—were scheduled to take the stage at 7 p.m., but didn’t actually start busting eardrums until nearly 8:40.
In the meantime, the crowd was “entertained” by American comic Jim Breuer, who you may recall for his portrayal of Goat Boy during a four-year stint on Saturday Night Live. Or maybe you remember him from such films as the stoner comedy Half Baked.
At any rate, he killed about half an hour trying to get the crowd riled up, proclaiming that since Vancouver had been chosen out of all the cities in the world as the place where Metallica wanted to film its upcoming 3D movie, we’d better damn well make a racket for the cameras.
“We’re gonna do an exercise, and if you don’t do it right they’re not coming out!,” threatened Breuer, somehow not realizing that fans who had paid over $140 for prime seats—before dropping another $40 on black “Metal Up Your Ass” T-shirts—were already planning on going a bit nuts.
Once Breuer’s nauseating pep talk was over, we had to wait another half hour or so for Metallica’s road crew to put the finishing touches on the immense, in-the-round stage, and for those brave spotlight-operators to climb ladders to their little lairs.
But when the band (singer-guitarist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, bassist Robert Trujillo, and drummer Lars Ulrich) finally strolled out to the strains of Ennio Morricone’s “The Ecstasy of Gold” and launched into the brutal “Creeping Death”, all was well with the world. The extremely loud part of it, at least.
I don’t know how Metallica does it, but every time I see them live they manage to sound amazingly clear at incredibly high volume. And their staging never fails to impress. On “For Whom the Bell Tolls” they had huge coffins twirling over the stage, “Ride the Lightning” boasted a massive electric-chair, and “One” incorporated more blinding green lasers than Blue Oyster Cult would ever have imagined back in ’76.
Twelve glowing white crosses rose up from below the stage for “Master of Puppets”, and for “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” a crew of workers used a crane to construct an immense statue of Lady Justice, which “collapsed” during “…And Justice for All”, barely missing Ulrich and his drum kit (sorry, Napster fans).
While the crowd was distracted by the killer riffs of the band’s biggest hit, “Enter Sandman”, a simulated breakdown of the show was staged, with scaffolding falling, a lighting rig swinging down, and an “injured” stagehand being carried away on a stretcher.
It was all kinda corny, but it did allow the group to pretend that its main gear was toast, and that it needed to bring in some smaller amps and emergency lighting for a “garage”-style session. Then Metallica revisited its thrashy roots for two tracks off the 1983 Kill ‘Em All debut, “Hit the Lights” and “Seek & Destroy”.
Kill ‘Em All was originally going to be titled Metal Up Your Ass, so in recognition of that fact a huge white toilet was lowered onto the stage at the end of the set. The lid opened and, in true Spinal Tap fashion, a huge dagger clutched in a fist rose menacingly up.
So where was Jim Breuer’s ass when we needed it?
Soundgarden, July 29, 2011
Due to its proximity to Seattle, Vancouver has enjoyed a special kinship to the famed grunge bands of the Emerald City. Before making it big the plaid-clad lads in Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden, hungry for gigs, would head north to rock our socks off at small venues like the long-shuttered Town Pump in Gastown. We embraced them wholeheartedly, not missing our socks at all.
And judging by the loud love expressed both by and for Soundgarden at Rogers Arena last night (July 29), that feeling is as strong as ever.
The show kicked off with an acoustically disastrous set by the Meat Puppets, a Phoenix rock trio with alt and punk leanings that’s been around since 1980, off and on, and was a major influence on the grunge scene. The group is composed of founding members/brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood, with Shandon Sahm—son of Texas music legend Doug—on drums.
The indie icons paid homage to the Seattle sound by performing all three of the Curt Kirkwood-penned tunes Nirvana recorded live for its MTV Unplugged in New York album—”Oh, Me”, “Lake of Fire”, and “Plateau”. They also pulled off a version of the Beach Boys’ “The Sloop John B”, during which the shirtless and shockingly pale Sahm substituted his bare fingers for drumsticks.
Taking it up a notch was the night’s other guest, Queens of the Stone Age, which seemed to benefit greatly, soundwise, from the fact that the rink was well padded with bodies by the time it hit the stage. Even though it often had three guitars raging at once, the Josh Homme-led quintet from Palm Desert, California, mostly overcame the soul-withering sound mix that had tortured the Puppets.
“You guys are sick, sick, sick, sick, sick,” declared singer-guitarist Homme when it came time to bang out “Sick, Sick, Sick”, a tune off the band’s last album, 2007’s Era Vulgaris. When he introduced one song as being “about telling authority to go fuck itself,” many in the party-hearty crowd took that as a cue to spark up joints, the show’s heavy security presence be damned. No doubt a lot of the tokers were also fans of Homme’s previous stoner-metal act, Kyuss.
QOTSA’s exhilirating set lit the audience’s fuse, and by the time Soundgarden took the stage the near-capacity crowd was psyched for action. The classic lineup of singer Chris Cornell, guitarist Kim Thayil, bassist Ben Shepherd, and drummer Matt Cameron didn’t spend a lot of time with chit-chat, but got straight to work churning out the riff-driven, Sabbath-influenced hits that ruled the airwaves back in the early- to mid-”˜90s.
The brunt of the band’s 20-some-odd-song set was taken from the double-platinum 1991 Badmotorfinger album (“Rusty Cage”, “Outshined”, “Jesus Christ Pose”, “Searching With My Good Eye Closed”) and its five-times-platinum 1994 followup, Superunknown (“Fell on Black Days”, “My Wave”, “The Day I Tried to Live”, “Spoonman”, “Black Hole Sun”).
Back in the group’s heyday the swaying vibe of the latter tune would have led large portions of the crowd to salute it with Bic lighters held on high, but that habit has long been usurped by the mass illumination of camera phones.
Although Soundgarden’s performance wasn’t the stuff of legend, it left little to complain about. Cornell can still screech with the best of them, Thayil brings the six-string dynamite, and the rhythm section is a formidable force. Cameron’s colossal drumwork definitely made him the night’s MVP.
The group ended its three-song encore with the Badmotorfingertrack “Slaves & Bulldozers”, bolstering it with a few Zeppelinesque bars of the traditional gospel-blues song “In My Time of Dying”. Considering the quartet’s obvious indebtedness to the monster riffs of Tony Iommi, it would have been more apt if it had figured out a way to incorporate a Black Sabbath tune instead.
But that might have been just a bit too perfect.
Rush, June 30, 2011
Rush fans are famous for their unwavering devotion to the Canuck prog-rock trio, but some go that extra mile—like the guy who showed up at Rogers Arena Thursday night (June 30) sporting a homemade placard tied around his neck. The young dude had obviously thrown this hokey piece of wearable art together in record time, but he was garnering a lot of thumbs-up from the concertgoers filing past.
They all seemed in total agreement with the statement that he’d lifted from an episode of Family Guy: “OH GOD, THERE IS NO F***ING DRUMMER BETTER THAN NEIL PEART!”
Usually when a rock drummer starts into a long solo at an arena show, that’s a sign for the audience to sit down, maybe even head to the exits in search of beer. With Rush drummer Neil Peart it’s different. When he started into his extended solo toward the end of the nearly three-hour performance, people instantly stood up—and didn’t sit down until he was done giving his vast array of skins the beating of a lifetime.
The mesmerizing effect Peart’s drumming had on the crowd was a sight to behold. But his bandmates were no slouches either.
It was the penultimate date on the band’s yearlong Time Machine Tour, so called because it sees the group travelling back to relive various phases of its 40-year career. Rush spent most of its time back in 1981, however, performing its Moving Pictures album in its entirety, which meant that proven crowd pleasers like “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight”—and lesser-known gems like the sprawling instrumental “YYZ”—were a guaranteed part of the setlist. That surely helped draw a good portion of the roughly 13,000 in attendance.
“As usual we’ve got three, maybe five songs to play tonight,” joked singer-bassist (and sometime-keyboardist) Geddy Lee early on, but that was after the band had already plowed through the ’80s tracks “The Spirit of Radio”, “Time Stand Still”, and “Presto”.
From the get-go the power-trio struggled with a trebly, muddled sound—which is par for the course in hockey rinks, although I’ve heard Rush sound much better in the same venue, as it did in 2008 on the Snakes and Arrows tour. But that aural complaint didn’t seem to register with the mostly middle-aged crowd, who—just like those guys in the bromantic comedy I Love You, Man—were there to have a good time in the presence of their idols, so-so sound be damned.
Even if you weren’t a prog-loving Rush fan—and were maybe dragged to the show by a fiftyish dad who’s never gotten over his teenaged fixation with original drummer John Rutsey—there was lots to enjoy besides the music itself. The staging and visuals were quite stunning, revolving around antique-looking, experimental time-travel gadgetry. And the immense lighting rig above the stage operated with amazing precision, unfurling like the metal fist of a shape-changing Transformers robot.
An hour or so into its set, Rush took a 25-minute break, then returned to kickstart the Moving Pictures portion of the show with “Tom Sawyer”, which drew the biggest ovation of the night and caused the blown-away fan behind me to proclaim: “That’s the best song ever done. Best song ever!”
I didn’t have the heart to turn around and say, “Nah, ‘Limelight’ is better.”
After Peart’s aforementioned drum wipeout, the group left the stage, returning soon after to encore with the 1978 instrumental “La Villa Strangiato”, off the Hemispheres disc. Then it was time to set the time machine’s dials as far back as they’d go, back to ’74 for the self-titled debut album’s “Working Man”. The trip apparently included a pit stop in Jamaica, as the song was given a reggae treatment at first, before metalicizing into its original Zeppelinesque form.
B.C.-born guitarist Alex Lifeson pulled out all the stops at that point, offering up his most intense fretwork of the night. I can’t think of many other 57-year-olds who could end a marathon night of rockin’ with that much energy and enthusiasm. The pogoing Geddy Lee is one of them, though.
Roger Waters, December 10, 2010
At one point during Roger Waters’s spectacular sold-out show at Rogers Arena last night (December 10) he pulled off what he called “an experiment in time travel”, playing in unison with a 1980 video of himself performing the ballad “Mother”. In actual fact, the entire concert was a journey back in time, to the days when his old band, Pink Floyd, would pull out all the stops and spare no expense to give its fans the type of massive rock spectacle they’d rave about for years to come.
Waters put on a riveting, state-of-the-art show three years ago when he played here on his Dark Side of the Moon tour, performing that cosmic 1973 Floyd opus in its entirety. And on his current tour, where he’s performing all of Floyd’s 1979 concept album, The Wall, he hasn’t cut back one bit on the staging and visuals. If anything, he’s ramped them up even more.
That became clear from the first song, “In the Flesh”, when huge fountains of shooting sparks cascaded around the stage and a plane came flying down on a cable from the far end of the arena to “explode” into flames at stage right. That really got your attention.
The centrepiece of the show was the wall of white bricks that was methodically built up while Waters and his crack band churned out The Wall’s tales of isolation and oppression. A major theme of the two-hour-plus presentation—which included a 25-minute break—was the futility and madness of war. Particularly heart-rending was the video footage shown during “Bring the Boys Back Home” of cheerful elementary-school kids breaking down when they catch sight of their returning soldier dads stepping into the classroom.
Waters’s own father was killed in the Second World War, and the fallout from that type of loss is just one of the issues plaguing Pink, the Waters-based protagonist of The Wall. He’s also burdened with an overprotective mother and abusive schoolteachers, the latter leading to a group of kid singers being brought on stage to proclaim “We don’t need no education!” and rail against a giant puppet teacher in “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2”.
It wasn’t just Waters’s personal demons that were targeted, though. Corporate greed and human-rights abuses also took a pounding, as on “Goodbye Blue Sky”, when animated warplanes unloaded blood-red Shell Oil emblems instead of bombs.
An hour after the show started the wall was complete, standing about 40 feet high and stretching the entire length of the stage, so that the band was completely hidden—and only Waters could be seen peeking through where one brick was missing, singing the languid “Goodbye Cruel World”.
During the intermission the wall became a memorial for the casualties of human conflict, displaying pictures of scores of dead civilians, soldiers, and activists to a solemn soundtrack.
After the break Rogers wandered out by himself in front of the newly constructed barricade while his unseen band played along from the other side. One of the show’s most dazzling moments—and there were tons—came during “Hey You”, when he slammed his fists against the front of the wall and it exploded in a rainbow of light, bricks flying everywhere.
It was only a trick of animation, though; the wall still held firm, and soon after the band appeared in front of it, carrying on with a set that included the atmospheric showstopper “Comfortably Numb”.
Apart from the stunning visuals, the sound quality of the show was unsurpassed—except maybe by Waters himself the last time he was here. How he manages to make a hockey rink come off like an acoustically designed concert hall is beyond me. I was still wondering how he did it after the wall had tumbled into ruin and a small army of workmen were folding down its cardboard-box bricks, stacking them aside for transport to the next unforgettable gig.
Aerosmith, September 16, 2010
Thursday (September 16) was a big night in Vancouver for legendary guitar acts from the ’70s. Over on the North Shore you had Johnny Winter at the Centennial Theatre, while, downtown, Aerosmith was packing them in at Rogers Arena. I don’t know how the albino blues-rocker from Texas fared, but the Bad Boys of Boston definitely acquitted themselves rockingly. Rumours of their demise have been greatly exaggerated, even by me.
Warm-up act Joan Jett got the crowd of 11,000 in a retro mood straightaway with the title track off her 1980 solo debut, Bad Reputation (not to be confused with Thin Lizzy’s awesome album of the same name). Looking mighty fine for 51 in black tank-top and black leather pants, the shades-wearing Jett followed up with the punky strains of “Cherry Bomb”, from her old group the Runaways, and kept the exhilarating vibe going with “Light of Day”, the Springsteen-penned theme song of the 1987 drama she costarred in with Burnaby’s favourite son, Michael.
And I don’t mean Bublé.
During the cover of Gary Glitter’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me”, also from Bad Reputation, the audience needed little coaxing to mindlessly chant “Yeah! Oh yeah! Oh yeah!”, and Jett rewarded its obedience with “A.C.D.C.”—not the band, but the 1974 glam-rock ditty by Sweet of “Ballroom Blitz” fame.
The mid ’70s lovefest continued unabated when Aerosmith hit the stage with the blistering double-shot of “Same Old Song and Dance” and “Train Kept A-Rollin’ ” from 1974’s Get Your Wings. I have no clue how the slashing guitars of Joe Perry and Brad Whitford carried up in the nosebleeds, but from my vantage point on the floor—near the end of the ramp where vocalist Steven Tyler would sashay in his shiny silver pants—it was hard-rock heaven.
Tyler sang his skinny ass off brilliantly, making you wonder why the hell he’d shelf his singing career to become a judge on TV’s vacuous American Idol. Viewers are conditioned to seeing the talent-strapped likes of Sharon Osbourne and Simon Cowell in those type of roles anyway.
Unlike in Toronto last month—when the much-publicized animosity between Perry and Tyler led to the latter being nudged right off the stage—there didn’t seem to be any friction among the bandmates. Tyler rarely let the opportunity to embrace his buddies pass by, whether hanging off of bassist Tom Hamilton during the familiar intro to “Sweet Emotion” or getting up close and personal with drummer Joey Kramer after helping out with his extended, “Look, Ma, just hands!” solo.
While the endlessly gyrating Tyler draws most of the attention from fans, Perry is actually the most magnetic of the two. Whether peeling off choice lap-steel licks with a big stogie in his mouth during the locally made “Rag Doll” or slouching against his amp to fingerpick pretty bits of the uplifting “Dream On”, the just-turned-60 rocker personifies cool.
After winning a guitar duel with the animated Guitar Hero version of himself, Perry was shown in video clips hanging out at the Gastown clock and eyeing Canucks jerseys through a store window. His fondness for our fair city is well known, as is his devotion to the six-string stylings of Peter Green, whose bluesy “Stop Messin’ Round” he sang lead on (unfortunately).
During the three-song encore—which, shockingly, didn’t include “Toys in the Attic”—Tyler got everyone to holler “Happy birthday, John!” on cue for a YouTube video that will commemorate what should have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday on October 9. Earlier on Aerosmith had shown its love of the Fab Four by performing Abbey Road’s “Come Together”, which it also recorded for that cheesy appearance in the 1978 movie Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Hey, if the band survived that calamity, it can make it through anything!
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