Evergreen: ‘Desert Trip’ down memory lane

Attendees at mega concert hear rock history courtesy former The Beatles member Paul McCartney

Desert Trip, the mega-festival of rock greats, is meant to be historic. Paul McCartney, on Saturday, served as a willing instructor, presenting a musical journey from pre-Beatles fare to a hip-hop collaboration.

Tearing through a three-dozen song set that enraptured a 75,000-strong crowd in the Californian desert, McCartney welcomed fellow rock elder Neil Young to the stage for a mash-up that built into the anthem Give Peace a Chance.

Desert Trip, forecast to be the most lucrative music festival ever, is bringing together six of the biggest names in rock music over back-to-back weekends with identical lineups. The festival opened on Friday with The Rolling Stones who played an unexpected cover of Come Together by The Beatles, fellow British rock icons who were often viewed as their rivals.

As a former Beatle himself, McCartney returned the favour a day later by performing Stones’ single I Wanna Be Your Man, which was written by McCartney and John Lennon. The still lissome 74-year-old turned his set into a retrospective, reaching back to 1958’s In Spite of All the Danger, an early and often forgotten song by Beatles’ early incarnation, The Quarrymen.

McCartney, whose audience appeared younger than the Stones’ baby boomer-dominated crowd on Friday, quickly swung back to the present and summoned his raspiest voice for FourFiveSeconds. The track was his 2015 collaboration with rap and R&B mega-stars Kanye West and Rihanna.

The singer also paid tribute to his late band mates Lennon and George Harrison. For the latter, he played the deceased songwriter’s Something on a ukulele. McCartney said he still heard nervousness in his own voice in the recording of The Beatles’ first single Love Me Do and dedicated the song to producer George Martin, who died in March. “It was George who signed us to a record contract, so without him, there wouldn’t be any Beatle recordings,” McCartney said. “We love him and we thank him.”

McCartney brought out a fireworks show and perilous-looking on-stage pyrotechnics for Live and Let Die, reinforcing the spirit of celebration at the festival. Young, playing his own set before McCartney, put on a more politically engaging show as the folk rocker pressed his environmental activism.

A banner on an Indian teepee set up on stage read ‘Water Is Life’ and Young played before a backdrop of an oversized bag of seeds, labeled as local and organic. As a staunch critic of genetic modification, Young brought environmental questions symbolically to stage, with actors planting seeds and later dressed in protective gear as if cleaning chemical or nuclear waste.

Casting the aura of a folk rock church service, the musician performed triple duty on organ, harmonica and vocals for Mother Earth (Natural Anthem), asking the planet, “How long can you give and not receive?”

But Young showed that his appeal extends beyond political allies as he put on a musical tour de force, with marathon jamming alongside his band Promise of the Real and hard-driving guitar solos on signature hits Down by the River and Rockin’ in the Free World.

Young, who earlier denounced Donald Trump for playing Rockin’ in the Free World at his events, said that presidential candidate had a new campaign theme in another song Welfare Mothers, with its ironic refrain, “Welfare mothers make better lovers.”

Young also stated that Trump may have another message from Sunday’s headliner Roger Waters, the force behind Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Trump has vowed to build his own wall on the Mexican border to “make America great again” but Young said, “Roger’s gonna build a wall and we’re gonna make Mexico great again.”  

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2016.

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