Hard Rock Calling 2012 - Paul Simon

I returned to Hyde Park the following day after the Bruce Springsteen concert for Paul Simon.

Because the previous day had left me completely knackered I did not go there early and so I arrived when Alison Krauss, who was appearing immediately before Paul Simon, had started playing.

When it was time for Paul Simon, he began his set with old favourites from the Simon & Garfunkel era (Me & Julio Down By The Schoolyard) but also from his solo career (Slip Slidin' Away).

He brought on stage Jimmy Cliff as a guest...

... and later Ladysmith Black Mambazo and his original Graceland band with whom they played the complete Graceland album together, which was what this concert was about, the 25 year anniversary of this classic album.

The sound volume was extremely low and if you were not in a good position, you could not hear the music and you could only hear other people's conversations. The weather was a bit better, the sun came out for a while, it didn't rain, but it was quite chilly at the end of the concert.

SETLIST:
01.Kodachrome
02.Gone At Last
03.Dazzling Blue
04.50 Ways To Leave Your Lover
05.The Harder They Come (with Jimmy Cliff)
06.Many Rivers To Cross (with Jimmy Cliff)
07.Vietnam (with Jimmy Cliff)
08.Mother And Child Reunion (with Jimmy Cliff)
09.That Was Your Mother
10.Hearts And Bones / Mystery Train / Wheels
11.Me And Julio Down By The Schoolyard
12.Slip Slidin' Away
13.The Obvious Child
14.Hello My Baby
15.Nomathemba (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
16.Homeless (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
17.Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes (with Ladysmith Black Mambazo)
18.I Know What I Know
19.The Boy In the Bubble
20.Mandela (Bring Him Back Home) (with Hugh Masekela)
21.Stimela (with Hugh Masekela)
22.Crazy Love, Vol. II
23.African Sunset (with Thandiswa Mazwai)
24.Under African Skies (with Thandiswa Mazwai)
25.Gumboots
26.Graceland
27.You Can Call Me Al
Encore:
28.The Sound Of Silence
29.The Boxer (with Jerry Douglas)
30.Late In The Evening
31.Still Crazy After All These Years

Hard Rock Calling 2012 - Bruce Springsteen

Having already seen Bruce Springsteen at Hard Rock Calling Festival in 2009 and having been featured on the DVD for posterity, we thought it would be a good idea to see him again, at the same festival three years later. However, before we even left for London, we dreaded the prospect of rain. Having already experienced THAT RAIN in Florence a month before, we kept hearing news reports that it was raining every day on London, that Hyde Park had been turned into a swamp, etc. The organizersr had spread sawdust on the ground (presumably so that we would not sink in the mud)...

...and so we wore our boots (well, some of us, anyway).

Of course, after the concert was over the sawdust and mud mix had turned into this...

...which on top of that gave off a smell that was bound to get you high!

Since there was no pit procedure nor roll calls (there wasn't even a pit) we joined the queue 90 minutes before the gates were due to open. In moderately good weather.

And then it started raining. Anyway. At some point, the doors were opened and after we were searched we got in. There was no way we could run to get to the front, running was impossible on top of the sawdust and mud mixture. We did get to the front, though. And more people came. So we had to stand, in that position, for the next 10 hours (sitting on the sawdust, although possible, was definitely NOT recommended).

Out of these 10 hours, we would spend 7 of them waiting for Bruce Springsteen.

They went by very quickly however, partly because of the good company and partly because of the quick succession of the artists appearing. Let's see now:

The festival was opened by Hey, Monea!, winners of the Hard Rock Rising competition, the winner of which had the chance to open for Bruce Springsteen. Quite good.

The bill continued with Tom Morello - The Nightwatchman. The Rage Against The Machine frontman, alone with his guitar, was teaching the British to sing protest songs. He even brought some Essex firemen who were on strike with him on stage for the last song.

 

Then it was time for Lady Antebellum. This was the point where we expected to get bored. We didn't, because Lady Antebellum (who played something that could be labeled "new country") are good musicians (although they insisted on starting some of the songs with pre-recorded beats) and they also had a good light show.

After Lady Antebellum, Bruce Springsteen came on stage! Not to perform though, but to introduce a living legend instead: John Fogerty from Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Later, Bruce came back on stage, to join Fogerty on Rocking All Over The World.

Finally, after Fogerty's set, it was time for Bruce Springsteen. We almost didn't notice him when he came up on stage alone. We were wondering what he was going to play. In 2009 he had started, joined by the full band with London Calling by The Clash. This time, he said he would start with the first song he played on British soil, back in 1975: Thunder Road. Alone, with his harmonica and Roy Bittan on piano.

The weather was good when Bruce's set started. "Well, give it fifteen minutes" Bruce said. And indeed, it later rained, stopped, rained again, stopped again, then the sun came out, and while we were searching for our sunglasses... it started raining again and on top of that it got cold...

It was clear from the beginning that this concert was going to be a little bit different. Bruce himself looked not tired as some people thought, but "emotionally charged" would be a more accurate description. He did a full roll-call, asking for each member of the band, eg "Is Professor Roy Bittan in the house?", but, contrary to Florence and Trieste, he then asked "Are we missing anybody?" (meaning Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici, the two E Street Band members that were no longer with us) concluding that "Well, if we're here and you're here, then they're here". All this procedure was taking place during the first leg of the tour in The United States, but not at the recent concerts in Europe. Indeed, at some point, while he was lying down on the stage floor with Jake Clemons (Clarence's nephew) he was talking to him about "all those stories I could tell you with your uncle".

Suddenly, just when he had finished another song, he remembered a request sign he had seen a fan hold earlier. So he went down again among the audience and found it. A Spanish fan had asked for "Take Em As They Come". He picked up the request sign and brought it on stage with him. The fan had noted all the concerts he had attended that year on which, of course, the song had not been played. Bruce started reading it, while commenting at the same time:

"This guy wants to hear an obscure song, paid his money in Seville, didn't hear it there... Pays more money in Barcelona, that wasn't f**king there. Then he went to Donostia... no, it didn't get played! Made it all the way to Madrid... That's a big investment now my friend... No, no song. Paris? No f**king good! Got to see the Eiffel Tower, though. Ah, but London! ha, ha! Tonight my friend... you're gonna hear this damn thing!"

And of course he played it!

At some point Fogerty came up on stage again, paying back his favour to Bruce and they played The Promised Land together.

Someone else who also came up on stage, not once, but several times, was Tom Morello making us think that maybe he should be given a place on The E Street Band now.

The best of these times was when they performed together The Ghost Of Tom Joad, a song that Morello has made it "his own" with his unique guitar solo.

Bruce however, had saved the best for last. "I've waited 50 years for this. A special guest is coming up..." The special guest was none other than Sir Paul McCartney!

The funny thing was that Paul McCartney had also come up on stage at the previous Hard Rock Calling I had attended, back in 2009, at the Neil Young concert when they performed "A Day In The Life" together. This time, with Bruce they performed "I Saw Her Standing There" and "Twist & Shout".

And that was when, towards the end of Twist & Shout that the incident which everybody has connected with that concert took place: We suddenly thought that one of the speakers was not operating. What in fact had happened was that most speakers were off because the organizers had cut the power off and what we were hearing was the natural, unamplified sound of the band since we were so close to the stage. We had heard a lot about curfews at British concerts, and because the curfew for this one had already been broken I realized what had happened. And when Bruce approached the microphone to announce that "London! You've just seen...the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, house-rocking, earth- quaking, booty-shaking, Viagra-taking, love-making -: Le-gen-dary E - Street - Band!", we could hear nothing. He went to the nearby mike and the same thing happened. Believing that it was a technical problem, he made a signal meaning "Do you want us to play one more?" when he was approached by an employee of the organizers who whispered something in his ear. So Bruce made a characteristic gesture meaning "There's nothing else I can do". Nevertheless, he grabbed his guitar, approached the - useless by now - microphone and quickly played a snippet of "Goodnight Irene", truly unplugged. Thankfully, we were close enough to the stage to be able to hear it. I won't say anything else about this incident, most of its aspects are already well-known. What most people don't know is that they had locked the artists in their dressing rooms and did not let them leave until all the festival goers had departed from Hyde Park. They were probably afraid that they would go back on stage and start playing unplugged! The concert was on Saturday night. And for those that might say that there were some people that had to go to work on Sunday morning, let me remind you that the nearest residences were at Park Lane. And for those that don't know what Park Lane is, I'll just say that it is the most expensive street in Monopoly. That's all you need to know. Because apart from the curfew and everything else, the sound was quite low for a rock concert. The previous winter, a nearby resident had complained that "with all these concerts and their noise we can't even open a window during the summer and enjoy the tennis at Wimbledo on the telly".

Finally, we should also mention that maybe festivals are not suitable for the hardcore fans of an artist. As somebody mentioned in this blog post "So while Springsteen was sharing poignant memories of the late Clarence Clemons with his saxman nephew, I was hearing about Sebastian's sales figures[...]While The Boss was introducing Empty Sky, I was hearing about Sharon's sex life as she bared all to a stranger she'd met, and would probably bare all again later[...]As Bruce explained how Thunder Road was the first song he'd ever played on UK soil, I was listening to four burly, boozed-up middle-age muppets talking about a mate's stag do."
All in all, despite all these problems, it was a great concert. And although we couldn't expect it to also be released on DVD, several songs from the night were featured on the "Springsteen & I" DVD.

SETLIST:
01.Thunder Road
02.Badlands
03.We Take Care Of Our Own
04.Wrecking Ball
05.Death To My Hometown (with Tom Morello)
06.My City Of Ruins
07.Spirit In The Night
08.The Promised Land (with John Forgerty)
09.Take 'Em As They Come (request)
10.Jack Of All Trades (with Tom Morello)
11.Empty Sky (solo acoustic)
12.Because The Night
13.Johnny 99
14.Darlington County
15.Workin' On The Highway
16.Shackled & Drawn
17.Waitin' On A Sunny Day
18.Raise Your Hand
19.The River
20.The Ghost Of Tom Joad (with Tom Morello)
21.The Rising
22.Land Of Hope & Dreams
ENCORE:
23.We Are Alive
24.Born In The USA
25.Born To Run
26.Glory Days
27.Dancing In The Dark
28.I Saw Her Standing There (with Paul McCartney)
29.Twist & Shout (with Paul McCartney)
30.Goodnight Irene (unplugged)

Hard Rock Calling 2009 - Day 3 - Bruce Springsteen

Sunday the 28th of June 2009 was the third and final day of that year's Hard Rock Calling festival, but the first which had been announced and the first for which I had bought a ticket. On my Day 1 blog post I have already explained the thought process behind my decision to buy a ticket for that particular concert. The thing is that by the time I made that decision it had already been sold out. However, browsing through the Live Nation website I noticed a loophole: The VIP ticket, or, as it was officially named the "Club Experience". As it was my first time doing this, I inevitably made a mistake. Instead of buying the Club Experience I bought the Club Experience upgrade (which presupposed that I had already bought a normal ticket. I quickly realized that and the situation was remedied with a new purchase of the appropriate product and a phone call to Live Nation to explain my mistake and get a refund. Yes, old fashioned phone calls sometimes do work in such large organizations and refunds do get issued provided you wish to buy something that costs even more. The funny thing was that a while later, normal tickets for the Bruce Springsteen concert did reappear in the form of the "Weekend ticket", a combination of a standard ticket for Saturday (Neil Young) and a standard ticket for Sunday (Bruce Springsteen), but by then I had already bought both my Bruce Springsteen Club Experience and my Neil Young standard ticket. I would buy one more Club Experience, this time for the Killers concert on Friday which in similar fashion had already sold out by the time I found out about it. In hindsight, looking back at the way things turned out, I never regretted a minute of it.

So, on Sunday morning I had to get to Hyde Park before doors opened. This was a Bruce Springsteen concert, this was the Bruce Springsteen concert, it was no joke. It was a great consolation though, that I would avoid the queues as I would enter from a side entrance. I walked past the queues, stopping momentarily to observe them and then moved on toward the Club Experience entrance. There was not much sun as the day before but there were still quite a few people lying on the grass. The image that has stayed with me to this day, though, was the scantily clad guy doing his Sunday morning workout.

So after having a quick peek through the side to the still empty front of the stage, I got in, phoned my friends to see where they were (they had chosen a space close and to the left side of the stage, a decision that would prove to be ingenious a year later when the official DVD came out and turned out that this was the side of the stage the cameras were mostly filming the crowd from), found them and secured my place there. I only left my place once to go to the Club Experience area and get my special dinner. As more crowds were arriving the space around our places was quickly becoming crowded so there was no time to wander around Hyde Park soaking the "festival experience" or going to see some other artist playing at the other stage. I decided to stay put. At least I could sit down. I remember one lady trying to get to the front and shouting "Let me through! I'm trying to find my mother-in-law!" and I thought "That's suspicious! People usually try to get as far away as possible from their mothers-in-law"

After a lady coming up on stage and introducing the acts, things really started to get going with The Gaslight Anthem who were Bruce fans themselves and who many Bruce fans cited as one of their "favourite new bands" of the time.

And then Brian Fallon asked us "Who have you come to see tonight?" "Bruce Springsteen!" everyone of course replied. Some of us suspected what was going to happen, others could already see him in the sidelines, yes, Bruce came up onstage in his sunglasses and with his guitar to perform "The '59 Sound" with The Gaslight Anthem. Some of us had already learned that they had done the same thing the previous day at Glastonbury, but since I was busy watching Neil Young, I didn't know. So, the second time I saw Bruce Springsteen live actually came a bit earlier than expected.

Next it was the turn of James Morrison and during his set most of us took time to rest and lie down. Some people had warned us that he was boring. Looking back on the TV broadcast all those years later it was probably not so but if you are waiting for Bruce Springsteen everything else must seem boring.

And then it was time for the Dave Matthews Band. This, I wanted to see, mainly because I had seen him performing with The Rolling Stones on The Bridges To Babylon tour official videotape and later he would legally donate tracks to Napster while it was still a free service. I thought his set was a bit too long, did not enjoy it that much, but that was probably because we were all geared up for Bruce Springsteen.

And yes, now it was finally the moment we had been waiting for, all through this weekend: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band! Now, we were in London, the festival was called Hard Rock Calling, Bruce had played it live before, so I was actually expecting what happened: The first notes of "London Calling". 

Well, do I have to describe the rest of the concert? I don't think so, you have probably seen the original DVD. Let me then mention a few details:

The first thing we noticed was that Max Weinberg was back. His son, Jay Weinberg had replaced him on the first dates of the tour.

I got "Out In The Street" that I was expecting. Let me explain. While I was on the plane on my flight to London three days before, "Out In The Street" was stuck on my mind for some reason. "I can't get this out of my head" I told my friends. "That's the song I want to hear". To which they replied "Right now you are not 'Out In The Street', you are 'Up In The Air' actually".

We also got "No Surrender" this time with Brian Fallon repaying the favour and appearing beside Bruce

By this stage of the tour, Bruce had ditched most of the songs from "Working On A Dream" and kept only two, playing these for the rest of it: "Outlaw Pete" and the title track. So the tour had by now become a "Greatest Hits" tour. Perfect for a live DVD. And although this showed that maybe even Bruce did not think "Working On A Dream" was not such a great album (and a lot of fans thought so as well), you only have to watch the live DVD while Bruce is performing the title track with people waving their hands and then maybe you can come back and tell me that "Working On A Dream" is not a good album. I have already posted my thoughts on that back in January.

"Magic" was now almost completely forgotten, although some people considered this as a continuation of The Magic tour. Bruce however played "Radio Nowhere" on this particular night.

As I have mentioned above the place where we chose to stand was perfect. Not only most of us can be seen on the DVD, you can actually pinpoint where we are at several instants during the concert by spotting the Greek flag!

Behind us was an 18 year old guy with a request sign for "Jungleland". He was behind us, but still too far for Bruce to pick up his request while he was collecting them during "Good Lovin'". So he gave it to us and we passed it to the people in front of us and it finally reached Bruce who took it. I'll never forget the look on his face when Bruce and the band finally played it. (Plus, I'll never forget that I met an 18-year old who listens to Bruce Springsteen!)

On this post you will find the videos I had took on that day. They are useless of course as we now have the official DVD as a souvenir. They can only help to show what was really happening in the crowd where we were, how we were reacting or feeling and maybe to the perfectionists who would like to see if any changes were made or if any overdubs were added to the final mix.

Finally, the best fun I had during my first Bruce Springsteen concert the year before in Paris was the super extended version of "American Land" in the end. So when I heard the first notes of the song at Hyde Park I was over moon shouting something like "Step aside! I'm going to destroy everything in my way!" And as you can see in the DVD it was a super extended version. And then some. But here it was followed by "Glory Days" and "Dancing In The Dark".

And then it was over. The best fun we could have had with our clothes on. Indeed it was even better than that, since, as I commented on a fan forum the following day, it was "better than sex".

So, we woke up the next day, had a stroll through London, going to Tower Bridge and at HMV in Oxford Street where I bought a clear vinyl 7-inch of "The 59 Sound". 

But Bruce was not over for that year. We still had the Italian tour when "The Greeks" would "invade Rome"... 

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SETLIST:
01. London Calling
02. Badlands
03. Night
04. She's The One
05. Outlaw Pete
06. Out In The Street
07. Working On A Dream
08. Seeds
09. Johnny 99
10. Youngstown
11. Good Lovin'
12. Bobby Jean
13. Trapped
14. No Surrender (with Brian Fallon)
15. Waitin' On A Sunny Day
16. The Promised Land
17. Racing In The Street
18. Radio Nowhere
19. Lonesome Day
20. The Rising
21. Born To Run
22. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
Encore:
23. Hard Times Come Again No More
24. Jungleland
25. American Land
26. Glory Days
27. Dancing In The Dark