Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Urban Bolta
Location: Sölvesborg / Sweden
Concert date: June 10, 2011
Attendance: 33,000
Ticket price: 270€ (4-day ticket)
We’d barely arrived in Sweden and here it was, the last day of the festival already! The days flew by like minutes, and in the blink of an eye it hit us that we had just one more day of pure rock bliss ahead before the grueling drive back home. Just like the day before, the interesting sets kicked off right after breakfast, at noon, when Lee Aaron and her band took the second stage.
LEE AARON (Rock stage)
Lee Aaron is a Canadian singer with a charming presence who spent a long time in hard rock and heavy metal waters before she began exploring the secrets of jazz and blues in the second half of the nineties. Since then she has drifted far from her rock roots, and for the last decade and a half her devotion to the music of the fifties and sixties has shown up in her live shows too, so catching the “rock chick” Lee Aaron on stage today is mission impossible. The Sweden Rock organizers announced her festival appearance with the words “heavy metal queen is back”, which hinted at a hard rock setlist this time – and us punters were taken for a ride. Sure, she played Hands On, Barely Holdin’ On and Metal Queen, but totally without any drive or rock fire. Her talks between songs were too long and disjointed, and not because she was struggling with nerves, but because over the years she’s moved away from the rock crowd and felt like a stranger on stage. Vocally Lee is still in superb form, her performance in the higher registers was flawless, but sadly she experimented way too much with the rock songs compared to the originals. At blues gigs that kind of live vocal interpretation is always welcome, but we can’t say the same for rock shows – here Lee flopped across the board. We got another cold shower right before the end, when instead of galloping off with Do I Move You she slowed the horses down even more and left most of the crowd cold. Don’t get me wrong, a set like the one we saw would have fit perfectly into a smaller club like Orto bar, but on the big Sweden Rock stage that sadly wasn’t the case. Of the energetic heavy metal queen, very little is left in the new millennium…
MOLLY HATCHET (Sweden stage)
Listeners hungry for Southern rock, who enjoyed Point Blank and Blackberry Smoke last year, gathered this time for Molly Hatchet, a band that already played this festival back in 2004. The long-haired musicians, mostly in shirts stretched over some serious bellies, were by themselves the picture-perfect representatives of the endless pastures of the American South, and when the cowboy-hatted Phil McCormack opened his mouth to greet the crowd in a thick Yankee accent, you knew exactly what time it was. Time for Molly Hatchet! With the opener Whiskey Man the Americans put things in their place: the next good hour on the third festival stage belonged to bouncy rock’n’roll rhythms and blues-leaning guitars, with the aforementioned McCormack adding his own bit on a fun harmonica. Keeping the songs bouncy, besides the fast rhythm machinery, was keyboardist John Galvin, who mixed fifties rock’n’roll into the pure-blooded Southern sound. Even a quick glance at the stage landed on drummer Shawn Beamer, who overdid the wind-in-the-face fan a bit and, with his hair waving straight up, looked like some kind of octopus. Besides classics from the albums “Molly Hatchet”, “Flirtin With Disaster” and “Beatin’ The Odds”, Molly Hatchet also played Justice and Live Til I Die from the still-current studio album “Justice”, released last year. Worth a mention is the constant guitar work of Dave Hlubek and Bob Ingram, who soloed throughout the instrumental parts and brought some complexity to otherwise simply built songs. To a nicely packed crowd, Molly Hatchet said goodbye after exactly an hour and a quarter with Flirtin’ With Disaster, showing that the old guard knows how to serve it up!
STYX (Festival stage)
Next in line of seriously interesting names were Styx, a band that never reaped the kind of popularity in Europe that it enjoyed on home American soil. How big they are in their homeland is probably best summed up by the fact that they’re currently on a huge American co-headlining tour with the mighty Yes. To a European rock devotee that sounds hard to believe – in short, you could say Styx are the American answer to Uriah Heep – the latter, conversely, never managed to make it big in America.
Styx racked up enough hits over their career that their whole set practically boiled over with familiar melodies, and they opened with The Grand Illusion. The guitar trio of Ricky Phillips / James Young / Tommy Shaw has an interesting stage setup, standing squeezed in close to each other and, in “ZZ Top style”, pulling comical body moves together to match the song being played. They continued with Too Much Time On My Hands and Lady, and by then had drawn a decent crowd to the front. From the first minute Styx worked the stage skillfully and bent its size to their advantage, which isn’t exactly typical for bands playing in the middle of the afternoon – proving the thesis that they’re used to physically huge stages from back in America. Styx’s big strength is their group vocal lines, which, backed by keyboards as a key building block of the atmosphere, deliver majestic moments; a nice example was the precise performance of the “Pieces Of Eight” (1978) classic I’m OK. A pleasant surprise came with Fooling Yourself, when Styx welcomed Chuck Panozzo, the original bassist, as a guest; he’s been joining his old bandmates on stage now and then over the last ten years. Then came a technically demanding drum solo from Todd Sucherman, which we wouldn’t have missed one bit, as it probably served only as filler for a relatively long schedule.
Despite their musically serious (prog) rock leanings, Styx are real entertainers on stage, led by the duo with the longest tenure – Young and Shaw. Constantly running around the stage, goofing on each other and even acrobatically kicking guitar picks into the distance were just some of the things Styx did to fire up the crowd even more. For the finish, the American classic rockers lined up the evergreens Miss America, Come Sail Away, Blue Collar Man and, after returning to the stage (again with Panozzo), Renegade. The extremely positive verdict on the show came down to Young’s still-decent vocals, the vocal and instrumental tightness, and fitting sound conditions, which, as the last obstacle out of the way for the Styx machine, made for a total victory!
The evening brought an overlap of three bands I’d gladly have seen, so in the end I decided to catch the one that’s hardest to catch on stage. So on my way from the tent I hurried past the jam-packed Rock stage, where Thin Lizzy were playing, to the miniature Rockklassiker stage, where German power metal veterans Rage had already started an acoustic set. They had just launched into the excellent suite Empty Hollow from last year’s album “Strings to a Web”. Piwi on the right guitar, Smolski on the left, and between them Piwi’s wife, who backed the orgasmically good chorus with backing vocals. That’s it! But sadly I had to hurry on to the “Sweden” stage…
HAWKWIND (Sweden stage)
Hawkwind are yet another band for whom gigs outside their homeland have long been a rarity. They’re known as one of the founders of so-called space rock, in the development of which, for example, Barrett-era Pink Floyd also played an important role. Psychedelic experimental music with long compositions, loads of avant-garde sounds and weird sci-fi lyrics – that’s Hawkwind. Some of you may also know them for the fun fact that Lemmy Kilmister once played with them, before getting kicked in the ass in 1975 and creating his own band – Motörhead. Hawkwind are commanded by their mastermind and only original member Dave Brock, who easily controlled the goings-on on stage with his strong personality. Hawkwind are still weirdos – bassist Mr. Dibs wore a military helmet and the other bassist, Niall Hone, a bright orange hat, to point out just the most striking examples, and there was no shortage among the rest of the lineup either. The hour-and-a-half-long trip in a spaceship was mostly enriched by a selection of seventies songs (that is, from their most successful period) such as Assault & Battery, The Golden Void and Brainstorm. The long instrumental excursions through a thousand different sounds were set up in a distinctly atmospheric way, dominated by the otherworldly keyboard outbursts of Tim Blake. The state of complete inner calm and exploration of the deepest corners of the human soul, as this kind of psychedelia demands, was achieved. Hawkwind are all multi-instrumentalists, so a huge range of sounds from every possible direction is within their reach: over the set they picked up a saxophone, a synthesizer, a violin and an instrument whose name I don’t know, whose sound is based on moving the (hand) closer to and away from a magnetic field. What stuck out a bit was Hone’s constant marching over to the keyboard on the far left side of the stage, which gave away that Hawkwind had the support of artificial computer samples while creating their palette of sonic madness. Vocal duties were split between Brock and the aforementioned first bassist, Mr. Dibs. The Brits ended this show of cosmic proportions, and a great change of pace at this year’s SRF, with Silver Machine, where Dave Brock replaced Lemmy’s original vocal, before the (surprisingly) small crowd headed for the main festival stage.
OZZY OSBOURNE (Festival stage)
Meanwhile, everything on the Festival stage was ready for the show by Ozzy Osbourne, the festival’s headliner, who is (or will be) a guest at numerous of the biggest European rock and metal festivals this summer. Last year Ozzy released the album “Scream”, sadly the next in a line of bitter studio disappointments. On the album the “Prince of Darkness” introduced a new backing band made up of Greek guitarist Gus G. (Firewind), bassist Rob Nicholson, drummer Tommy Clufetos and keyboardist Adam Wakeman – interestingly, the son of former Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman, who worked with Ozzy on his album “Ozzmosis” (1995).
Enough facts, now it’s showtime! Orff’s O Fortuna boomed from the speakers as an intro, and Ozzy ran onto the stage and, in his usual style, welcomed the people with a few words: “How are you doin’? Are you ready to go fuc*in’ crazy..? Let the madness begin”! The show opened with Randy’s song I Don’t Know, Ozzy’s essence and charisma worked like a raging volcano and caused a real party in the sea of people – for the last time at this year’s SRF! The flirting with Randy Rhoads’ legacy continued with two more “Blizzard of Ozz” classics, Suicide Solution and Mr. Crowley, during which Ozzy started his stage antics. The buckets of water from the Black Sabbath days were replaced by a more technologically advanced hose spewing snow-white foam, with which Ozzy turned the front rows, security guards and cameramen included, into a true winter landscape, sending the crowd into fits of laughter. The flirting with old-school material continued, to general delight, with Goodbye to Romance, Bark at the Moon and the phenomenal Shot in the Dark, when it was time for the first encounter with Black Sabbath, namely the song Rat Salad.
The original of the song from the album “Paranoid” (1970) allows for an arbitrary instrumental ending, which Ozzy used to take a short rest while pushing his crew under the spotlights. With his solo spot Gus G. proved himself a technically excellent musician with a sense of aesthetics, though, honestly, he doesn’t have nearly as much charisma as his longtime predecessor Zakk Wylde. Gus passed the baton to drummer Clufetos, who entertained us until Ozzy’s return to the stage and the leap into the venomously infectious riff of Iron Man. Ozzy still has the energy of a naughty teenager smoldering in him, which he gave off with his trademark gestures, constant encouragement and mischievous goofing tricks, without which it just wouldn’t work. The well-rehearsed performance was wrapped up by the band with the evergreens Crazy Train, Mama, I’m Coming Home and the always-present Black Sabbath farewell Paranoid. The selection of Ozzy’s older classics was a winner, served with surgical precision and seasoned with a showman’s approach; the only minus of the festival’s final act was its length of just 75 minutes.
And so the jubilee twentieth edition of Sweden’s biggest rock festival wrapped up successfully, serving up quite a few treats, highlights and, on the other hand, disappointments. On the way home we had planned a stop in Berlin, where the legendary UFO were playing the next day, but our drained bodies wouldn’t allow it. Never mind, what matters is that we got home happy and healthy after a marathon, non-stop 23-hour drive. And now what? The days until Sweden Rock 2012 are already being counted! =)
Photos: Robert Helberg (Styx), Anna Winberg (Hawkwind, Ozzy Osbourne)
Setlist
Performers: 11:30 — 12:15 RAUBTIER (Zeppelin) 12:00 — 13:15 LEE AARON (Rock) 12:15 — 13:15 DESTRUCTION (Sweden) 13:30 — 14:45 The Hooters (Festival) 13:45 — 14:45 FLÄSKET BRINNER (Zeppelin) 15:00 — 16:15 MOLLY HATCHET (Sweden) 15:00 — 16:15 SPOCK’S BEARD (Rock) 15:15 — 16:00 CLAES YNGSTRÖM CC… (Rockklassiker) 16:00 — 17:00 ANGEL WITCH (Zeppelin) 16:30 — 18:00 STYX (Festival) 17:30 — 18:30 NIFELHEAIM (Zeppelin) 18:00 — 19:30 KANSAS (Rock) 18:15 — 19:15 RHAPSODY OF FIRE (Sweden) 18:30 — 19:30 NICKE BORG HOMELAND (Rockklassiker) 19:30 — 21:00 BLACK LABEL SOCIETY (Festival) 20:15 — 21:30 WALTER TROUT (Zeppelin) 21:15 — 22:30 RAGE (Rockklassiker) 21:15 — 22:45 HAWKWIND (Sweden) 21:15 — 22:45 THIN LIZZY (Rock) 23:00 — 02:00 OZZY OSBOURNE (Festival) LEE AARON setlist: 1. Powerline 2. Concrete & Ice 3. Hands On 4. Baby Go Round 5. Handcuffed to a Fence in Mississippi 6. Sweet Talk 7. Some Girls Do 8. Odds of Love 9. Barely Holdin’ On 10. Watcha Do to My Body 11. Metal Queen 12. Do I Move You ——————- 13. Bad Boyfriend MOLLY HATCHET setlist: 1. Whiskey Man 2. Bounty Hunter 3. Gator Country 4. Been to Heaven – Been to Hell 5. Fall of the Peacemakers 6. Justice 7. Beatin’ The Odds 8. Live Til I Die 9. In the Darkness of the Light 10. Jukin’ City 11. Dreams I’ll Never See 12. The Journey 13. Flirtin’ With Disaster STYX setlist: 1. The Grand Illusion 2. Too Much Time On My Hands 3. Lady 4. I Am the Walrus 5. Lorelei 6. Suite Madame Blue 7. I’m OK 8. Queen of Spades 9. Fooling Yourself (The Angry Young Man) 10. Miss America 11. Come Sail Away 12. Blue Collar Man (Long Nights) —————— 13. Renegade KANSAS setlist: 1. Magnum Opus 2. Musicatto 3. Belexes 4. Point of Know Return 5. Song For America 6. On The Other Side 7. Hold On / Peaceful & Warm 8. Dust In The Wind 9. The Wall 10. Cheyenne Anthem 11. Miracles Out Of Nowhere 12. Icarus – Borne on the Wings of Steel 13. Portrait (He Knew) ———————- 14. Fight Fire With Fire 15. Carry On Wayward Son HAWKWIND setlist: 1. Warriors on the Edge of Time 2. Assault & Battery 3. The Golden Void 4. Where Are They Now? 5. Angels of Death 6. Fahrenheit 451 7. Prometheus 8. Brainstorm 9. Sentinel 10. Magnu 11. The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke) 12. Wraith 13. Hassan-i Sabbah ——————— 14. Silver Machine OZZY OSBOURNE setlist: 1. I Don’t Know 2. Suicide Solution 3. Mr. Crowley 4. Goodbye to Romance 5. Bark at the Moon 6. Road to Nowhere 7. Shot in the Dark 8. Rat Salad 9. Iron Man 10. Fairies Wear Boots 11. Don’t Want to Change the World 12. Crazy Train —————— 13. Mama, I’m Coming Home 14. Paranoid
Photo gallery
