Location: Inzell (Chiemgau, Bavaria) / Max-Aicher-Arena / Germany
Date: 01.06.2013
No question about it. When a festival gets announced with Toto, Journey, Rick Springfield and so on… it can turn into a real little trauma of temptation. Anyone with a soft spot for melodic rock instantly pricks up their ears. Add Europe, Whitesnake, Black Star Riders (Thin Lizzy reborn), newer followers of the style and glam rockers H.E.A.T., plus German hard rock veterans Voodoo Circle, and then top off the list with AOR champs Survivor from the US and FM from the UK, and it’s honestly impossible to resist. Two days of dreams on the horizon.
And yet? The more our hearts burned and the closer the Hi-Rock festival got, announced for June 1 and 2, the louder the ominous rumors rang out: severe multi-day downpours were expected across the old continent, with the bulk of the rain heading straight for the Chiemgau region of southern Bavaria. That’s where you’ll find the little town of Inzell, which lives off tourism, since this region full of natural beauty belongs to the Alpine area. And in that very same Inzell, about the size of Slovenia’s Trzin, sits the not-so-modest Max Aicher Arena. Besides tourism, Inzell is also one of the region’s sports hubs. The arena is bigger than the one in Stožice. Unbelievable. We’re comparing the level of the Slovenian capital with some easily forgotten tourist village in Germany.
And so it happened. The rocker’s stubbornness kept smoldering relentlessly. Let the sky come crashing down to Earth if it must. No big deal! After we reached the Salzburg area, the last blue scraps of torn sky left us for good, and we sank into the maw of a gray that dripped. It dripped, and dripped, and dripped. It got cold. Like early March rather than June. But it still felt completely “painless.” It was getting clearer and clearer, though, that we’d have to leave the tents in the car, forget about camping and find an apartment.
The clock struck three in the afternoon. We’re in Inzell and in front of the Max Aicher Arena! It’s pouring outside. We’re soaked and we don’t care. They let people into the hall through a narrow funnel-like bottleneck, where once again nobody escapes the groping hands of the security guards. Even the line for picking up accreditations creaks and sticks. Minutes tick by. Precious minutes. The H.E.A.T. show is already half over. As I walk into the hall, the band is just treating itself to the famous Led Zeppelin classic Rock N’ Roll, and a negative thought shoots through me: “Did I drive all this way just to listen to a million-and-first rendition of one of Led Zeppelin’s most worn-out songs? Brrr…”
The Swedes, mostly with market-friendly stage names, lined up as Erik Grönwall (vocals) – who joined in August 2010, replacing his predecessor Kenny Leckremo – plus Dave Dalone (guitar), Eric Rivers (guitar), Jona Tee (keyboards), Jimmy Jay (bass) and Crash (drums), presented their current studio album “Address the Nation” (2012) and in a 40-minute show also played three hit singles (Beg, Beg, Beg, 1000 Miles, Living On the Run) – only Keep On Dreaming was missing. The band can boast an innate perfectionism. That goes for the performance, where the crew was practically bursting on stage with untamed, unbridled kinetic energy, and above all singer Erik Grönwall won people over with his infectious charisma. It’s glam rock revival, sure, but with an exceptional feel for the plasma of melody. The band understands how to use eighties synths, which adds a clear AOR trace to their expression (for instance the anthemic Downtown in the middle of the show). The band is extremely tight, and the multi-part vocal harmonies backing Erik’s vocals confirmed that more than anything. Sound-wise, too, H.E.A.T. settled nicely into the room. We listened to them from farther back, and the sound quality during their set was solid.
Voodoo Circle are really a crew of seasoned German rock (and metal) musicians with English singer David Readman on vocals. He’s more or less a naturalized German anyway, since he’s been at home with German hard rockers Pink Cream 69 since the mid-nineties. Voodoo Circle grew out of a concept project by guitarist Alex Beyrodt into a band that has by now put out three studio albums. Besides Beyrodt, whose guitar technique recalls his own obsessions with the playing of Y.J. Malmsteen and R. Blackmore, and the aforementioned vocalist David Readman, the lineup is filled out by a true legend of the German rock and metal scene, bassist Matt Sinner (Sinner, Primal Fear), keyboardist Jimmy Kresic and drummer Markus Kullmann, who joined the band in 2010 after it became clear that original drummer Mel Gaynor (otherwise the Simple Minds drummer) couldn’t fit one more commitment into his packed schedule. On stage the band presented their freshly released album “More Than One Way Home” (2013). You can’t fault the performance. Only the fact that Voodoo Circle were the “black sheep” of the festival lineup, the “filler” in the timetable. Nobody would have missed them if they hadn’t been on the bill. The German organizer could have put their own Bonfire on the stage instead. Swiss Krokus or Danish Pretty Maids would have been handier too, if Gotthard simply got too expensive. Simply because Voodoo Circle remind you too much of Whitesnake one moment and Rainbow the next, and where those two come close together, Deep Purple isn’t far off either, even though Voodoo Circle play very nicely. David Readman is phenomenal in general. Songs like Graveyard City and King Of Your Dreams, among others, were played with confidence and conviction, but there are far too many stylistic quips calling out the genericness of already established standards, which keeps Voodoo Circle in the shadow of older bands. Still, it’s an outstanding combination of top-notch musicians, which was confirmed by a few escapades of trading solos back and forth between keyboardist Jimmy Kresic (who also brought to mind aces like Derek Sherinian) and the “baroquely ornamented” guitar master Alex Beyrodt. There were sound problems, and Beyrodt got the worst of it. In 40 minutes he showed off an enviable collection of guitar beauties, which he evidently had to keep swapping in his hands. Like I said: solid, but instantly forgettable.
The first of the festival’s real attractions, the ones that started drawing visitors in somewhat bigger numbers in front of the stage, was the American hard rockers Black Star Riders. Their name surely means nothing concrete to a layperson who doesn’t regularly follow the classic rock scene. In truth, though, it’s a cunning and well-thought-out name for a band that, until recently, was appearing on concert stages under the legendary name Thin Lizzy. Their commander is now the properly gray but still agile Scott Gorham, longtime Thin Lizzy guitarist and member of the classic lineup of this originally Irish band, which was written into legend above all by the unforgettable, sadly long-departed singer and bassist Phil Lynott.
After Lynott’s death, Gorham, with the help of former singer and guitarist John Sykes, kept Thin Lizzy alive as a live attraction for a long time from 1996 on, but most of the longtime fans could never come to terms with this “sacrilege.” Thin Lizzy without Phil Lynott are, just like Queen without Freddie or, God forbid, Motörhead without Lemmy, a band without a soul. Gorham of course thought differently and was convinced that Phil would look approvingly on keeping the memory of his famous legacy alive on stage. And many who hadn’t even been born at the time of their greatest successes got the chance to hear some of the best classics from the story of this legendary Irish outfit live for the first time, which gave Gorham’s band at least some legitimacy.
A somewhat bigger problem came after Sykes left, when Gorham suddenly wanted to create new music that would sound at least roughly the way Thin Lizzy sounded with Lynott in the golden days. For that purpose he “drummed up” some old Thin Lizzy buddies, of whom in the end only longtime touring bassist Marco Mendoza remained, since original Lizzy drummer Brian Downey and former keyboardist Darren Wharton both turned down further collaboration for various reasons. Around then the band, which took the name Black Star Riders after the gang of outcasts of the same name in the movie Tombstone, was rounded out by singer and occasional guitarist Ricky Warwick, who took on the toughest job of stepping into Lynott’s vocal shoes, guitarist Damon Johnson, who joined Gorham in weaving the famous dual guitar and vocal harmonies, and drummer Jimmy DeGrasso. In this lineup Black Star Riders recorded their debut “All Hell Breaks Loose” this year, which strongly recalls the classic Thin Lizzy in style and from which they played most of their set.
The guys, of various age groups and looking a lot like drifters from the American Midwest (except for the charismatic Gorham, who in his old age is the only real gentleman among them), opened their show with the title track of the new album, which with its energy and quickly likable chorus warmed the crowd up fast. But as expected, real excitement took over the hall when the indispensable Thin Lizzy classics came up, like “Jailbreak,” “Massacre,” “Cowboy Song,” “Suicide” and “Emerald.” The guitar partnership between Gorham and Johnson ran like a well-oiled machine, while Warwick fit convincingly enough into Lynott’s vocal shoes, so that genuine Thin Lizzy magic took over several times. The peak of the Black Star Riders show, as expected, was the excellent rendition of the biggest Thin Lizzy hit, “The Boys Are Back In Town.” On this more-or-less melodic rock evening, Black Star Riders were definitely the heaviest and sonically dirtiest band, and it has to be admitted that they bowed to Lynott’s memory surprisingly successfully and put on a very dignified show.
After the excellent Black Star Riders, the stage was taken by one of the most important Scandinavian representatives of eighties hard rock, Europe. However much Europe have been chasing after themselves sonically and stylistically with new albums since their reactivation at the start of the millennium (in a deliberate experiment), the latest, “Bag Of Bones,” counts among their four new-millennium albums as a kind of return of Europe to the language of rock roots, one not even known to their studio debut “Europe.” Does it even make sense to compare two stylistically separate eras of this otherwise highly respected, influential but often overlooked band? “Bag Of Bones” is the album that put the band back on the UK best-seller charts after more than twenty years. Incidentally, an album that, thanks to its bluesy “heaviness,” surely appeals to Europe’s big comrade and their employer in the mid-nineties, Mr. Glenn Hughes.
As for the Europe show, the stage becomes one man. Joey Tempest. It would be hard to find a more ideal textbook example of a polished stage performance than the stage presence, stature and voice of Joey Tempest. He’s a stage actor who has honed the craft that the charisma of every band’s frontman demands, optimized down to the last detail. Moves, communication, flirting, firing people up. Brilliant. Everything works flawlessly as Tempest strolls across the stage, twirling the mic stand in his hands…. The rest of the guys hold themselves back, with the exception of bassist John Levén. Even if they come across as reserved, they do their job with great dedication. Scandinavian perfectionism, what can you do. A full-blooded show in just under an hour. Europe were also the first to be able to use the “upper floor” of the stage lighting, meaning the rows of spotlights mounted higher on the stage rig. They also drew by far the most people in front of the stage up to that point in the festival. The crowd enjoyed their biggest hits, among which the evergreen Cherokee, somewhat surprisingly, dropped out.
With Europe, though, there’s an interesting phenomenon. It can be a modern-day curse for them, or a salvation. Depends on which angle you look at it from. As mentioned, Europe have two creative eras. The historic one, which engraved their name in big golden letters on the facade of rock, and the other, stylistically different one, when Europe changed their approach to arranging. So the contrasts in mood across the repertoire are stark. A typical example came up during the show after Europe had been carrying the audience high on their hands. In a row came the ultimate ballad Carrie, as a surprise the historic Seven Doors Hotel, and the hot-blooded hit Rock the Night. This was followed by Norum’s instrumental intro to the newer Last Look At Eden. It was like cutting through one world and drawing another. The guitar sound deliberately muffled, greasy, distorted as much as possible. Instantly. Not by accident. On purpose. On Norum’s orders to the techs at the mixing desk. In line with the band’s new studio cosmetics, which have prevailed in the new millennium. The injected “harshness” felt eerie to the uninitiated! And let’s be honest. It is eerie. In every respect. Regardless of Norum’s sacred conviction that it’s great, it’s actually not okay. So Last Look At Eden gave the atmosphere a completely different dimension, almost the dimension of another band. The new songs simply can’t measure up to the old ones. Their arrangements are just weaker. The closing part of the show confirmed it, when the band, as expected, followed Last Look At Eden with The Final Countdown, one of the best hard rock standards of the entire rock era. Bottom line. This band is digging in even in 2013 with extraordinary infectiousness, drive and stage character. Tempest remains a big stage magnet, even though the highest vocal registers haven’t obeyed him for a long time. Europe are seasoned, experienced hard rock gurus who simply can’t leave a concertgoer disappointed or indifferent. The HiRock festival show at least confirmed that. Apparently, though, they can “bury” a set list too, if it happens to have too many new songs in it. This time the set list was nicely “weighed down.”
Just before the troop of “white snakes” marched onto the stage, led by their increasingly furrowed but still shamelessly untamable vocal charmer David Coverdale, the hall had already filled up noticeably, in anticipation of the first of the evening’s two main attractions. Whitesnake were announced as the headliners of the first day of the festival, but at the last minute they swapped places in the running order with Journey, which made happy everyone who had come to the festival mainly to live out their melodic rock concert dreams. Cult hard rockers, which Whitesnake still are despite numerous lineup shuffles, naturally have hordes of faithful live fans who aren’t bothered at all by the fact that Coverdale’s voice is already pretty badly damaged. That could be heard clearly again right from the start of the opening evergreen “Give Me All Your Love.” Many were glad to hear that one again after a long time on the list of performances. The legendary singer fairly successfully compensated for the awkward fact that his voice is long past what it once was, with the help of backing vocals from his two longtime guitarists, Doug Aldrich and Reb Beach, who later in the evening delighted fans of guitar virtuosity above all with numerous improvised duets.
The rest of the vocal help, especially on the choruses, came from the loyal crowd, who knew all the lyrics by heart. Granddad David, even past sixty, remains a charismatic patron of a special kind, which means that despite the unbuttoned Italian shirts and narcissistic-adolescent gestures, including flirting with members of the gentler sex and grabbing at his crotch, he hasn’t yet become a complete caricature of himself, the way it happened to many of his musical peers. His voice, despite the damage, which at its worst resembles guttural choking, is still recognizable and authoritative enough that the longtime classics, with the help of his outstanding instrumental comrades (the one who impressed the most that evening by far was the drumming “animal,” returnee Tommy Aldridge), come off decently and listenably, but not much more than that.
Aldridge himself, with his astounding solo spot during “Steal Your Heart Away,” which, as usual, ended with him pounding the drum kit with his bare hands, earned by far the loudest applause from the crowd. The reaction to his performance drowned out even all the renditions of beloved Whitesnake classics. Aldrich’s and Beach’s guitar antics were diligently complemented with keyboard lines by Brian Ruedy, while young bassist Michael Devin has evidently become Coverdale’s newest favorite, since at the first opportunity he tugged him by his bushy beard and invited the young female visitors to a special baptism that Devin would perform in the bathtub backstage.
Of the newer material, meaning stuff released in the last few years, they luckily played better efforts than, say, the very solid “Love Will Set You Free” and “Forevermore,” while they caused considerable surprise with a more-than-welcome performance of the “Slide It In” classic “Gambler.” With it, Coverdale drew attention to two departed friends who played on the album “Slide It In”: guitarist Mel Galley and drummer Cozy Powell. Of course he couldn’t forget the creative force behind early Whitesnake either, keyboardist Jon Lord. We older ones had properly moist eyes. As expected, the crowd got most fired up during the big hits like “Is This Love,” “Fool For Your Loving” and “Here I Go Again,” even though most of the choruses had to be sung in place of the vocally thoroughly worn-out Mr. Coverdale. To close, Whitesnake, as expected, played their “heavy metal peak,” “Still Of The Night,” where David, as expected, got plenty of generous vocal help from his comrades and the crowd, especially on the choruses. After a thunderous round of applause and the taped, traditional farewell tune “We Wish You Well,” Coverdale’s crew left the stage and made room for the main attraction of the first (and sadly only) day of this festival. The “white snakes” show could be rated as satisfactory and more or less in line with expectations.
The show by melodic rock champions Journey could be summed up with the popular ancient Roman saying: veni, vidi, vici. Nothing less than sonic perfection and a complete realization of AOR greatness in every possible shade could be expected from them. Their faithful followers are used to the greatest possible melodic rock pampering, where they have few rivals. Ever since the album “Revelation” (2008), when Filipino singer Arnel Pineda joined them, Journey have been going through a real renaissance. The charismatic Steve Perry was one of a kind and his successor is very well aware of that, but Arnel’s vocal approach is still a very good approximation and as such the best possible replacement for Perry. The American AOR heroes opened their show in the best possible way, with the epic classic “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart).” That was followed by a series of their biggest hits like “Any Way You Want It,” “Only The Young,” “Stone In Love,” “Lights” and “Open Arms.” A very nice change of pace was the rendition of the title track from the legendary album “Escape” (1981), as well as “Keep On Runnin'” with drummer Deen Castronovo as lead singer.
The individual members, especially guitar virtuoso Neal Schon and keyboardist/guitarist Jonathan Cain, who repeatedly called their sound techs’ attention to doing something about it, are incorrigible sonic perfectionists, which is kind of right in its own way. Pineda introduced Schon’s guitar solo as “our new song,” and there were quite a few similar humorous bits during the show. Schon, in the style of his former boss Carlos Santana, wore sunglasses through most of the show, which didn’t stop him from playing some breathtaking guitar improvisations at almost the speed of light. Bassist Ross Valory, the only original member besides Schon, meanwhile provided exceptional rhythmic stability the whole time with his dynamic bass lines and calm.
The engine of the band, though, was ‘the little man with the big voice,’ Pineda, who besides superbly singing the evergreens and newer material, diligently made sure with his vocal and other acrobatics that the crowd didn’t nod off for even a moment. In general, the members of Journey gave off extremely positive vibes the whole time, so the atmosphere in the hall was positively electrified for the entire show. You could feel it especially during the nearly flawless renditions of “Wheel In the Sky” and “Be Good To Yourself,” where the crowd breathed as one with the band while singing both AOR hymns.
During the love ballad “Faithfully,” two funny, almost bizarre incidents happened in the front rows. First a young guy, who had probably “fallen into” the song a bit too much, since he was far from looking like some kind of maniac, started hugging a playful, unsuspecting young woman in front of him. She angrily pushed him away and scolded him, after which he left her alone for the rest of the show. An even more tragicomic scene played out a bit further to the right, when a gray-haired man of mature years started coming on to a woman his age standing next to him. She shoved him away furiously, and he fled in fear to the far back rows. Apparently the lyrics of “Faithfully” fell on fertile ground, in case both of these women already had their real but “hidden” partners, who weren’t among the festival attendees. For the grand finale, Journey, as expected, played their biggest hit “Don’t Stop Believin’,” one of those hits played often on the radio that never come off stale even after more than three decades. They spiced it up with a bunch of instrumental improvisations before leaving the stage to the huge applause of the crowd. In every respect, Journey were the undisputed winners of the first and sadly only day of the festival.
After the Journey show, the first day of the festival wrapped up. Not knowing that, together with the Journey set, the Hi-Rock festival had actually ended too, we fought our way through the downpour to the car, which called for almost a full application of Einstein’s theory of relativity and MacGyver’s wilderness survival stunts. It was eerie.
But the eeriness escalated into the dimensions of a watery apocalypse. Good morning, new day! A wet morning. Apparently the campsite where we had wanted to spend the night, utopian as that was, has long been entirely underwater. The downpour is even stronger. A real evacuation follows. The access road to the apartment, along the pedestrian walkways, is already lined with sandbags to keep water from spilling off the road onto the private properties of the surrounding homes. The roads are slowly turning into drainage channels. Still, at half past two in the afternoon we’re at the venue for the festival’s second day. At three, FM should have been on stage. Instead, local band Hurricans start entertaining (as much as there’s any room left for entertainment) a handful of people in the middle of the gigantic Max Aicher Arena, and before that an organizer’s informant warned us that the course of the festival day was unpredictable and that he couldn’t confirm exactly how and when the bands would play. Things were supposed to get a clear outcome around four o’clock. Even though there was a “Nightliner” parked outside (where the hell are all the big rigs?), which had evidently managed to make it from northern Loreley to Inzell, and even though the festival’s official merchandise served up Toto souvenirs, the mood was anything but approving. And indeed. Around half past four in the afternoon, the festival’s official program director stepped onto the stage and announced that the festival was over because of the catastrophic proportions brought on by the flood.
EPILOG:
The core of the downpours was concentrated right over southern Bavaria. The access road via Bad Reichenhall to the Salzburg – Munich motorway was shut right away, and you couldn’t continue via Lofer toward Innsbruck either. Only one saving straw was left: back to Inzell and north to the junction near Traunstein. It worked. We’re on the motorway heading for Salzburg. Across from us stands an unmoving column of traffic heading for Munich. Lake Chiemsee has flooded the motorway. Luckily Inzell is located well south of the lake. So we were able to slip out of getting trapped. Germany declared a state of emergency over the natural disaster, which later, with the swollen Danube (and Vltava), also hit Austria in the Vienna area, the Czech Republic and then Slovakia.
You drive along the roads and watch rescuers entering homes and leading entire families to safety. The evacuation was already in full swing. It was also no miracle if you had to steer around some fallen tree lying across a local road, drive through “lake-ified stretches” of road, and cross patches of sand laid down that the raging flood had carried along. The view, not exactly pleasant, painted the faces of wild rivers and streams that threateningly swallowed up the land in front of them. The riverbeds became too small, and the water began to spill over. Laws of nature! It came for what we took from it. Its own space. And developed Western European civilization has masterfully scored another own goal.
So Hi-Rock turned out to be an ill-fated project. Basically, there weren’t many visitors even on the first day. The hall wasn’t even fully open. The stage was set up in the middle and half the hall went unused. At most a good 4,000 people were in it, which handed the organizer a hefty loss right from the start. The next day there weren’t even 500 people in the hall. So most of the first day’s visitors had already scattered home, anticipating the forecast cataclysm. Now will come the visitors’ demands for refunds, on top of all the money put into not-cheap performers and all the other logistics. Probably there won’t be another HiRock festival. At least not in Inzell. We missed Toto, who had prepared a top-notch set list. But even if we missed Toto this time, the bigger loss is that we were deprived of the performances by FM, Survivor and Rick Springfield. On European stages those are real musical “exotics.” We’ll have to catch them some other time. And those opportunities will surely be very few in the future.
text: Peter Podbrežnik & Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Mitja Groznik & Jernej Vene
Setlists:
JOURNEY:
1. Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)
2. Any Way You Want It
3. Chain Reaction
4. Only the Young
5. Stone in Love
6. Keep on Runnin’ (drummer Dean Castronovo on vocals)
7. Edge of the Blade
8. Lights
9. keyboard solo – Jonathan Cain
10. Open Arms
11. Escape
12. Dead or Alive
13. guitar solo – Neal Schon (Pineda introduces the piece as “our new song”)
14. Wheel in the Sky
15. Faithfully
16. Be Good to Yourself
17. Don’t Stop Believin’
WHITESNAKE;
taped intro: My Generation (The Who song)
1. Give Me All Your Love
2. Ready an’ Willing
3. Can You Hear the Wind Blow
4. Don’t Break My Heart Again
5. Is This Love
6. Gambler
7. Love Will Set You Free
8. Pistols at Dawn
9. Guitar Duel (Doug Aldrich & Reb Beach)
10 Steal Your Heart Away (plus drum solo by Tommy Aldridge)
11. Forevermore
12. Best Years / Bad Boys
13. Fool for Your Loving
14. Here I Go Again
15. Still of the Night
taped outro: We Wish You Well
EUROPE:
1. Riches to Rags
2. Firebox
3. Not Supposed to Sing the Blues
4. Scream of Anger
6. Superstitious
6. Love Is Not the Enemy
7. Carrie
8- Seven Doors Hotel
9. Rock the Night
10. Prelude
11. Last Look at Eden
12. The Final Countdown
BLACK STAR RIDERS:
1. All Hell Breaks Loose
2. Jailbreak
3. Bloodshot
4. Waiting For An Alibi
5. Hey Judas
6. Massacre
7. Kingdom Of The Lost
8. Kissin’ The Ground
9. Suicide
10. Valley Of The Stones
11. Before The War
12. Emerald
13. Bound For Glory
14. Cowboy Song
15. The Boys Are Back In Town
H.E.A.T.:
1. Breaking the Silence
2. Better Off Alone
3. 1000 Miles
4. Late Night Lady
5. Straight For Your Heart
6. Beg Beg Beg
7. Downtown
8. Falling Down
9. Heartbreaker
10. Danger Road
11. Living on the Run
12. It’s All About Tonight
