Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Urban Bolta
Location: Ottakringer Arena / Wiesen / Austria
Concert date: 07.07.2012
Attendance: 10,000
Ticket price: 54€
July rolled around again, and with it came the annual edition of Lovely Days, an event that gathers thousands of old-school rock fans under one roof. These days the whole region is teeming with all sorts of mass festivals dedicated to the more modern faces of rock and related genres, but Lovely Days remains one of those rare festivals where you can spot plenty of gray-haired rock fans reliving their younger years, alongside younger faces just getting acquainted with their parents’ music.
Lovely Days takes place every year in the village of Wiesen in the Austrian state of Burgenland, about 70 kilometers from Vienna. It’s a cozy, semi-covered location that takes in a good 10 thousand people. Half of the grounds sit under the roof of a huge tent, while the other half rises amphitheater-style above the first level, giving everyone in the back a great view of the stage and the sea of people below. The festival first took place in 2006, and to this day it has hosted a whole range of rock giants from days gone by and not-so-long-gone, to name just a few: Robert Plant, Gary Moore, Billy Idol, Jethro Tull, Uriah Heep, Neil Young, Deep Purple, Eric Burdon, Foreigner, Toto, Santana…
With seven acts on this year’s bill, things got going as early as around 1:30 in the afternoon, so the Rockline crew missed the opener, the NORBERT SCHNEIDER trio. The local musician, who weaves elements of blues, jazz and reggae into his sound, reportedly did a fine job and passed the baton to STAN WEBB’s CHICKEN SHACK. This is a long-serving band with British roots, gathered around mastermind, vocalist and guitarist Stan Webb. The man is deep in the waters of traditional blues and boogie, so basic instrumental moves are more than enough for him. Despite the limited room to maneuver, Webb and the crew occasionally picked up the pace and edged toward the sound of Texas blues and its immortal champion Stevie Ray Vaughan; an American take on the blues is hardly a novelty in Stan Webb’s career anyway. The frontman shone with a soulful vocal approach, and the honest smile on his face at the end of the set made it clear he was more than happy with the crowd’s reaction.
Next up should have been the legendary forefathers of sixties psychedelic rock, Iron Butterfly, but illness kept them off the stage, so at the last minute the organizers found an equally fitting replacement – TEN YEARS AFTER! A quick dive into music history shows that 1969 repeated itself out of the blue: Iron Butterfly were supposed to play the legendary Woodstock but got stuck at the airport, and the young blues upstarts Ten Years After took the stage of the most famous festival ever (though independently of Iron Butterfly’s predicament, mind you).
More than four decades later, Ten Years After are still kicking with full force, even with a new frontman at the helm! Just 35-year-old Joe Gooch has been filling Alvin Lee’s shoes for almost 10 years now, and he does his job damn well. Gooch is a technically gifted guitarist but extremely modest by nature, so he dodged the excess attention and the stage spotlights, automatically leaving the audience’s gaze to the always cheerful Leo Lyons on the left side of the stage. The gray-haired bassist with his distinctively groomed mustache danced around the stage in the style of the old rock’n’roll school and enjoyed every second of it. Ten Years After served up most of their hits, starting with 50,000 Miles Beneath My Brain and I’d Love to Change the World, and slipped in a few newer compositions too. With drummer Ric Lee and keyboardist Chick Churchill playing a bit on the subdued side, most of the instrumental load landed on young Gooch’s shoulders, and with his own take and excellent feel for blues-rock he steered the ship safely into port, with the help, of course, of the rugged swagger of the indestructible Leo Lyons! Ten Years After wrapped up the set with the little hit I’m Going Home and proved that a seemingly odd combination of young and old school can work wonders!
Next on stage was IAN ANDERSON, known to the wider rock crowd as the longtime frontman of folk / prog rock veterans Jethro Tull. Earlier this year Anderson released the controversial solo album »Thick As A Brick 2«, finally confirming the rumors that he and his longtime collaborator, Jethro Tull guitarist Martin Barre, had parted ways for an indefinite period. That was a real shock for all devotees of this legendary outfit, and Anderson carrying on his career without Barre is today the consolation prize, the closest thing to the best Jethro Tull – especially knowing that Tull bassist David Goodier and keyboardist John O’Hara play alongside him. After the album came out, Ian Anderson set off on an extensive world tour, and a stop at Lovely Days was part of it. Anderson kicked off the set with the first part of the Thick As A Brick composition, in which he briefly grabbed the flute and won a wave of delight with the very first blow. The long central instrumental section gave the backing musicians a chance to introduce themselves to the crowd, and the toughest job fell to German-born guitarist Florian Opahle, whose technical brilliance still couldn’t fill the gap left by Barre’s soulful touch on the guitar neck. The middle of the set was devoted to getting acquainted with Anderson’s latest record. Ian didn’t skimp on his trademark stage moves, the standout being playing the flute on one leg, and his humorous approach also showed in the cynical, sarcastic lyrics, which come alive even more authentically live than on the studio recordings. Ian Anderson is simply a man who bets big on interpretation itself! A juicy mix of Hammond organ, acoustic passages and the occasional flute entry created a real medieval ambience, and judging by the crowd’s reaction, the peak had to wait until the very end, when the troupe on stage tackled a Jethro Tull rendition of Locomotive Breath.
Next in the lineup of acts drawing from the rich legacy of the blues were GOV’T MULE, hugely popular in their native America. The band, with almost 20 years under its belt, wants to build its name among classic rock fans in Europe too, as their numerous tours across the Old Continent lately show. As part of the current tour they’ll play Pivo in cvetje in Laško in mid-July, and before that they (once again) showed up in Wiesen. Gov’t Mule were founded by two Allman Brothers Band companions, guitarist Warren Haynes and bassist Allen Woody, so it’s not hard to figure out that the band builds its identity on a foundation of blues, over which it lays Southern rock rhetoric. The band started expanding its output at a brisk pace in the second half of the nineties, when they filled in for the studio-inactive Allman Brothers, and so they’ve managed to win over most of the fan base of The Allman Brothers Band, which reached cult status in America long ago. From the opening track Blind Man In The Dark (»Dose«, 1998) on, Gov’t Mule with Haynes up front struck their trademark stance and took listeners into a world of endless instrumental passages and long jam sections, so much so that on first listen it was even hard to tell the individual compositions apart. Gov’t Mule practically don’t know breaks between songs or banter, since Haynes and company were completely focused on the free flow of pure musical magic, which pulled in the devotees of their idiom as if it were child’s play. But watch out! Their loose marathon compositions, into which guitarist Haynes and bassist Jorgen Carlsson wove their own musical ideas, can be tough to digest for non-fans of their language precisely because of their apparent long-windedness, which also showed in the smaller crowd under the stage compared to Anderson’s set before them. Before leaving the stage, Gov’t Mule hit us with one of their very first songs, Mule, and one last time that afternoon let the spirit of Southern blues out of the bottle!
Next on stage was LOU REED, the notorious musical artist with his own peculiar manners, who last shook up the music world last year, when he released the controversial album »Lulu« together with Metallica. Its content didn’t sit well with conservative metalheads, and Lou Reed even received death threats after the release. But his history reaches far beyond »Lulu« itself: in the sixties of the last century he played in the now-cult band The Velvet Underground, and after its breakup he carried on with a solo career, on which he earned a reputation as a notorious artist of a totally unique mold. Although the organizers advertised Lou Reed as a festival headliner, he took the stage before the evening’s closing act anyway. After a whole troupe of backing musicians had already spread out across the stage, Reed finally arrived and immediately struck with the uncharacteristically aggressive lines of Brandenburg Gate, the opening track of the album »Lulu«. Reed’s cold approach froze the crowd from the get-go, but you can’t expect populist tricks from him anyway. Next came the Velvet Underground classics Heroin, with a stretched-out middle section, and Waiting for the Man. Lou Reed remains a true interpreter – he laid his verses over a rich instrumental backdrop in free song form, with which the now 70-year-old musician cunningly hid his increasingly faltering vocal form too. On stage Reed was accompanied by a whole ensemble of multi-instrumentalists, who built him a proper orchestral harmony and opened up wide room to maneuver for the recognizable experimental bits. »Lulu« was further represented by The View and Mistress Dread, before the electrified atmosphere was calmed by the acoustic Walk on the Wild Side (»Transformer«, 1972). At moments an intimate musical confession, it could at times flip the mood into the harmonic kitsch of pure experimentation, so Lou Reed proved live, too, his reputation as a musician who can strongly attract crowds with unique creations while repelling them even more strongly – the autocrat among giants simply sticks to the recipe that brought him success long ago.
The last to take the stage were RAY MANZAREK and ROBBIE KRIEGER, founding members of the cult American band The Doors, who since 2002 have been reviving, in various lineups, the memory of the days when, alongside the late Jim Morrison, they made up one of the most popular bands of their time. Since the two musicians are authors or at least co-authors of most of The Doors’ material, this kind of reminiscing decades later is completely credible, and today it’s the only thing truly relevant when it comes to playing Doors songs live.
The musicians spread out across the stage and opened the set with Roadhouse Blues. 66-year-old guitarist Robbie Krieger, who hides even more wrinkles under his brow than Keith Richards himself, got huge ovations from the very first bars, and the crush in front of the stage said the same: the former Doors comrades were deserving headliners. Break On Through (to the Other Side) took us into the typically psychedelic waters of Californian rock from the second half of the sixties, with a slice of the pie going to keyboardist Manzarek’s magic fingers too. Between the two central figures stood Dave Brock, a vocalist capable of exceptional vocal acrobatics, but sadly with a (too) modest stage presence, not charismatic enough to fill the frontman spot of the 21st-century Doors – in that respect it would be better if Ian Astbury were still standing there, probably the closest thing to Jim Morrison on this planet. With every spontaneous step Krieger took in his direction, Brock took two to the side, all so as not to overshadow the guitarist’s ego, and that kind of timid behavior won’t exactly pad the long-haired singer’s résumé. The evergreen People Are Strange, the epic Riders on the Storm and the closing L.A. Women set off real explosions of enthusiasm and, together with the cool evening breeze, made for an unforgettable stroll through the treasure chest of Doors hits, and for the encore the Americans, as expected, conjured up Light My Fire, during which the crowd drowned out Brock and his troupe of backing vocalists. After Iron Butterfly’s cancellation, Krieger and Manzarek single-handedly raised the flag of psychedelic / blues rock high at the Lovely days festival and managed to convince even me that they’re not just two more fossils from some long-gone era.
The sixth edition of Lovely days festival is successfully in the books, and a few days later the countdown has already begun to the first weekend of July 2013, when a new »hippie gathering« is on the schedule.
A few photos of Gov’t Mule and Lou Reed were contributed by Mitja Groznik.
Setlists
GOV’T MULE:
1. Blind Man In The Dark
2. Broke Down on the Brazos
3. Bad Little Doggie
4. Game Face
5. Temporary Saint
6. Banks of the Deep End
7. Lola Leave Your Light On
8. Mother Earth
9. Thorazine Shuffle
10. Mule
RAY MANZAREK & ROBBIE KRIEGER:
1. Roadhouse Blues
2. Break On Through (to the Other Side)
3. Strange Days
4. When the Music’s Over
5. People Are Strange
6. Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)
7. Back Door Man
8. Riders on the Storm
9. Love Me Two Times
10. Spanish Caravan
11. L.A. Woman
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12. Light My Fire
Photo Gallery
