Written by Jim Bille

The mega concert known as Desert Trip finished up its second weekend with repeat performances by some of the most iconic acts in rock history. Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, The Who and Roger Waters all took part in this historic event and delivered what is probably a once in a lifetime one off spectacle that will not likely be equaled regardless of who might gather for this event next time. That is if there will be a next time.

The Empire Polo Club grounds in Indio CA, home of the annual Coechella event, was the site where over 70,000 plus fans gathered each day for three days of music. Not only was the music epic but the food offerings, displays and other venue attractions all contributed to the weekends eclectic activities.

One exceptional attraction was called The Desert Photography Experience, a 36,000 square foot photography exhibit that featured photos of all six bands through the years. Contributing photographers for the exhibit included Michael Cooper, Henry Diltz and Lynn Goldsmith to name a few. Many of the works displayed were familiar to fans since much of the show included original album cover work that graced many of the artist’s most famous albums. Other points of interest around the venue included gourmet food vendors and giant album covers from each performer / band where fans, including myself, would pose for pictures.

All of these extras were great but the real reason folks showed up would take place over the next three evenings.

Friday night’s show started off with Bob Dylan and his band. Dylan who has been on his “Never Ending Tour” for years now, played a number of his hits albeit sometimes with slightly re-arranged tempos. Even re-arranged Dylan songs were still Dylan songs and for the most part the audience didn’t seem affected by the Nobel laureate’s change of musical pace.

Dylan’s set list included some classic gems like “Rainy Day Women #12 & 35”, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”, “Highway 61 Revisited”,”Simple Twist of Fate”, “Tangled up in Blue” and “Desolation Row”. My personal favorites had to be “Hi Water (For Charley Patton)” and “Ballad of a Thin Man from Dylan’s 1965 release Highway 61 Revisited. The obvious crowd favorite was saved for the encore when Dylan featured his classic “Like a Rolling Stone”.

The first night’s party was ratcheted up a few notches when The Rolling Stones took the stage. I’ve seen the Stones a number of times now and they seem to get better every time. Mick Jagger appears to be unstoppable at this point in his 50 plus year career as he still cavorts and skips around the stage like a 20 year old and Keith Richards is still twisting and bending the guitar strings as only he can do. Along with the ever stoic and serious Charlie Watts maintaining the automatic drum backbeat and Ronnie Wood adding his raunchy guitar touch, The Rolling Stones are still on top of the Rock and Roll heap.

Kicking off with the red hot “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”, the Stones immediately got the crowd’s attention and didn’t lose it for close to two hours.

The set was similar to ones I’ve seen from them in recent years and covers just about every angle and decade since the band has been in existence. From “Get off of My Cloud” to the soon to be released “Just Your Fool” the show featured something for every fan.

The set did feature a few numbers that I never heard performed live which included “Angie” and Keith Richard’s obligatory two song spot featuring one cool version of “You Got the Silver” that had Ronnie Wood flashing some incredible slide work on acoustic guitar. The other Richards number was “Little T&A” from the Stones 1981 release Tattoo You.

Other Stone’s classics performed included “Sweet Virginia”, “Live With Me”, “Paint it Black”,” Midnight Rambler” and “Sympathy for the Devil” to name a few.

Encore numbers featured this evening were “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”. This show was yet another great performance by the best of the best.

Neil Young has always been unpredictable so although I was familiar with his latest endeavors that feature a top notch band, The Promise of Real, I still wasn’t going to try and guess which Neil would show up for the first set of the evening for day two of Desert Trip. I’ve seen Young go country in the 1980’s with The International Harvester’s and go full frontal guitar assault with Crazy Horse so whatever he was going to bring would be or could be a surprise either way.

After walking on stage unannounced, Young sat down at a beaten up piano and started the set with the title song of one of his most well known albums ”After the Gold Rush”. Young continued to go solo for the next few songs which included pristine versions of some classic Neil Young standards such as “Heart of Gold”, “Old Man”, and ‘Long May You Run” a song dedicated to his first car. His last solo effort was “Out on the Weekend” from his 1972 release Harvest.

Fronted by Lucas Nelson, The Promise of Real eventually joined Young on stage for the balance of the performance. The first number featuring the full band was “Comes a Time” from Young’s 1978 release of the same name.

More Young standards would follow accompanied by the band including “Alabama”, “Harvest Moon”, and the uber classic “Helpless”, originally performed by CSN&Y. It was around this time that Young decided to crank it up a bit and presented the crowd with some classic blistering guitar work on versions of “Words (Between the Lines of Age)”’, “Powderfinger”, and a good twenty plus minute jam based version of “Cow Girl in the Sand”.

Songs from Neil Young’s soon to be released album called Peace Trail were sprinkled throughout the show and from what I heard this will be another Neil Young musical diversion. With songs like “Terrorist Suicide Hang Gliders”, “Show Me”, “Peace Trail” and “Texas Rangers” the audience got a good sampling of great things to come. Young capped off the show with his rock anthem “Rockin’ in the Free World” which was a perfect ending for what I considered to be one of the best shows of the week end.

Also worth mentioning was Young’s mid show interaction with the audience when he put his guitar down to address the crowd. He was going on about how ridiculous a California law was in regards to distributing organic seeds across the states county lines. In protest, Young, holding a giant picnic basket filled with small bags of seeds, started throwing them into the crowd and told them to take them home and plant them. Young mentioned that he might be breaking some sort of law but really didn’t seem to care. Kinda’ crazy but I guess he was making a good point for the organic farmers out there.

Sir Paul was up next with his long time band and was, as always, full of energy which he would need to cover his massive set list of thirty-nine classic Beatles, Wings and solo songs, as an extra deep cut he even threw in one from The Quarrymen days.

For those of us who were not fortunate enough to attend a Beatles concert a McCartney show is the next best thing. As usual McCartney loaded up the performance with standards like “A Hard Day’s Night”, “Got to Get You Into My Life”, “Day Tripper” and more.

As an extra bonus McCartney was joined on stage by Rihanna for a duet of “Four Five Seconds”, a song originally recorded with Kanye West as well. But the real treat was when Neil Young joined along for “A Day in the Life”, “Give Peace a Chance” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” which was performed a week earlier for the first time live. Neil Young stole this particular song as he would venture off into Crazy Horse type guitar smashing sounds throughout the number.

McCartney really seemed to enjoy himself on stage as he would engage the crowd with old stories and anecdotes from his long and winding career. One story was about playing ukuleles with George Harrison which segued into Harrison’s Beatle classic “Something” featuring McCartney on ukulele for the first few verses. Other ‘I can’t believe what I just heard’ songs from McCartney included “Jet”, “Live and Let Die”, “We Can Work It Out”, “Band on the Run” and the ubiquitous “Let It Be”, and way too many more hits to list.

This was another excellent performance by one of the original four masters of Rock and Roll, The Beatles.

The Who, (Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry) concluded their “Who Hits 50” tour on day three of Desert Trip with a bang as the band covered everything from 1964 onward. This was my first time seeing the Who so my anticipation was pretty high. After the first guitar cord was struck by Townsend and the band kicked into “I Can’t Explain” I knew the crowd was about to be treated to something special.

Daltry and Townsend do not appear to have skipped a beat since the inception of The Who and to see these two perform on stage with an incredible band that included Pete’s brother Simon on guitar and Zak Starkey on drums was monumental. Starkey’s drumming was to say the least an amazing tribute to Keith Moon as was Pino Palladino’s bass work was to John Entwistle’s original work.

Every era of The Who’s catalogue was covered during the set and there wasn’t much left to ask for since they managed to squeeze in 50 years of their best hits in about two hours.

From “The Kids Are Alright” to “Eminence Front” the band covered most the bases. “Behind Blue Eyes” was especially noteworthy as Townsend and Daltry hit the song note for note which included some exceptional vocals by Daltry.

Roger Daltry has received some iffy remarks over the past few years regarding his pipes and hitting the high notes but on this night he was spot on. Considering the constant desert dust blowing through most of the week end it was surprising that any of the performers made it through their sets with out a cough or two.

Townsend leading the band with his wind milling guitar strumming was especially animated. To describe his performance as high energy would be an understatement. On target vocals and guitar work made for one amazing performance by this original rock and roll hooligan.

Other Who numbers featured included “The Seeker”, “I Can See for Miles”, “My Generation”, You Better You Bet” and “Pinball Wizard” to name a handful. The band closed out the show with “Won’t Get Fooled Again” with Daltry again excelling on vocals.

The Who not only exceeded my expectations but I’m pretty sure everyone else’s this evening as they gave what I would call an epic performance.

Roger Waters was last but by no means least on the weekends bill and it was evident that there was a large Pink Floyd contingent on hand for the event. A Roger Water’s show is always a mix of stunning visual effects and stage productions as well as the sounds of Pink Floyd. The surround sound set up for Waters this week end was an amazing audio adventure as you almost felt enveloped inside the music as different sounds would come at you from all directions at times.

Opening the show with ‘Speak to Me / Breathe” Waters began his guided musical tour of almost everything Pink Floyd and basically held the audience spell bound for the next two hours.

As with the other acts on the show Water’s covered just about every Pink Floyd era there is. From obscure tunes that originally featured Sid Barrett like “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” from Pink Floyd’s 1968 release A Saucer Full of Secrets, to more familiar work like “Another Brick in The Wall”. My personal favorite song of the evening, “Fearless” came from my favorite Pink Floyd album, Meddle, which was also an earlier release by the band.

Water’s also featured many selections from Pink Floyd’s epic recording Dark Side of the Moon that included “Money”, “The Great Gig in the Sky”, “Time”, “Us and Them” and the aforementioned “Breathe”. It was obvious that these were the songs most anticipated since these numbers received the greatest ovations from the fans.

Of special note, backing vocals by Lucious singers Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig were superlative as the duo hit on all notes supporting Water’s meticulously crafted melodies.

This show was no doubt the most visually entertaining production any one could ask for. Along with an otherworldly sound system and of course the music of Pink Floyd you owe it to yourself to go see Roger Waters when he comes to your town. He may just be doing that next year as he has recently announced a North American tour in 2017.

Now that Desert Trip has ended, and by all accounts deemed a success, it will be interesting to see if Goldenvoice can pull this off again in 2017. It may be difficult to duplicate a line-up like this for a single event again but I’m sure there are plenty of acts that would jump at the chance to be part of a Desert Trip II if given the opportunity.

I would start making plans to attend now just in case. Hotels are not easy to find and tickets will sell out fairly quick.