ANZ Stadium, Sydney
Saturday, 20th of April and Sunday, 21st of April, 2013
The heavens opened up and decided to make an outdoor festival a challenge as The Superjesus played to a sparse crowd as did Richie Ramone and company for their very early support slot. For an arena split in half or more with staging cutting across the field and looking to be somewhat undersold, The Living End reliably added energy with their festival prowess whilst Noiseworks gave the older set some familiar tunes to get their heads bobbing as the sun decided to make an appearance. As the weather cleared, Kings of Chaos delivered something of an all star covers band setlist with Guns N’ Roses rhythm section backing a mash up of hits relevant to the three revolving vocalists of Glenn Hughes, Sebastian Bach and Joe Elliott. ‘Paradise City’ ended their set with lead guitar duties by Steve Stevens taking the performances to a stellar level. Great stuff.
Avoiding the horrendous over priced, mid strength beer on sale, hiding in the upper realms of the venue section allowed some respite from Jimmy Barnes’ onslaught of visuals with big rigs, butchered old film clips and utes. The performances were well oiled and competent but ‘Khe Sanh’ and ‘Flame Trees’ has more gravity when he sings it in Chisel. Still, the staging was markedly improved and the overall show was tight.
Next up, Aerosmith were shoehorned from their Sydney show into this festival and it has to be said that things improved dramatically when the toxic twins of Joe Perry and Steve Tyler wandered out onto the stage without fanfare. Their ninety minute performance was sensational regardless of the ballad heavy setlist. Guitar trade-offs between Brad Whitford and Joe on ‘Love In An Elevator’ was a highlight as was witnessing Steve’s raspy yet still intact voice nailing high notes on ‘What It Takes’. They could play for hours but crammed in ‘Walk This Way’, ‘Last Child’, Joe playing upright pedal steel during ‘Rag Doll’, a cover of The Beatles classic ‘Come Together’ and ‘Dude Looks Like A Lady’, Guitars included Strats, Teles, hot graphics Gretsches, Les Pauls and other vintage beauties. Ending with ‘Dream On’ followed by Tom Hamilton on bass introducing the classic rock of ‘Sweet Emotion’, this performance was a close runner to their only previous tour here in 1990. It was possibly better.
Almost an hour late and having to follow Aerosmith, Van Halen’s individual golf carts finally screamed across the field. Appearing in matching black pants, black vests and white collared shirts, at least Edward Van Halen had a pair of sneakers on. The stage bellowed overkill with five twin stacks of EVH 5150 amplifiers on Ed’s side of stage whilst Ed’s son Wolfgang on bass guitar, played behind an equally towering wall of amps. Drummer Alex Van Halen was perched in front of a huge gong amongst a monstrous double bass kit whilst the ubiquitous David Lee Roth [aka DLR] bounced around the stage largely keeping to pre-constructed flooring to allow his world of dance moves to unfold. His fluorescent mic stand and over confidence could not mask the fact that the sound mix was not quite right no doubt causing some onstage friction that the massive video screens hinted at sometimes. Still, this was Eddie and Dave in Australia for the first time as opposed to the ill fated yet talented Gary Cherone fronted version of Van Halen seen here in 1998. That tour also had Michael Anthony on bass.
To start off, Eddie offloaded tapping runs and whammy dives to open with a powering version of ‘Unchained’ followed by ‘Running With The Devil’ and new track ‘She’s The Woman’. The flanged riff of ‘Romeo Delight’ rolled into ‘New Tattoo’ with a guitar solo chock full of EVH style. Delving into the old material, ‘Everybody Wants Some!’, ‘Somebody Get Me A Doctor’, ‘Beautiful Girls’, Kinks cover ‘You Really Got Me’ and the show highlight of ‘Hot For Teacher’ put the poppier songs out to pasture. Sadly, the overpowering bass mix made the guitar riff in ‘Panama’ and the solo in the set closer of ‘Jump’ a little muffled. Yet, Eddie’s solo spot near the end was a phenomenal guitar piece as he sat on the staging steps to unleash tapping sections of ‘Good Enough’, ‘Spanish Fly’ and ‘Eruption’, adding athletic fast alternate picking and tapped harmonics. The volume swells and delay pedal mastery of ‘Cathedral’ was a guitar lesson in itself. Eddie live is something special but DLR just did not have the chemistry going that Aerosmith had on the night.
Day two dawned and it was a very different crowd. The floor section was now seated and the acts were far less likely to upstage headliner Billy Joel. A last minute exclusion by Lifehouse meant the schedule changed but many witnessed Shannon Noll and Mark Seymour. Arriving after that, this reviewer caught Diesel as he ripped through a set that included some Injectors songs and solo material with some great funky soloing. Guy Sebastian followed but seemed out of place however with his huge band, he is very good at what he does and sings with heart. As a good performer, he entertained the crowd well.
Icehouse gave an almost brilliant performance with well executed embellishments of classics and used band members to rotate vocal duties whilst staying anchored with Iva Davies’ band leader abilities shining through.
Nostalgia then hit overdrive as Billy Joel delivered a well honed and highly professional set with song after song of hits that spanned decades. His tongue-in-check humour and witty banter about his place in the festival was succinct yet comic and his band bolstered his considerable skills as a consummate live performer. The show is out of scope here given his brilliance is vocal and piano based but to cap off the festival which looked like being shaky due to all sorts of variables made everything pan out quite nicely. Not trying to be cool makes him cool.