Stone Free Festival
London O2 Arena
The classic rock weekender returns to the capital for two days of blues, prog, metal and more.
There are few other festivals in the UK, a handful at most, where the following exchange might happen. “That’s my tattoo!” exclaims a man clearly unknown to the group of men to Classic Rock’s left that he’s fast approaching.
“Your T-shirt”, he says, pointing at a bemused gent in a baseball cap, who is sporting a shirt that has that classic Angel Witch logo (a seated Satan with a hefty bosom) on it. “That T-shirt,” he repeats, without drawing breath, “is my tattoo!”
And given that not one word of conversation has passed between him and his new-found friends, he proudly pulls back his sleeve to reveal a shoulder tattoo of something that must have resembled the Angel Witch logo once, but with time has come to look more like a food stain with horns. “Angel Witch,” he says. “Best live band I’ve ever seen.”
This remark is met with a quizzical look that finally gives him pause. “Or maybe Motörhead. They were the best live band I ever saw.”
And with that, he’s in. The conversation immediately opens up to best line-up, best tour, best support act (classic trio, Bomber and Saxon just edged it) and is, presumably, still being ruminated on in some dark pub corner somewhere.
Welcome to Stone Free 3, a celebration of heavy metal and hard rock across a balmy weekend in the bosom of London’s O2. There’s the gleaming white dome that’s home to the arena, Indigo; a smaller theatre-sized room; and this year, a small outdoor stage, courtesy of Orange amps, flanked by a picket fence and a craft beer stand. Step inside to the darkness of the interior and there’s a vinyl fair and high above the All Bar One, the Speakeasy space.
This weekend, it’s home to an array of comics who range from the ridiculous to the sublime. Well, maybe not the sublime…
Stop for a moment in the foyer and marvel at the wall of Japanese import seven-inches, all with picture bags, not least Scorpions Blackout and Rush’s Mystic Rhythms. As a man in a Vinnie Vincent Invasion top and black cowboy boots strides by, he comments to a friend (Krokus T-shirt, red hair dye), “That record stall is all albums for a tenner – I’m not getting involved in that, I’d never get it all home!”
To say it’s a good place to get lost in would be to understate it somewhat.
Outside in the dusty sunshine, Daxx & Roxane (not their real names) are being greeted warmly for a sound that suggests grunge might have never happened. The throwback is pretty much the theme of the weekend. Inside, Stone Broken, who look like they’ve just finished a shift in a garage, are playing to an Indigo that’s full to the back bar. They might sound like they’re from Kentucky, but they talk like they’re from the Black Country. Their audience isn’t bothered: they’re simply rocked back on their heels.
Outside, Aaron Buchanan and his finely tailored band look a bit too big for the small stage they’re
playing on. The wind blows their sound around a bit, but they end on a high, literally, with Buchanan atop the attentive crowd.
Imagine if Motörhead’s Capricorn had (filthy) congress with Black Sabbath’s The Wizard and you’re somewhere close to the sound Orange Goblin make with The Fog. It’s as terrifying and glorious as their mosh pit – you can only stand back inside the Indigo and take it all in.
Inside the arena, it’s a less thrilling spectacle that’s unfolding. With no seats on the floor and a small crush of people against the stage, there’s probably still enough space in the room to park about a hundred cars. Also, like the fabled Miss Havisham’s desolate home, most of the stage is covered in what looks like dustsheets to obscure Megadeth and the Scorpions’ equipment. Buckcherry do their best to counter with Lit Up and Crazy Bitch, but it’s a losing battle as they end up as vibrations distilling into the empty air.
Megadeth wear their hearts on their sleeves, Diamond’s Head Lightning To The Nations welcoming the band to the stage. Who knows what lights the fire that burns beneath Dave Mustaine tonight, whether it’s rehab, ire or revenge, but Megadeth are on top form. Forget the intermittent dropped vocal, from Hangar 18 onwards, the floor is full, the corners of the arena slowly coming to life. Wake Up Dead is thrilling, and Sweating Bullets causes an outbreak of dancing on the stairs which is very gently quelled by security. Dave’s feeling less beatific: “To the two spot operators up there, you suck big fat dicks,” he mutters, giving them middle fingers.
He beats everyone else into submission with a rare The Conjuring and a rattling Holy Wars, and then, with a singularly cheery wave, he’s gone.
Truth be told, Scorpions go through a few gears before they truly start to move, Lovedrive’s Is There Anybody There? bounces off the tightly packed crowd in all directions and then they find their footing with a seismic The Zoo, Rudi Schenker wearing jeans that are as ripped as he is these days, and making a series of startled faces. The psychedelic Top Of The Bill is forty years away from We Built This House, but both are welcomed like prodigal sons.
Typically atypical, they bring on a bemusedlooking roadie to stand in for an errant Rudi as Matthias Jabs performs a solo spot at the end of the band’s walkway. They even shoehorn in an erratic Overkill for Lemmy and drummer Mikkey Dee, their audience looking as surprised as if they’d just seen the ending to The Sixth Sense.
There’s an acoustic Flying V guitar, a lusty singalong Winds Of Change, questionable video screen footage and, finally, a thrashy Rock You Like A Hurricane that leaves everyone wide-eyed and woozy as the house lights slowly rise.
What the families strolling into The O2 on Father’s Day must think as they enter the building in search of a late lunch remains a mystery, though there’s some visible twitching as the (very affable) black-clad hordes drift from one bar to the other, poring over the day’s running order. In the Indigo, a blissed-out Ginger Wildheart is making Sunday afternoon sparkle with songs from his lovely Ghost In The Tanglewood album. Acoustic and understated, he even celebrates kindness with the winsome Paying It Forward.
Outside on the Orange Amps stage, The Rising Souls are faring less well. Much admired and talked about, they might be having an off day with their rousing mix of blues and rock’n’roll. They’re good, but they make CR wish The Black Crowes would re-form and remind everyone how it’s done. Which isn’t to single them out: if there’s one criticism of a lot
of the bands on the smaller stages this weekend it’s that everyone sounds like they could have opened for Rory Gallagher in the 70s.
To Tyketto’s credit, they’ve managed to wrangle their sound up to, say, 1988. Admittedly, in many rooms that could sound like very bad news indeed, but not in a very full Indigo. Danny Vaughn and his band come across as a bewitching mix of a Timotei advert and a Skid Row video, given the sheer amount of hair flicking that’s going on.
Along with FM and Dare, they’re keeping their melodic rock freak flag flying. Vaughn’s voice is still a weapon and he’s in striking shape, as are most of the songs. When he encourages the audience to jump up and down with an impassioned, “I’d like to see you do this – we’re not too old yet!” it makes you realise that he hasn’t clocked half the crowd. Still, it’s hard not to be moved by his enthusiasm, and there’s nothing wrong with a song like Forever Young.
In the hazy sunlight, The Bad Flowers can’t seem to keep hold of their audience. Like The Rising Souls (are all bands the definitive article now?) they’re rattling along like Rival Sons never happened. Rich Man thunders, but it feels like everyone’s painting with the same colour this afternoon. Richie
Kotzen borrows from the blues too, but he’s clearly a man who’s reaching back to its roots, and the woozy psych-rock that came flowering out of it. That said, he might be today’s Indigo headliner, but it’s to a half-full room. Which is puzzling.
With his pulled-down hat, he’s hardly the dynamic figure who got thrown out of
Poison, but his set is one of the highlights of the day – he’s smoking. Part Hendrix, even a little bit of King’s X at their starryeyed best, Kotzen is a star, but one few have chosen to look up and see.
Cross the foyer, and Starship’s biggie is pumping out of the in-house PA; three mums link arms and belt out a not insubstantial refrain of ’We built this city…’ In the arena, the rows of seats on the back wall are covered in giant, spiked rubber balls (why? Who knows?). The floor is all-seating for tonight’s show, and while the room is quite still, Anathema are filling it with their beautiful, abstract washes of sound. Like Peter Gabriel meets Lamb through a Bristol Sound filter, it’s haunting and inescapable. As the giant video screen behind them races through the far reaches of the cosmos, the lucky souls in here are forever carried away.
Forget the elephant in the room – Joanne Shaw Taylor is the anomaly in the room. A man in a Rush T-shirt next to me is so perplexed as to be annoyed, sitting back in his seat determinedly until he looks like a harried toad. Why he doesn’t leave remains a mystery. Not that it matters to Taylor, she plays like the place is a sell-out. If she were a man, people would be calling her the next Stevie Ray Vaughan. Her playing is a thrill, her voice a smoky siren, plus she looks to be having 10 times more fun than half the people in here. Taylor is a revelation – though not if you’d asked the men seated around me.
There’s nothing more pleasing than the fact that each time this writer has seen Roger Hodgson, he’s brought his own selection of pot plants for the stage. Which must mean he has a pot plant roadie. Dressed like a milkman, he is, to paraphrase Todd Rundgren, a wizard, a true star. He doesn’t put a foot wrong as he cherry-picks his greatest hits: School, Hide In Your Shell, a thrilling Fool’s Overture. He even gets up from his piano to play a tricky guitar solo. Like the music he makes, he’s timeless.
A huge, bald-headed gentleman three rows down from CR rises to his feet to perform a languid and gentle dance as Yes Featuring ARW take the stage. Rick Wakeman is in a cape that can best be described as luminescent, Jon Anderson is on his own riser and Trevor Rabin has a poorly judged dye job. They are – excuse the hyperbole – utterly magnificent. Not to pick sides, but this is the best Yes in years. Changes is a dramatic judder, And
You And I is a colourful swirl, and Rhythm Of Love gets two likely lads hopping around at the front until security ushers them towards the door.
“It was raining outside when we wrote this,” says Anderson, caught in a reverie, before Heart Of The Sunrise explodes into the air above our heads, rising higher and higher until it’s lost in the shadows in the tall ceiling, echoing towards us like all those lost years.