Smashing Pumpkins, Queen enthrall and rock Vegas
THERE Billy Corgan was, seated behind an electric piano, banging out “Stairway to Heaven” as an illuminated shrine featuring a crown-adorned statue of himself worked its way through the crowd on the floor.
Go ahead, rub your eyes, makes no difference.
This was really happening. That the Smashing Pumpkins frontman would tackle maybe the most iconic hard rock song of all time two hours into an alt-rock spectacle for the ages tells you all you need to know about both Corgan and this show: For him, for this production, more is more is more with a side of more.
By covering classics from Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac (“Landslide”), David Bowie (“Space Oddity”) and — why not? — the Disney songbook (“Baby Mine” from “Dumbo”) during a 31-song, three-hour-plus show at T-mobile Arena on Sunday, Corgan and company simultaneously showcased their ambition, chops and a confidence bordering on bravado.
Touring with fellow original members in drummer Jimmy Chamberlain and guitarist James Iha for the first time in 18 years (along with guitarist Jeff Schroeder and a pair of touring musicians), Corgan began the show by performing acoustic ballad “Disarm” alone as boyhood photos of himself flashed across the video screens behind him.
Despite the vintage images and the fact that all but two of the songs played Sunday were originally released in 2000 or earlier, the Pumpkins’ performance
SOUNDING
didn’t feel posited on nostalgia as much as the goal of reaffirming the band’s place among the alt-rock leaders of its era — or any other, for that matter.
Corgan said practically nothing from the stage all night until thanking the crowd near the end for seeing this “crazy show” through, preferring instead to let his guitar do the talking.
It said as much with a whisper as a shout.
Sure, the Pumpkins can bring the bluster, exemplified by weaponsgrade bruisers such as
“Bullet With Butterfly
Wings,” “Cherub Rock” and “Zero,” which Iha outfitted with a solo that squealed like rubber being laid on wet asphalt.
But texture, nuance and a sense of delicacy figure as prominently into the band’s repertoire as overdriven guitar aplomb and smoldering amplifiers, the Pumpkins’ catalog equal parts scalpel and meat cleaver.
A beatific “Soma” unfolded as a dreamlike reverie, supple and warm, practically luxuriating in its sadness, before erupting in a cathartic conclusion. The Iha-sung “Siamese Dream” B-side “Blew” breezed by. During “Drown,” Corgan sang of wanting to fly in a song as sweeping as the sky in which he dreamed of taking flight.
It was all a lot to digest, as the band acknowledged on a couple of occasions.
“Let’s face it: It’s a long show,” Iha said late in the evening. “I hope you brought a granola bar or yogurt for sustenance.”
No worries there.
To borrow a line from Marie Antoinette, or maybe it was Ted Nugent: Let them eat riffs.
Killer Queen
The pelvic-thrustincarnate swished his hips just like the original occupant of the “Heartbreak Hotel,” whose movements he mimicked via a similar cocktail of longing, lust and leather.
“I’ll be so lone-ly, I could d-i-i-i-e-e,” Adam Lambert sang on the Elvis Presley classic in question, taking a one-syllable word and outfitting it with another seven or so as guitarist
Brian May ripped an equally elongated lead.
That number was the big new addition to Queen + Adam Lambert’s set list as the band kicked off its 10-show “Crown Jewels” residency at the Park Theater at Park MGM on Saturday with a two-hour, 22-song performance.
The show will be somewhat familiar to those who caught the group on its most recent U.S. tour, which drew nearly 12,000 fans to T-mobile Arena last June: Lambert pedaling around the stage on a hot pink tricycle during “Bicycle Race”; May soloing atop a riser fronted by a video screen depicting the arm of the giant robot from the cover of 1977’s “News of the World,” making it seem as if he were playing from the palm of the thing’s hand; Lambert belting out “Killer Queen” while perched upon a prop of said robot’s head.
After concluding that Queen concert staple, Lambert addressed the big, glittery, gold-spangled elephant in the room, as he normally does in concert.
“I know what some of you are thinking tonight,” he began, his words a verbal eye roll directed at any naysayers. “He’s no Freddie Mercury. No (expletive).
“Do you love Freddie? Do you miss Freddie?” he continued to a chorus of cheers. “Me too. I’m just a fan up here in the gayest outfit you’ve ever seen.”
About that outfit — a sparkly red suit with matching platform shoes and plunging neck line — it was one of eight costume changes, by our count.
The real draw here, though, wasn’t Lambert’s exposed chest hair — OK, maybe for some — nor was it a radically different collection of songs. Instead, it was where they were playing those songs: in a 5,000-seat theater as opposed to the arenas and stadiums they’re used to headlining.
This more up-close-andpersonal setting served two purposes.
Most obviously, it heightened the operatic oomph of one of rock’s most bombastic songbooks, exemplified Saturday by a seismic “Somebody to Love,” the irrepressible harmonies of “Fat Bottom Girls,” and the explosive coda to “Under Pressure,” which Lambert delivered with such force, his lips quavered as if an electric current was being passed through them.
Secondly, these more intimate confines especially suited the more emotionally charged moments of the evening, of which there were plenty, chief among them, May’s acoustic rendition of “Love of My Life,” which he performed alone, seated at the lip of the catwalk that extended from the stage.
“This is a song we used to do many, many moons ago,” May said by way of introducing the tune. “Just me and young Freddie.”
By song’s end, Mercury had joined in on the song, dueting with May via the video screens behind him.
Similarly stirring were inspired takes on capital “P” power ballads “Who Wants to Live Forever” and “The Show Must Go On,” the latter of which encapsulated the sentiment of the evening.
“I’ll top the bill,” Lambert sang on said number. “I’ll overkill.”
Check.
And check.
“The show must go on,” he continued. Promise kept.
Contact Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal. com or 702-383-0476. Follow @Jasonbracelin on Twitter.