Shaking it up for Weekend 2
The second weekend includes Rihanna, congrats to Dylan and fan musings for 2017.
Rihanna, a Nobel laureate and dreams of 2017.
The second weekend of Desert Trip festival — a sort of summit meeting of six of the most esteemed figures in rock music history — illustrated their wildly divergent approaches.
“Welcome to Desert Trip two!” Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger announced Friday to the 75,000 at the Empire Polo Field in Indio. “They say that if you remember Desert Trip one, you weren’t really there.”
Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney turned in virtually identical sets to Weekend 1, while the Stones and Neil Young significantly mixed it up. As performances ranged from the celebratory to the angry, fans — some of whom traveled from other countries — were already dreaming up wish lists for next year. Weekend 2 also began in wake of some other rather surprising news.
Yet circumspect as ever, Dylan made no mention Friday that he was the 2016 recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature. For that matter, he made no announcement on any front.
Jagger, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and McCartney, however, all took the opportunity to congratulate him.
“The Nobel Prize for Bob Dylan — c’mon!” Richards happily grumbled in the middle of the Stones’ set after Jagger’s “Let’s thank Bob Dylan for his set. “We’ve never shared the stage with a Nobel Prize winner before.”
McCartney also offered congratulations and paired it with an appreciation for rock pioneer Chuck Berry, who turns 90 on Tuesday.
And he brought out Rihanna to help sing their 2015 pop hit “FourFiveSeconds” to the delight of many under-30 fans.
Young, meanwhile, interjected a note of political protest in another house-onfire performance with his Promise of the Real band.
In keeping with his longstanding advocacy for family farmers, he voiced concern about laws being passed, including here in California, limiting the transportation of organic seeds from one region to another. He tossed out packets of seeds and told those who caught them to “take them wherever you want and then turn yourselves into the police.”
Roger Waters also offered overtly political comments during his Weekend 1 performance (Waters and the Who were slated to perform again on Sunday evening).
Yet despite criticism for the relative dearth of spoken commentary on political matters during a highly combustive U.S. presidential election, it’s not as if the artists were apolitical. Dylan wasn’t exactly mum on current events, at least to those listening closely. Along with early standards, he offered up “Early Roman Kings” and “Pay in Blood” from his 2012 album, “Tempest.” Anyone thinking he had nothing to say politically couldn’t have been listening during “Early Roman Kings,” when he sang, “They’re peddlers and they’re meddlers / They buy and they sell / They destroyed your city / They’ll destroy you as well.”
Or to this devastating lyric refrain from “Pay in Blood,” which skewers the attitude of many who roam the halls of power: “I pay in blood, but not my own.”
Meanwhile, on Desert Trip’s first weekend, Waters blatantly lambasted GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump with enough vitriol for everyone on the bill, interspersing disparaging images of Trump with on-screen messages, many of which cannot be printed here. One of the more civil: “If You’re Not Angry, You’re Not Paying Attention.”
Waters prompted a number of fans to leave before the end of his production when he spoke in support of Palestinians.
In general, however, Desert Trip played out as an event where fans from several generations as well as every continent except Antarctica found common ground in music.
“There’s such a communal feeling,” said Mariana Sanchez, 25, who grew up in Mexico City listening to records by the Beatles, Dylan and other Desert Trip acts.
Her father, Faustino Sanchez, 51, and mother, Ana Marciel, 49, brought all three of their children from San Jose, where they moved from Mexico City in 2007.
Some were so taken by the heady experience that they talked about who they’d like to see next year. Desert Trip promoter Goldenvoice hasn’t commented on 2017 plans.
“A Led Zeppelin reunion — oh, my God, that would be a whole festival on its own,” said Victoria Hyder, who came from El Paso with her friend, Leandra Sanchez. “I just got goosebumps even thinking about it.”
Hyder and Sanchez, each 24, are just under half the average age of 51 of Desert Trip ticket buyers and one-third the average age of 72 for the fest’s headline performers.
Desert Trip has been dubbed “Oldchella” and “Rockers With Walkers,” among other sobriquets, but matters of age seemed irrelevant to those on hand.
“You want to know what the immigration officer asked me at the airport?” said Eduard Uruchurtu, 59, who flew in from Mexico City. “He asked why I was coming into the country, and I told him I was going to the big rock festival.
“He said, ‘Aren’t you too old for a rock festival?’ I said ‘No — all the performers are older than me!’ ”