10 memories as we wait for Summerfest to return in 2021
This week in an alternate universe, Maier Festival Park would have been packed with hundreds of thousands of fans cheering for Justin Bieber, Luke Bryan, Steve Miller Band, Khalid and hundreds of other acts for Summerfest’s 53rd year.
Instead, the festival site on Milwaukee’s lakefront is a ghost town.
In March, Summerfest was postponed until September because of the coronavirus pandemic. In June, it was
canceled altogether, for the first time in its history.
This would have been my 10th consecutive year covering Summerfest for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I’ve nitpicked about the lineup and panned some of the shows, but I absolutely love it.
The fact that it’s America’s largest music festival, with more than 800 acts performing for more than 700,000 people each year, isn’t the most impressive thing about it. It’s that Summerfest assembles the most diverse lineup of any festival in the world year after year, for a general-admission price point that’s substantially less than practically any other event of its caliber.
I’ll miss covering Summerfest tremendously this year, but it absolutely couldn’t, and shouldn’t, take place. People are losing far greater things from this devastating pandemic.
When I interviewed the biggest Summerfest fans in the world — married couple Mike Retzer and Nancy Anne Sachs, who have attended the festival for 281 consecutive days since 1994 — they put that in perspective.
“If I were to say where my mind is at, I am more in sympathy (with) and concerned about the first responders, the nurses, the doctors, the grocery store clerks,” Sachs said. “To pass on Summerfest, it’s a small request while other people are risking their lives to help.”
“We have so many fond memories, we can just enjoy it by thinking about the past,” Retzer added.
With that in mind, I’ve spent some time thinking back and rereading my Summerfest coverage over the past decade.
As I wait with hundreds of thousands of fans for the festival to return when it’s safe, I’ll especially cherish these 10 Summerfest memories, listed in chronological order.
Kanye West wows (June 30, 2011)
Fresh off “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” one of the most influential albums of the past decade and one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, West bypassed a tour to headline select festivals instead, including only three in the United States. Incredibly, Summerfest was one of them, with West staging a show worthy of his masterpiece and massive ego — with the superstar surprisingly beginning his show among the masses in the amphitheater.
“Working his way through high fives and rhymes en route to the stage, where three musicians and a score of ballet dancers who looked as though they pirouetted from the set of ‘Black Swan’ awaited, West powered through warrior cry ‘Power’ and ripped through a propulsive ‘Jesus Walks’ with passion and sweat — stomping and shuffling his feet, flailing his arms, attacking the rhymes with force,” I wrote in my review. “It was as if he was trying to get God’s attention.”
A massive crowd for Wiz Khalifa (July 5, 2011)
There have been some legendary crowds during the past decade at Summerfest — like the 100,000 people who showed up the day Imagine Dragons performed in 2013, or the sea of people for the Lonely Island last year, especially when T-Pain took the stage for their collaboration “I’m On a Boat.”
But being in the thick of the crowd for Wiz Khalifa’s set was unlike anything I had experienced. The rapper was riding high off his smash hit “Black and Yellow,” and tens of thousands of people were smashed shoulder to shoulder from the front of the Harley-Davidson Roadhouse stage to the edge of the lake.
Naturally, there were some tense moments in the crowd, and crazy sights, like a couple of guys that climbed the top of a souvenir tent to check out the action. But more than anything, it was a fun party, signaling how central, and popular, hip-hop would become over the next decade.
Summerfest steps it up with Bruno Mars (June 25, 2014)
That 2011 Marcus Amphitheater lineup was impressive — in addition to Kanye, there was Katy Perry — but Summerfest’s amphitheater lineup in 2014 was astonishing, with Lady Gaga, a briefly reunited Outkast, the second stop of Motley Crue’s faux farewell tour, Usher’s lone date of the summer, and white-hot country superstar Luke Bryan (with a surprise appearance from Florida Georgia Line).
And Bruno Mars on opening night was “a hell of a start,” I wrote in my review. Riding high after an impressive Super Bowl halftime show four months prior, Mars, through sweat and skill and style and charm, cemented his standing as one of the most electric live performers alive.
Grooving with the Summerfest Dancing Guy (July 1, 2014)
Beyond the music, I’ve had a lot of fun interviewing Summerfest artists and fans. A sky-glider interview with Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips in 2014 was a highlight — our microphone for the video recording intercepted the play-by-play announcements at the Gruber Law Offices SportsZone below us. Coyne, never shy about seizing attention, cried out, “Hello Summerfest. Let’s get high together!” over the PA system.
But my favorite interview was with the Summerfest Dancing Guy, Chris Briggs, who displayed his infectious moves, with his signature tie-dye shirt, for countless hours across several sets that year. Waiting for him to dance through a cover band’s never-ending “Freebird,” and some post-song photo ops with fans (including a woman who pinched his butt), we asked Briggs for an on-camera interview and tutorial. I was winded after a few minutes, but Briggs was unstoppable, and having the greatest time.
The Rolling Stones rock (June 23, 2015)
The Marcus Amphitheater lineup in 2015 was also exceptional. Stevie Wonder wowed (with Mayor Tom Barrett dancing awkwardly on stage), Ed Sheeran inched closer to becoming a stadium-packing superstar, and J.J. Watt made a surprise cameo, tackling a “stage crasher” at the Zac Brown Band show.
But the Rolling Stones’ first Milwaukee show in 10 years towered over everything, and is arguably the greatest booking coup in the festival’s history. The
Stones played just 15 dates for that summer’s “Zip Code” tour, primarily football stadiums. The Marcus Amphitheater, with its 23,000-person capacity, was the smallest venue on the tour by far, and the show sold out seven minutes after going on sale.
All these combined factors made the Stones’ Summerfest show one of the biggest Milwaukee music events in recent history. And the band still managed to exceed the hype, from Keith Richards’ grizzled gravitas; to a special jam with Buddy Guy; to Mick Jagger’s one-of-akind, swagger-soaked showmanship. “The fact the Stones are still standing — and still this good — after 53 years is cause for celebration,” I wrote. “And insane ticket prices.”
A local breakout packs ’em in (July 5, 2016)
2016 will be forever remembered as the time Summerfest booked a Beatle, and Paul McCartney was magnificent. But the memory I’ll cherish most was walking behind the Miller Lite Oasis and being floored to step in front of the stage, where several thousand teens and college kids were watching local rapper IshDARR.
At that point, a few local rappers had performed for large audiences as direct openers for major hip-hop stars. But the crowd wasn’t there for the headliner; it was 6 p.m. on a Tuesday. All those kids were there to see IshDARR. Watching him soak it all in with his huge, toothgapped grin, it was clear Milwaukee hiphop, and IshDARR specifically, had arrived in a big way.
Pink soars, literally (July 2, 2017)
Summerfest 2017 included what will likely be Paul Simon capping his pre-retirement Summerfest show with a stunning “Sound of Silence,” and Tom Petty’s final Milwaukee performances. But the show that burns brightest in my memory was Pink’s first concert in three years. Initially raw but always riveting, the pop star, one of the most polished live performers, embraced spontaneity at this special show, including rare and remarkable covers of Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee” and Bishop Briggs’ “River.” And I assumed there was no way Pink would be able to safely do her signature “So What” flying routine in the amphitheater, but sure enough, the pop star and her team pulled it off.
A masterful performance by Janelle Monáe (July 6, 2018)
With the country descending into greater turmoil, several artists at Summerfest 2018 used live music to offer healing and hope, from Imagine Dragons’ Dan Reynolds opening up about depression and promoting therapy, to Shawn Mendes singing with thousands of teen fans about overcoming anxiety. During these turbulent times, no live performer has had more impact than Janelle Monáe, who transformed her Summerfest set into a utopia of inclusivity, celebrating women, Black lives and the LGBTQ community with empowering songs and spellbinding style that recalled Prince, James Brown and Beyoncé at the peak of their powers.
Jennifer Lopez lights up Summerfest (July 3, 2019)
We’ll have to wait until 2021 to see the results of Summerfest’s $53 million renovation of its 33-year-old amphitheater (renamed the American Family Insurance Amphitheater in 2017). But Jennifer Lopez’s first Milwaukee show of her career gave us a sense of the kind of eyepopping spectacles yet to come. Summerfest managed to do some of the reconstruction in 2019 — including raising its roof, allowing Lopez to bring her tour’s massive production to Summerfest, singing “Medicine” while swinging from a chandelier of champagne glasses, and performing “Dinero” with 24 phenomenal dancers. Lopez herself towered over everything, with her jawdropping dancing and staggering star power.
Billie Eilish breaks new ground (July 6, 2019)
Even the most seasoned concertgoer can count on one hand the times they saw an emerging supernova on the verge of changing the world. Billie Eilish at Summerfest last year was one of those very special occasions.
The 17-year-old was just three months removed from her groundbreaking debut album — and six months away from being only the second artist in history to sweep the Grammy Awards’ four main categories. In front of 23,000 people, Eilish performed for the largest ticketed crowd of her career to that point, for her first festival-headlining performance.
And she crushed the set — even though she admitted with a froggy voice to being “sick as (expletive)” — with her otherworldly energy for “Bad Guy,” and a gorgeous and intimate “When the Party’s Over.” For the latter, Eilish successfully convinced most of her fans to put away their phones and be in the moment. It was a moment, and a performance, I will never forget.
Contact Piet at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him on Twitter at @pietlevy or Facebook at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
Piet also talks concerts, local music and more on “TAP’d In” with Jordan Lee. Hear it at 8 a.m. Thursdays on WYMSFM (88.9), or wherever you get your podcasts.