It was as if the band – if not the Band – have been again collectively.
Under a trio of softly lit chandeliers, greater than two dozen musicians together with Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Mavis Staples, Eric Church and Bob Weir gathered on stage Thursday evening on the Kia Forum in Inglewood to pay tribute to Robbie Robertson, the Canadian singer, guitarist and songwriter. and composer who died final 12 months on the age of 80.
The lineup of acquainted names — to not point out the elegant lighting scheme — was clearly meant to evoke “The Last Waltz,” director Martin Scorsese’s traditional 1978 documentary in regards to the all-star Thanksgiving blowout at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco which served as the ultimate live performance. by Robertson’s beloved roots-rock group, The Band. In truth, Scorsese filmed Thursday’s present — formally billed as “Life Is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson” — for eventual launch as a live performance movie.
Jamey Johnson performs.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Following the deaths of Richard Manuel, Rick Danko and Levon Helm, Robertson’s passing leaves 87-year-old Garth Hudson as the one surviving unique member of the band. And Robertson wasn’t the one mourner on the Forum: Not lengthy into the present, which started round 7pm and ended a couple of minutes after midnight, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers famous that Thursday was ” form of a religious evening for me” as a result of he and his longtime accomplice Benmont Tench have been at certainly one of their outdated haunts simply three days earlier than the late Petty turned 74.
So: reminiscences upon reminiscences upon reminiscences. Yet at its greatest, the Robertson tribute — produced by Blackbird Presents, which additionally staged Willie Nelson’s ninetieth birthday extravaganza final 12 months on the Hollywood Bowl — had a vibrancy that surpassed the retrospective at many ranges of all of it.
Eric Clapton performs.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Morrison, who appeared on “The Last Waltz,” gave a three-song efficiency from behind a pair of mirrored aviators, singing “Tupelo Honey” on “Days Like This” and “Wonderful Remark,” the latter of which he contributed to Scorsese’s 1983 “The King of Comedy,” for which Robertson supervised the rating. (Robertson continued to work with Scorsese on most of the director’s movies; this 12 months he earned a posthumous Oscar nomination for his rating for “Killers of the Flower Moon.”)
Clapton, who has spoken a number of instances about his need to affix the band, performed blues guitar on Bobby “Blue” Bland’s “Farther Up the Road,” which he lined on “The Last Waltz”; on the Forum he additionally supplied crisp renditions of the band’s “The Shape I’m In,” “Chest Fever” and “Forbidden Fruit.”
Allison Russell, from left, Nathaniel Rateliff, Logan Staats, Margo Price, Julian Taylor, Jim James, Bob Weir and Trey Anastasio on stage on the Kia Forum.
(Michael Blackshire/Los Angeles Times)
Staples, a 3rd participant in Scorsese’s movie, made a catchy, trashy model of “The Weight” that featured a pair of jam band icons just like the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and Phish’s Trey Anastasio. Other highlights embrace Weir’s spooky solo efficiency of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece,” Church’s funky “Up on Cripple Creek” and an imposing model of the nation singer’s hauntingly lovely “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” bearded Jamey Johnson, who additionally spent the night within the live performance’s crack home band alongside Campbell, Tench, Don Was, Ryan Bingham and an assortment of drummers, backing vocalists and horn gamers. (Elvis Costello and Noah Kahan have been marketed as attendees however did not present.)
Someone on stage Thursday rearranged your fascinated by Robertson and his music — the way in which he thought in regards to the previous and methods of injustice, or the way in which he balanced devotion to plot with religion within the essential economics of a pop tune ? No. As with any tribute live performance on this vein, this system in the end was too lengthy, too midtempo, too stuffed with warmly respectful performances from the likes of Jim James, Allison Russell, Nathaniel Rateliff and Robert Randolph.
He additionally wanted an actual A-lister: somebody to spark a burst of pleasure, as Paul McCartney did at April’s Jimmy Buffett memorial on the Bowl. (Bono, who wrote and recorded “Sweet Fire of Love” with Robertson, can be an enormous hit.) Yet, late because it was, you could not assist however be moved by the present’s grand finale: an all-hands” I Shall Be Released” which inevitably referred to as to thoughts the get together of many a long time in the past at Winterland – surrounded by pals, sweating via my shirt, making the historical past of a second.
