In a Year of Death, Desert Trip Is a Celebration of Rock's Survivors
There has never been a mega-festival quite like Desert Trip. There are just six acts and only one stage. No art installations, no dance tent, no bands you never heard of serenading you in the distance while you stand in line at the beer garden. Just a half-dozen rock & roll legends — The Stones, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters and The Who — doing what they've all been doing for over 50 years.
There is, of course, a morbid corollary to the "over 50 years" part of the Desert Trip equation. Not counting each act's small army of (relatively) younger backing musicians, the average age of the performers is 72. In 10 years' time, or less, they will nearly all be retired. And more than a few, to indelicately state the obvious, will probably be dead.
If 2016 has taught us anything, it's that the generation that popularized rock & roll won't be around playing it much longer. In one bleak four-month span leading up to Desert Trip's May 3 lineup announcement, we lost David Bowie, Glenn Frey, Lemmy Kilmister, Paul Kantner, Keith Emerson, Maurice White, George Martin and Prince. No wonder there was such a feeding frenzy over Desert Trip tickets — against that macabre backdrop, it became the FOMO concert event of the century. See 'em one last time, while they're still here! Even Roger Daltrey jauntily called the lineup "the greatest remains of our era." Long live rock, be it dead or alive.
I'm a fan of all six artists to varying degrees, but at first, I didn't want to go. To me, the media and fan hype surrounding the whole thing felt weirdly ghoulish.
By: andy Hermann
Source: LA Weekly
