Bowie's act worthy of $1.5 million tab U2 and Stevie Nicks make breakthroughs at the US Festival

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Music

Liam Lacey
The Globe and Mail

June 1, 1983

San Bernardino, Calif. -- Until Monday, the US Festival was missing a vital element - great performances. Except for the huge crowds and The Clash's performance on Saturday, there was nothing to give the audience the sense of being witness to something extraordinary. But on Monday, the Festival's third day, there were three outstanding performances - from the Irish group U2, from former Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks, and above all, from David Bowie.

Traditionally, festivals have the ability to break new bands to a mass audience, and for the US Festival, U2 was the new band that broke through. The power of the Irish band's performance was largely a matter of lead singer Bono's unusually beautiful voice, perhaps as clear and pitch- perfect a male voice as exists in rock music. The stark clarity of the music, from the mournful, liquid sounds by a guitarist known as The Edge, to the propulsive bass and drums combination, was beautifully conveyed through the Festival's sound system.

Bono made a point on stage of saying that songs such as Sunday Bloody Sunday (about Belfast's infamous Bloody Sunday) were "not political," deliberately dissociating himself from The Clash's confrontation approach.

After the performance, Adam Clayton, the 23-year-old bassist for the group, said the band was "pleased" by the enthusiastic response of the crowd. "We've been making some inroads here now. This tour, we feel we're coming to America as victors, and it feels a lot better."

The Clash, he said, "made fools of themselves. If you sign up for $500,000 to play a date, you can't suddenly pretend you meant something else."

The band has made a point of continuing to live in Dublin, outside the rock music mainstream. "I imagine we're the last band Ireland will see in a long time," Clayton said. "The kids in inner Dublin are living in a ghetto. We've tried to do benefits and things to help them out, but they don't really know who we are. If a kid is worrying about where to get a slice of bread, he isn't thinking about electric guitars."

Nothing could have been more remote from U2's earnest concerns than the second-last act of the day, Stevie Nicks. David Bowie, making his first tour of North America since the mid-seventies, was the main draw, and it looked as if Miss Nicks might have a hard time winning over the audience. But she had a couple of things on her side: the California setting and audience were ideally suited to the moody, melodic standards - Rhiannon, Say That You Love Me, and Over My Head. Miss Nicks' band, which included E Street Band pianist Roy Bittan, was superb.

Perhaps most important was Miss Nicks' striking good looks, and she was the first performer of the Festival who benefited incalculably from the huge video screens on each side of the stage. Miss Nicks, dressed in a low-cut, black lace evening dress, had most of her audience in an erotic reverie, but to her credit, she managed to maintain an intense aura of vulnerability under the scrutiny of 100,000 pairs of eyes. The warmth was obviously genuine, and Miss Nicks was the first performer of the Festival to actually touch hands with the audience over the barrier.

By the end of her act she was almost emotionally overcome. "If you ever think you don't matter," she told the audience, "I want you all to know that you're the only thing that matters to me." And the audience watched the video screen in respectful awe as tears began rolling down her cheeks.

By the end of her set, it was obvious the onus had shifted to David Bowie to try to win the audience back. But the moment rock's Thin White Duke sauntered out on stage, with a wan smile to the audience, the game was up. As he has done so often in his career, Bowie gave a performance that rewrote all the rules for rock music, and The Woz, The Clash, and even Stevie Nicks - tears, black lace and all - receded into irrelevance.