If I had to make a guess, I’d say I’ve attended somewhere between 150 and 200 concerts in my lifetime. I’ve seen Rush play twice on the same tour — once at the Minnesota State Fair Grandstand and once at the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state nearly a year later. I was at the very first show of Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA tour in 1984, and the last show he played in the 20th Century. I saw Def Leppard blow Bryan Adams off the stage on a perfect July evening from the outfield grass of Midway Stadium. I’ve watched Bruce Hornsby effortlessly control his piano as I sat on the same plank bleachers hundreds of Minnesota kids have sat on while watching bird shows at the zoo on field trips. Last summer I traveled to Tennessee to meet up with one of my best friends so we could witness the classic line-up of one of our favorite bands briefly reunite to play one of our favorite albums live, for the first time ever, in its entirety. One of my greatest regrets in life will always be that I was too young to see Queen’s last American tour with Freddie Mercury.
When it comes to concerts, I think I’ve earned my bona fides.
Just last month, I saw a total of five bands spread out over two separate weekends: On April 1 it was Against Me! opening for Green Day, then on April 21 it was Tesla and Poison opening for Def Leppard. With the exception of Def Leppard (5 shows now, I think), it was my first time seeing all of those bands. I wanted to see Green Day because of the strength of their new album, “Revolution Radio,” and I wanted to see the Def Leppard / Poison / Tesla show because Tesla was one of my favorite bands in college, and because it was sure to be at least three hours of pure live jukebox fun.
A lot of concerts, like the aforementioned Def Leppard show, aren't meant to be anything more than a fun night out. You cheer, you wave around the flashlight on your phone, you get up and dance in your row when a favorite song comes on, and, unless someone spills their beer all over your shoes, you go home in a great mood. Those concerts are great to see. But once in awhile, if you’re lucky enough to see a performance that somehow intersects with exactly what you need in your life at that moment, you can see a show that transcends being merely a concert and can become a life-changing experience.
The Def Leppard show really was a great time. Only three songs were played from the “new” album (which is two and a half years old now), and, luckily for the crowd, they were all good. Other than that it was a night of three bands taking the dominantly middle-aged crowd back to their 80s and 90s glory days. I thought about how Tesla’s album “The Great Radio Controversy” was practically installed in my car’s cassette deck in the summer of 1989. I remembered how in 1990 all the kids at the Boys and Girls Club where I worked thought Poison’s horrible “Unskinny Bop” was one of the greatest contributions any band had ever made to rock music; when Poison started playing it at the concert and a friend somewhere else in the venue texted “I hate this song” to me, I laughed my head off. I remember the suburban legend from junior high that the counting off at the beginning of Def Leppard's “Rock of Ages” was something obscene in a different language; I remember my Boys and Girls Club site supervisor spending an afternoon in mourning the day we heard guitarist Steve Clark died; I remember watching on television when Vivian Campbell, the “new guy” in Def Leppard who replaced Steve Clark about twenty-six years ago, made his debut at the Freddie Mercury Concert for Life. Of course I remember a time when my hormone-addled early-teen brain was dangerously close to convincing me the only thing I needed to become the coolest guy in my semi-farmtown high school was a sleeveless Union Jack t-shirt.
The Def Leppard show was great, and I loved every minute of it. But Green Day was different. This was the show I didn’t know I needed to see so badly.
Green Day isn’t a band I would ever list as one of my ten favorites, but they’ve always been there. Some of their songs were more radio filler misses than hits, but when they were on point they had some good ones. Then “American Idiot” came along in 2004, unexpectedly exploding onto the creative and political landscape. They had things to say about the state of the world, and told that story by reflecting the lives of people trying to survive it. The album had an added layer for me, since it arrived right at the time I needed music to channel the anger and confusion I was buried under in the final weeks of my sister’s life.
They were a different band after that, rising to meet expectations that I doubt they were even fully aware they were capable of establishing. Their new album, “Revolution Radio,” came out this past fall and quickly became a favorite of mine. As fall became winter and all of the tangential ugliness that accompanied this winter came on, it became something I was relying on more and more. When I made arrangements to see their show in the Cities with my cousins, I figured it was a good chance to see a band I liked while supporting an album I had connected with. I didn’t know it would be more.
The opening band, Against Me!, sounded surprisingly good. My cousin Dennis and I agreed they were one of the better opening acts either of us had seen in some time. Green Day had a solid set, combining a lot of bigger hits with some of the songs from their deeper catalogue they understood were clearly emotional favorites of the fans, along with a healthy sampling of songs from the new album.
Not to take anything away from the two guys in the rhythm section of the band, but Green Day wouldn’t exist without Billie Joe Armstrong. If you’re in a band and the guy singing your songs is also the guy who writes most of them, it’s easy to tell who has the most influence over the direction. This is probably even more true for trios, with Geddy, Alex, and Neil being the exception that proves the rule.
Billie worked the stage and the crowd like his life depended on it, screaming “Minnesota!” and “St. Paul!” dozens of times to bring the almost unbearable crowd noise to new crescendos. For those two and a half hours, he owned all 18,000+ of us. It wasn’t just the songs, but the stage banter and speeches, all coordinated and delivered with the backbeat of the band continuing behind him to highlight and associate the emotional connection. Granted, these speeches were probably the same things he’d been delivering several times a week throughout the tour, but it was different than just stage banter. There was something so earnest about his delivery, you could just tell he meant it.
Up to that night, I had not been having a good winter. I’d been navigating some dark and confusing times that permeated most areas of my life so there weren’t many places I could retreat for anything more than the most temporary moments of solace. The vitality and urgency delivered at that show broke through and got me to step outside of my head long enough to gain perspective on everything I was trying to sort out. That night was the catharsis I needed, at the moment I needed it. It was recognizing how music could be something bigger, and how the musicians and bands so many of us elevate to hero and icon status can truly deserve those titles. They're the people who created so many of the songs that drove our life stories. I can remember being taken out of my body when I heard Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band start playing “She’s the One” in May of 1988; I remember John Petrucci’s extended guitar solo in “Surrounded” bringing me to tears on Dream Theater's Chaos in Motion tour; I remember standing slack-jawed and frozen when I saw Brian May on the catwalk stage playing his guitar, and my capacity for self-awareness was nearly erased. I had another moment like that a month ago, when I watched Billie Joe Armstrong beat the life out of his guitar as he sang about wanting to start a revolution, and wanting to hear it on the radio.
A month later a lot of that show still sticks with me. I’m now more optimistic than frustrated and confused, more healed than broken. I can look at the days and weeks and months ahead and feel anticipation and quiet wonderment about their possibility, instead of just seeing a purgatory of perpetual routine.
Music can absolutely heal. It’s done that for me before, it did just weeks ago, and it probably will again. Anyone lucky enough to be at a concert that can impact them the way that show did for me would be able to say the same thing.
