Power Trip has come and go and in its wake over 80,000 fans weathered the high temperatures in order to see full sets on one stage over three days by some of the legends in hard rock and heavy metal.
AC/DC, Judas Priest, Metallica, Tool, Iron Maiden, and Guns n Roses congregated at the famous polo fields in Indio last weekend at the venue best known for hosting the Coachella and Stagecoach concerts.
Now it's known for rock.
Let's go over it, chronologically.
Iron Maiden
Getting Iron Maiden as an opener is a feat all unto its own. The wildly successful british metal legends haven't opened for anyone since the early 1980s when they were cutting their teeth in the arenas providing support for Judas Priest, UFO and KISS.
Since 1983's World Piece Tour, Maiden have been established headliners with the ability to pack 'em in and rock them out with the sinewy dual guitar attack and operatic vocals you can try to sing along with, but you're better off playing air guitar.
Bruce Dickinson et al treated Power Trip like another stop in the Future Past Tour that concluded Friday in the desert. Just like they've been doing around the world, the set was mostly tracks from their most recent album Senjutsu and a bunch from 1986's Somewhere in Time.
The band seemed decidedly against playing much from the Live After Death album which they might be tired of now, decades later, but the festival audience who was there to see six headliners, not one, might have appreciated "Hallowed Be Thy Name" and "Aces High" instead of 5 tunes from the new one and 5 from 1986.
Guns N' Roses
Guns also stuck to the script they've been playing off for their current World Tour 2023. Unlike Maiden, they aren't afraid to play their greatest hits mixed with covers and a pair of unreleased tracks.
When Powertrip said these bands would be playing full sets, Guns said hold my Jack Daniels bottle and knocked out 28 tunes and a guitar solo.
Eight of the dozen songs from Appetite for Destruction accounted for, four tunes from each of the Use Your Illusion albums, and six covers including one Velvet Revolver track made up most of the set.
No disrespect, but that seems like a fair variety of songs for legacy '80s bands playing to audiences that probably bought many of those early albums. So play them for them!
Guns got right back on the road after the gig and even announced a pair of dates in November at the Hollywood Bowl, a venue they'd never played before strangely. Tickets for those shows and the remaining dates of their creatively named World Tour 2023 are here.
Judas Priest
As you might be aware, Judas Priest was the replacement act for Ozzy Osbourne who was originally booked for the gig but had to sit this one out on doctor's orders.
Because heavy metal is wild, yes, 74 -year-old Ozzy was given a breather by 72-year-old Rob Halford and his leathermen who must have been sweating in those outfits when they opened Night #2.
And you know who loved it? Everyone. Including Kirk and James of Metallica who got in the photo pit to rock out to the dulcet sounds of "Electric Eye," "Pain Killer," and so many of the metal favorites Priest has given us over the years.
The Saturday night began with the pre-recorded strains of the ominous Black Sabbath chestnut "War Pigs." It was a very rocking tip of the cap to the Prince of Darkness who was sorely missed. Once the generals had gathered their masses, Judas Priest got to it.
Fun fact about Judas Priest: the two covers they performed for the crowd, Joan Baez's "Diamonds & Rust," and "The Green Manalishi" by Fleetwood Mac, are not rarities. Priest has covered Baez's 1975 tune about her break up with Bob Dylan 572 times now and the Mac tune they've rocked over 1,000 times.
The last three songs of the encore were played with one of their former guitarists Glenn Tipton who was diagnosed with Parkinson's nine years ago. Every now and then he will make an appearance in an encore, and every time it is greeted with love and awe. Saturday night was no exception.
The band also used the moment to announce their new album Invincible Shield will drop just in time for Spring Break of 2024, which just happens to align with them hitting the road again in March. Tickets can be purloined here.
AC/DC
The bad boys from Australia might have been the most anticipated act of the weekend. Besides looking forward to the band's first performance since 2016, people wanted to see if singer Brian Johnson's brush with deafness that sidelined him from 26 of the Rock or Bust Tour dates had been repaired.
The ear issues were not surprising, since the early 1980s Johnson has been surrounded by Marshall stacks fueled by the Young brothers, Angus and Malcolm, and at the end of every show they blast canons for a few minutes over the stage and towards the screaming fans.
When Johnson realized he couldn't hear the music, he sought help. The band replaced him with Axl Rose, and the Newcastle singer considered ending it all.
"I just didn't f—ing care anymore. I'd always thought that the best way to go out would be at 180 mph, flat-out around a corner," Johnson wrote in his new memoir. "You'd hit the wall and boom, it would be over, just like that. Don't get me wrong, I didn't want to die. … I just wouldn't have minded all that much."
Fortunately modern medicine is a miracle and Johnson returned to the stage with fewer complaints about his tone and gusto than those tweeted about Mr. Rose.
AC/DC also had the most interesting set of the weekend.
Kicking off with the aptly titled "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)," the band was basically daring the fates while looking into the abyss. Angus was out there, once again, without his partner and closest friend, Malcolm who died of dementia a few years ago.
The band's longtime (and yet on-again off-again) drummer Phil Rudd is dealing with legal issues, anxiety, and substance abuse. He's been replaced with Matt Laug.
AC/DC, Angus specifically, have every reason to pack it in. They have the best selling rock album of all time, mountains of cash, and an incredible legacy including the most successful bounce back from losing a front man ever.
Fortunately the guitarist wanted to show everyone how cool he looks now with gray hair.
"If You Want Blood," was as perfect for this show opener for AC/DC as when the Stones opened with "Not Fade Away" during the Voodoo Lounge Tour. Whether it be Johnson declaring "We got what you want /And you got the lust," or Mick promising, "I'm gonna tell you how it's gonna be!" it's two bands on the back half of their careers claiming dominance over Time.
After the warmly-welcomed Highway to Hell cut that hadn't been performed from 1980-2003, the classic riff of "Back in Black" provided the one-two punch. This was followed by the live debut of "Demon Fire" from AC/DC's most recent album, which was released during Covid.
A few tunes down the set they also live debuted, "Shot in the Dark."
All in all it was a fine return to the stage for the band who had been on those polo fields in 2015 as Coachella headliners.
No future tour dates have been revealed as of yet.
Tool
Tool did a very interesting thing on Sunday evening.
They knew they didn't have the hits of some of the others. They knew their band members were not as household names as some of those on the poster. And they knew they had been assigned to open for the most popular metal band on tour right now.
The best way to compete would be to blow the 80k away with 4k visuals.
So instead of closeups of the bassist making bass faces, or the singer looking like some wild Halloween character, it used all the real estate of the ultra-wide video screen to trip the kids the f out.
Tool did not veer very far from the path they have set for themselves in their current North American Tour. Indeed they seemed to lay into their more atmospheric tunes.
Tool will stay on the west coast for much of October and head to Canada and points east. Grab your tickets here.
Metallica
If anyone was prepared for the giant audience and the huge stage it was Metallica who have been rocking the world on the M72 Tour playing no-repeat weekends in football and soccer stadiums near and far.
This setlist was a perfect amalgam of their best songs live right now, both old and new.
Sixteen songs off nine albums with no more than three tunes per album, it would have been the perfect setlist if they had included "Sanitarium" and either "Blackened" and/or "Battery."
So close. Or would that have been showing off? Guns played damn near 30 songs. Metallica couldn't play 19?
It's fine. No really. Seriously. It's ok. They ruled.
And as Hunter Bolding noted, Metallica was the only band in the lineup to acknowledge with the crowd what a unique three nights it was.
So Metallica wins.
They're taking the rest of the month off but will be back at it in November for a few cities before heading to Europe next year. Get tickets on the Metallica website.
