Rockin at Download Festival

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If there is one thing you can count on when heading to a weekend music festival in the UK, it is massive traffic jams on the motorway to get there. Download festival should be a 2 hour drive from London, 4 hours later, we had the car parked and did the mad dash carrying the tent and backpacks and madly setting up so to get out there and get a good spot for the Friday night headliner - AC/DC! Being a little late we ended up camping on a very hard patch of dirt that was on a slope - it was going to take some serious drinking to get comfortable on that spot! We got set up right on time to run to the main arena, a natural sloping ampitheatre-type field with 80,000 thousand others there to do the same thing.

Acca Dacca came out on stage to be greeted with glorious sunshine at 8:30pm, kicking off the set with Rock n Roll Train, having brought out an almighty smoking black train on stage behind them. The huge crowd went nuts as they then launched into favourites Back in Black and Thunderstruck. For a bunch of old guys, they sure knew how to rock and mixed up the occasional new song amongst some classics. The Jack saw Brian stop for an interlude encouraging the girls in the crowd to flash, and of course being a British crowd, the girls happily obliged to the cheering of the guys in the crowd. The 12 minute guitar solo of Let There Be Rock was a highlight as Angus played up to the crowd, doing a striptease that finished with him revealing his AC/DC boxer shorts and playing the guitar over his head during the solo. The encore featured Highway to Hell and the song they always close with, For Those About To Rock (We Salute You). No Jailbreak or Long Way To The Top was a shame, but thankfully none of the tracks from the late 90s like Big Gun, Hard as a Rock or Hail Caesar. Apparently, it was exactly the same setlist as the entire Black Ice tour of 2009. Maybe in their old age, they only have the same 20 songs that they can play. Regardless it was a fantastic show and a great way to kick off a weekend of rock!

The night then went into the early hours of the evening thanks to the numerous temporary bars selling overpriced cans of Carlsberg and the numerous liquored up freaks to socialise with. There was no shortage of crazy folks, young and old, from all over the world. We all had one thing in common though and that was we were all here to hear some great tunes and have fun. I drank enough to numb the pain of sleeping on the rock hard slope in the tent, which took me until about 2am. Of course at 5am sunrise, the tent starts to warm up and get pretty bright, so most of the day Saturday is spent chilling out in the download village that is a complete dustbowl and listening to chilled out music at the acoustic stage.

Saturday night saw Rage Against The Machine as the highlight of the festival. Without any new material, the setlist was remarkably similar to the setlist from the 2008 Big Day Out, opening the show as always with the opener from the Battle of Los Angeles Testify. Zach paid tribute to all the citizens of Britain for supporting the cause of making them Christmas #1 (albeit 18 years after song was released) to ensure that the manufactured pop of X-Factor was burned. The set was full of energy from all 4 members and each song was cranked out brilliantly, only stopping for a brief interlude to state their opposition to the US Governments stance on letting the people of Palestine be subject to such human rights abuses, encouraging us all to stand up to the Israeli Government. Not sure how many political heavy hitters were in the crowd so i'm pretty sure the US won't be sanctioning Israel anytime soon. As expected, they finished the one and a half hour set with Killing in the Name Of, and everyone retreated to the campsite bursting with energy after the final set of the day.

Sunday was another glorious sunny day and we had been very lucky with the fickle English summer weather. The highlight of the Sunday afternoon was Slash. With the huge banner of his latest album cover towering behind him, he emerged on stage with his token black top hat and leather vest to show off his equally leathery arms. Touring vocalist Myles Kennedy looked like a cheeky schoolkid who had just won the lottery after getting plucked from relative obscurity to front with everyone's rock guitar god, flicking around his long black hair around and bouncing around the stage. Myles has an amazing voice with an ability to hit high notes in the same way that Axle Rose could before he got fat, drugged out and lost the plot. Slash opened the same way he opens the album, noodling his way through Ghosts before the first of the two album tracks that Myles sings on Back from Cali. The better of the two Starlight came a little later and was the perfect stadium rock song, melodic guitar, stripped back vocals and a blasting chorus. Awesome stuff. Myles formally introduced Slash to the crowd in intro-ing the song that kicked Guns N Roses into fame - Sweet Child O Mine - and from the intro, to the riffs in the verses to the solo it was brilliant. The highlight of the festival. From there Slash brought out his hero Lemmy, lead singer of Motorhead (who were up next on stage) to play See the Doctor which he also sang on in the album, before launching into my favourite Velvet Revolver song, Slither. Myles did a pretty good Scott Weiland impersonation and given Scott was on stage only a few hours later, there must have been a bit of rift for Slash not to get Scott to sing it. It was hard to tell if Myles was impersonating Scott to take the piss or to make the song sound authentic - either way, it rocked and has a killer solo which Slash nailed every note. The only other track played from Slash’s latest album was By the Sword, which Andrew Stockdale sung on the album, and Myles tried to do but it was not as good as Andrew’s version. To close the set, another gunners rock anthem in Paradise City was wheeled out. A great way to end the perfect set, Slash had well and truly stolen the afternoon and given the punters their moneys worth.

Pouring rain followed Slash's set and we retreated to the car to dry off due to the lack of shelter at the festival. We returned for the closure of the show - my favourite band of the 90s (Stone Temple Pilots) and one of my favourite bands of the 70s and 80s (Aerosmith).

Stone Temple Pilots came out with Scott Weiland wielding a black umbrella to shield him from the drizzling rain when we leant out to the crowd and dancing around to the intro of Vasoline until he almost tripped over the bandmates. Straight into Wicked Garden before Scott ripped out the megaphone for a heavy version of Crackerman. After the golden oldies, Scott intro-ed the new album, his slow drawl indicative of how drunk or high he was. Playing the first single, Between the Lines and straight into the best song of the album, Hickory Dichonomy with its punchy solo. Scott dedicated Big Empty to the folks in Louisuana dealing with the oil spill, its haunting guitar and lyrics even more pronounced than the album version. From there it was into their two biggest hits, Plush and Interstate Love Song and the crowd was completely hooked. For a band that spent 5 years apart and nearly 20 years after recording these songs, they sound just as brilliant today as they did back in the day. Another newbie in Huckleberry Crumble rounded out the first 9 songs symmetrically with 3 from each of Core, Purple and the new album. Then the fast paced Tumble in the Rough was a crowd pleaser before the weird selection of Lounge Fly seemed to suit Scott’s cruisy, chilled out mood. A couple more from Core followed, with Sex Type Thing, Scott noting his surprise at our controversial the song had been when it was released way back in 1992. Not sure why he thought a song about rape wouldn't be controversial. The megaphone came back out for Dead and Bloated. To finish, perhaps rather appropriately given Scott’s apparent lack of co-ordination was Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart, a poppy way to finish, but at least they knew to leave alone their ordinary 4th and 5th albums from earlier this decade. On stage the band gelled well with the Deleo brothers guitar work very tight and Scott’s stage presence enormous. It was almost as though they were looking to re-win over fans after such a hiatus and the mix of new and old songs worked well, their 6th album, released in May 2010, is a cracker and they gave it the justice it deserved. In just over an hour they had ripped out a 14 track greatest hits set that kept the masses more than happy to stand in the mud and put up with the drizzling rain.

To close the show, Aerosmith burst on to the stage with Love In An Elevator. Steven Tyler in a glittering silver suit was a great showman, shining in an acapalla first verse of What It Takes and of course the cringe worthy I Don't Want To Miss A Thing, with screen behind him showing scenes from Armageddon. Sadly, there was no footage of Robin Williams cross dressing and no Dude Looks Like A Lady - nor any Waynestock footage or Shut Up And Dance. Other big hit Janies Got A Gun also didn't make it to the set list, 70s classics Sweet Emotion, Dream On and Walk This Way finally came out in the encore with Joe Perry’s double necked guitar working overtime. After almost 2 hours on stage, the ageing rockers showed no signs of weariness other than Tyler’s occasional deliberate heaving breathing and belching into the mic. All in all, a cracker of festival and worth every minute of sitting in traffic and camping on hard ground to see it! Rock on!

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Photos

Old rocker
This dude was a little crazy

The Jagermeister stage
Complete with Jager for sale on the right - dangerous!