During a vigorous State Of Love And Trust, Eddie Vedder notices something. He motions at the camera operator to point at the audience. A boy, around 10 years old, appears on the massive screen behind Pearl Jam, smiling broadly. He’s at the rail with his dad, holding up a disposable take-away tray repurposed as a sign. It says: “1st show”. The singer welcomes him to the fray and recounts how, as a 16 year old, guitarist Mike McCready’s life was changed from the front row of a Van Halen show. In that moment, it’s clear Pearl Jam have grown into a band for everyone. The young adults who listened to Ten back in 1992 have now grown up and are bringing their families, while new generations of teens connect with the rage and anguish of songs like Once and Jeremy.
The message at Hyde Park tonight is clearly one of inclusion, from the big screen shots of the audience singing along with the intro tape (The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love) or getting them to vote for a song, to stopping the show for a medical situation and last night’s dedication of Light Years to a fanclub member who’d recently passed away. But this doesn’t mark a slide into sentimental middle-age for Pearl Jam. The stage-diving may have stopped, the scissor kicks at the mic stand are no longer quite as high, the leaps through the air less frequent, but the urgency, the passion, the intensity are undimmed (during – and between – the songs). After a fraught Garden, Vedder speaks angrily, despairingly, movingly about the US’ lack of gun control. He even cites an incident involving his own wife and daughter, before leading the band and Johnny Marr through a triumphant rendition of Neil Young’s Throw Your Hatred Down.
A similar candor is apparent in New York City duo The Last Internationale, who open the main Great Oak Stage on this positively sweltering afternoon. Dressed in a metallic blue body-fitting outfit, augmented by boots, sleeves, and jewellery all in gold, and a FREE ASSANGE cape, vocalist Delila Paz looks (and acts) like a superhero. She dedicates the set to love and freedom, calls for the WikiLeaks founder’s release, encourages everyone to greet the person next to them. She prowls from side to side, poses on amps, kneels on the ground, bounces around while playing bass, hops down to the front row. And she sounds as fierce as she looks, her powerhouse voice tearing through the blues-rock jams of blazing guitarist Edgey Pires and their touring band. A smoky, hard-swinging Wanted Man, especially, burns almost as brightly as today’s sun.
Less political, less outspoken, but by no means less engaging are The Wild Things. Easily living up to their name, the good-time rock quartet championed by Pete Townshend hit the smaller Rainbow Stage as if they’re headlining today. That’s despite temperatures pushing 30°C. Singer-guitarist Sydney Rae White, dressed in a Mad Max-style boilersuit (that she openly regrets wearing), is particularly dynamic, using her gritty voice and acting chops to sell full-throated anthems with choruses destined for arenas. Then again, the actress who’s been in shows like Uncle, lets slip that they recently supported The Who at Madison Square Garden by way of introducing a brand-new song, the sexy My Name. Current single Lay On Take Off, a slick open-road anthem co-written with Townsend, also gets a look-in, although it’s a storming Loaded Gun that best shows off the collective power of the group rounded out by larger-than-life guitarist (and Bridgerton actor) Rob Kendrick, bass player Cameron White, and drummer Pete Wheeler.
Back on the main stage, Imelda May and a five-piece band offer a spellbinding tour through her ever-evolving career. Looking glam enough to celebrate her birthday (which is tomorrow), she goes from the rockabilly stomp of 2008’s Johnny Got A Boom Boom (complete with bodhrán intro) right up to Word Up, a piece (with brooding instrumental backing) from her recently released debut poetry collection, A Lick And A Promise. En route, May dances and sways her way through the likes of bittersweet ’60s soul-leaning Should’ve Been You and sultry The Longing (both off Life Love Flesh Blood), Meat Loaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love, as well as several choice selections from last year’s 11 Past The Hour. While the slow-burning title track drips with sorrow and longing, Just One Kiss is all sensual swing, and Made To Love is the kind of open-top-car-down-a-California-highway celebration that The Eagles used to write. The through line is May’s voice, which can transform from sweet and sensitive to full-blown Tina Turner.
Just as versatile, but on guitar, is Johnny Marr. He’s no slouch as a singer either, opening his performance with an impassioned rendition of 2019 eco-disco single Armatopia. Spirit Power And Soul, one of the highlights of this year’s Fever Dreams Pts 1-4, sounds even better, lifted by the synth drums, pulsing keyboard line, and an airy solo from the man whose silhouettes (in zen pose with guitar, of course) fill the backdrop. Easy Money ratchets up the bpm even further and eventually prompts a comment on the weather (“England isn’t meant to be sunny”) that reveals even the ever-cool Mancunian is feeling the heat. Not that he shows it — at one point he gently calls out someone for looking down at their phone with the pitch-perfect “I hope you’re texting ‘Johnny Marr is fucking badass’”. He is, and today’s set is further proof. Alongside the recent solo work, he generously dips back into the ’80s and ’90s, with a 2022 makeover of Electronic’s Getting Away With It (more groove, more guitar, no balearic keys) and plenty by The Smiths. Panic swings; This Charming Man jangles; Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want waltzes (and expands with a mournful solo). How Soon Is Now still sounds otherworldly and closer There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (dedicated to “Eddie and the boys”) sparks what must be the most unlikely singalong by thousands of people in a sunsoaked garden: “And if a double-decker bus, Crashes into us, To die by your side, Is such a heavenly way to die”.
Stereophonics‘ choruses, in turn, seem custom-made for a day like today. The breezy Maybe Tomorrow, bookended by frontman Kelly Jones singing the refrain of “Maybe tomorrow, I’ll find my way home” while accompanying himself on acoustic guitar, naturally gets thousands of backing vocalists. It’s impossible not to join in on the bright Have A Nice Day (“A song I wrote in San Francisco about a taxi driver,” explains a chatty Jones), even if you only know the title and Beach Boys-style harmonies. Pick A Part That’s New, with the singer-guitarist on ukulele, is introduced with reflections on his lifelong friend (and Stereophonics bass player) Richard Jones and becomes another Hyde Park hymn. But it’s not just voices that get a workout — the band stuff the set with songs that simply need to be moved to: the bouncy C’est La Vie, new garage rocker Hanging On Your Hinges, and a spirited A Thousand Trees are all performed with the confident swagger of a group in the middle of a run of summer shows. And by the time they reach the final two songs, Just Looking and (of course) Dakota, they look and sound as euphoric as an audience thoroughly warmed up for Pearl Jam.
The headliners turn up the heat even further, announcing their intentions with a riotous Corduroy. An instant reminder that the stage is where they truly excel — a louder, faster, edgier version of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band — it’s immediately followed by the more graceful Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In A Small Town and the promise that “we’ll play everything we didn’t last night”. Eddie and the boys do just that, unleashing a wide-ranging set that repeats just two songs from yesterday. So we get the likes of eternally hopeful Wishlist, savage Animal, punk jangle Do The Evolution, jagged Why Go, lost dog Yellow Ledbetter, steadfastly defiant Not For You, and the powerfully melancholy Black. There are deeper cuts like the earnest Faithful and gritty groover Rats — which, true live performers that they are, Vedder simply gets the band to restart after flubbing the first line.
There are new songs: leftfield Dance Of The Clairvoyants, complete with sparkling synths, reaches its full potential when unfurling in front of an audience; the elegiac River Cross, with Vedder at the organ, is even more moving than on 2020’s Gigaton. There’s even a rendition of Van Halen’s Eruption by the band’s flashiest member, Mike McCready. Big on solos, reaching out to the crowd, and throwing picks, he’s the opposite of other guitarist Stone Gossard, who prefers to keep a low profile, and no-nonsense drummer Matt Cameron. Bass player Jeff Ament, prone to pogoing and twirling, offers up some flash, but Vedder is undeniably the focal point. Flannel shirt and bottle of red present and accounted for, he’s the ultimate host: casual, inviting, engaged, and deeply sincere. He gets a little emotional when dedicating Porch to the family of Taylor Hawkins (“he emitted light”), speaks eloquently on Ukraine, and even offers up a relevant history lesson. During the Great Plague of 1665, camps were set up in Hyde Park, which “became a refuge and a sanctuary”.
“That’s what it felt like tonight,” he adds. The 65,000 people gathered here clearly agree, if the cheers greeting the goodnight song, a thrashy rendition of Baba O’Riley, are anything to go by.
BST Hyde Park, London
Pearl Jam | Stereophonics | Johnny Marr | Imelda May | The Wild Things | The Last Internationale
9th July 2022
Photo: Naomi Dryden-Smith
- This article originally appeared on Louder Than War.
Nils van der Linden 