The Wild Heart Tour: 1983

[michelej1]

[Wish I had been there to hear Stevie sing Over My Head]

Globe and Mail (Canada) June 1, 1983

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

BYLINE: LIAM LACEY; GAM

DATELINE: SAN BERNARDINO, CA

BODY:


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.