57. British Summertime
Hyde Park
4 July 2014
MOTÖRHEAD
This really wasn’t the ideal time to be on a pre-op ultra-low calorie diet. No beers, no burgers, just water and diet shakes. A rock ‘n’ roll purgatory, if ever there was one. But when your mate scores VIP tickets, the sun’s out, and Lemmy’s about to grace the stage, you grit your teeth, sip your sad liquid dinner, and crack on.
Because Lemmy, well... Lemmy is Lemmy. And Lemmy does Lemmy better than anyone else on the planet. With his signature snarl, whiskey-worn vocals, and basslines that hit harder than his hangover cures, he stomps out and delivers the kind of unapologetically loud rock ‘n’ roll that should probably come with a warning label.
Sure, the content feels more “dingy Sunset Strip dive bar at 2 a.m.” than “sunlit parkland with picnic blankets,” but did anyone expect Lemmy to adjust to his surroundings? Not a chance. He cranked it up, blitzed through the set with zero nonsense, and gave the kind of performance that makes you wonder if the man is actually bulletproof. No drinks for me, no greasy snacks, just vibrations in my bones and Lemmy roaring in my ears.
FAITH NO MORE
Faith No More were up next, and things started off... well, weird. Stagehands rushed about with pots of flowers. Lots of them. Enough to rival a funeral parlour, and then the band shuffled onstage dressed like preachers, as though they’d accidentally wandered off a set for The Omen. At this point, expectations plummeted. Was this a statement? A cry for help? Were we witnessing the slow unravelling of Mike Patton’s mental health?
Just as we were all bracing for an existential crisis, these wonderfully odd little men flipped the script and absolutely killed it. Funky, ferocious hard rock, shaking the sun-baked crowd of increasingly lobster-pink metalheads out of their collective heatstroke stupor. Two new songs were debuted, and the crowd gave them a lot of love in return
It was unhinged, it was loud, it was borderline spiritual. Faith No More might look like a traveling cult, but when they plug in, they’re the kind of band that can make a crowd jump or at least make you forget you’re getting second-degree burns in the process, and they engender a lot of goodwill in the process.
SOUNDGARDEN
A year ago, I was in Brixton watching this band deliver a gig so uninspired it felt like they were actively trying to disappoint us. I left with the bitter aftertaste of dashed expectations and the nagging sense that I still hadn’t seen this band hit anything close to their true heights. Fast forward a year, and Chris Cornell strides out like a rock ‘n’ roll prophet, declaring that tonight they’ll be playing Superunknown in full, track-for-track, for the first time ever. Cue absolute bedlam. The crowd collectively combusted, and what followed was nothing short of a masterclass in rock and roll.
The band was on fire, playing like their lives depended on it, and Cornell’s voice? Transcendental. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, out strolls Mike McCready from Pearl Jam for the title track, casually setting the whole place ablaze. By this point, everyone’s brains had left their bodies, and all that remained was a sweaty, ecstatic mob losing its collective mind.
Looking back on it over a decade later, with the weight of knowing what would happen to Cornell just a few short years after this triumph, the memory is bittersweet. On the one hand, pure joy at finally seeing why Soundgarden weren’t just part of the Seattle scene, they were the band that defined it. On the other, the inescapable sadness of knowing this kind of magic was finite. But on that night, in that moment, it was perfection. A reminder that when they were at their best, there was no one better
BLACK SABBATH
To be honest, the band we’d really come to see had already played, and the day’s relentless sun had begun to feel like an oppressive headliner in its own right. Across the scorched grass, downed metalheads lay strewn about like the aftermath of some sort of beer-fuelled battlefield, sweaty heaps surrounded by a sea of crushed plastic pint glasses. These were the brave souls who’d peaked far, far too early. We could relate and having witnessed Sabbath obliterate the O2 a few months earlier (air-guitaring alongside Bill Bailey, no less), our energy levels were now in terminal decline. Tired, hungry, and resigned to our fates, we went for a wander.
The VIP area, for all its supposed exclusivity, was basically a slightly calmer paddock with overpriced bars, scattered seating, and a bit of grass closer to the stage. Think “luxury cattle pen,” but with marginally fewer cowboy hats. Outside the velvet rope, however, it was a scene of pure festival chaos. There were the usual suspects: cowboy-booted women with painted stars on their faces, tumbling over in drunken choreography and flashing their knickers with zero regard for gravity. Then there were the wide boys in skinny jeans and no socks, clutching ciders and building up the courage to awkwardly chat up said cowgirls. Meanwhile, the metal contingent, cut-off Megadeth shirts, flannel shirts tied around their waists and arms full of regrettable tattoos, staggered about like zombies, slumping against bushes with their pints as the sun continued to punish everyone indiscriminately. Carnage, glorious carnage.
We waded through this human circus in search of sustenance, dodging the food concessions with their ludicrous queues until my mate hit the jackpot with a beef noodle truck. Me? I was still in the joyless purgatory of an all-liquid diet, so my dinner was a meal replacement shake and a black coffee. The sheer indignity of sipping a protein shake while surrounded by greasy festival delights was frankly hard to take.
We left the park with Ozzy wailing in the background, his voice cutting through the chaos like a demented uncle’s karaoke session. It wasn’t glamorous, it wasn’t dignified, but it was rock ’n’ roll, or at least a sweaty, sunburnt approximation of it, but for now it was time for home