Live on stage

Some of my most vivid memories are seeing musicians live in concert. You know, the kind of shows where for years after you can close your eyes and revisit all the sights and sounds in your mind.
Among my favourites is Freddie Mercury at the Canadian National Exhibition in 1980. The slicked-down hair and full moustache were new, but the haughty style was familiar as his vocals scorched through 48 (by my count) speakers. I took my prerogative as managing editor of Maclean’s to get press passes for my son Mark and I so we could stand in the media pit right below the stage.
Mercury and his group Queen performed for more than an hour-and-a-half before a sell-out crowd of 26,000. He’s an accomplished pianist but that night confessed to having some musical limitations. A tambourine was something to throw to the crowd and a guitar was but an accessory. “I don’t usually play this,” he admitted candidly, “I only know four chords.”
In 2013 my daughter Alison and I saw the Dixie Chicks in Hamilton at FirstOntario Centre, the former Copps Coliseum. The Texas trio, the biggest selling female band ever, played almost two dozen songs including all their top hits like Long Time Gone, Cowboy Take Me Away and Goodbye Earl.
Lead singer Natalie Maines, who had in the past done a few anti-war rants, took a shot early in the show at Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, saying wherever he was and “whatever he’s smoking, we send this out to him.”
Backed by a five-piece band they also played a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s Landslide. For reasons unknown to me, they are now just called The Chicks but will be on tour again later this year.
The best concert I’ve ever seen was by Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall in London, England, in January 1988. He sang all his top songs that night, opening with Crossroads, moving on to White Room and then to Bob Marley’s former reggae song and my all-time favourite I Shot the Sheriff (but I didn’t shoot no deputy, oh no).
I lucked out that night when Clapton brought out Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits on guitar. The inimitable Ray Cooper on drums was a star in his own right.
Even Shakespeare got into the act in Twelfth Night: “If music be the food of love, play on.”
May that always be so.