Sydney Festival First Night was arguably the best way to start a month-long arts, music and culture festival in one of the worlds most vibrant cities. Practically, close off the most family-friendly areas of the CBD and hold a party, complete with gay-disco weddings, raves in Business Precincts and Huge Swing lessons around park fountains.
However, the ticketed “big” headliner proved to be one of the most depressing, life-draining moments in my short live-music-viewing history. A Music Luminary in his own right, Brian Wilson has a grand history as an innovator of pop music in the 60’s, through captaining The Beach Boys. What I saw on-stage at The Domain tonight, however, was a man in tatters. He sat there, emotionless, reading the most well-known non-Beatles lyrics off a teleprompter, banging at a keyboard and flailing his arms around as an entourage of incredibly skilled musicians filled in the wide and deep gaps.
I was told that he suffered a mental breakdown that he never truly recovered from some twenty years ago and, I believe, it clearly shows. It’s odd, seeing an artist and/or band age, especially one that’s not only a celebrity, but so connected to the history of an entire generation. Bob Dylan does so many key-and-lyrical changes in a performance the next thing he’ll be doing a duet with The Mars Volta. The Rolling Stones use a tried and tested formula so much that their recent works sound like filler off albums released decades ago. U2 have seemingly forgotten that they’re not the UN; The Sex Pistols ruin their classics for video games;whilst others are fighting off deaths to rekindle their lost fire. The major difference between them and Wilson, at least, is that they all still show signs of life.
Such is the nature of music’s, or just art in generals, evolution that the artist may never be seen again in the same light, even if they don’t die. I’ve only ever known a Brian Wilson like the one I saw today, and will grow up knwoing Paul McCartney as a boring guy going through a bitter divorce, Michael Jackson as a strange black-turned-white man who “likes” children, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards as silly old men. This is not because I’m ignorant to their histroy or their place in the music world, but becasue this is what I’ve been presented with as thier characters during my lifetime, leaving me to wonder how they truely were back when they were younger and not at this state.
I wonder where and how we’ll see the big bands and artists of now when they have reached their veteran age? Only time will tell.
