DIGITAL JOURNALIST
Who wouldn’t be thrilled when Paul McCartney kicked off his set at Coachella with the Wings hit “Jet” and did that bobblehead doll move everybody remembers from “The Ed Sullivan Show”? You could see it on the multi-story screens that flank the stage.
The stagecraft is spectacular and McCartney is tapping into Liverpool nuttiness in his between-song patter. “We come from many miles to rock your roof tonight he said before launching into “Drive My Car.”
1. Jet
2. Drive My Car
After his second song, the Beatles’ “Drive My Car,” McCartney greeted the crowd in a fake accent.
“We come from many miles away to rock your roof tonight Coachella,” he told the crowd.
two more songs, now it’s “Got To Get You Into My Life” from the Beatles.
Elder statesman troubadour Leonard Cohen proved a point made earlier in the day by Matt Schultz of Cage the Elephant. He got a roar from his large crowd of disciples when he interjected the lyric “I’m not trying to fool you, Coachella,” into his song “Halelujah.”
Cohen performed an hour-plus set for a deep sea of humanity. He started 10 minutes late, which surprised his hardcore fans and caused others to make barnyard noises and chant to draw him out.
He was wearing a dark suit with a baby blue ribbon tied around one arm and a fedora, which he frequently doffed after his numbers, five-minute anthems about blighted love and the decline of civilization and the impact one has on the other. Many audience members knew the lyrics and mouthed them or sang along.
Titles included “First We Take Manhattan,” “I’m Your Man” and his closer, “Democracy.”
Favorite image: A upright piano mounted on a bicycle sitting at the edge of the crowd with a burning candle while Cohen finished his set. The instrument is operated by an English performance artist called Rimski and his part of the Coachella installation.
Cohen’s set overlapped a little with Morrissey’s opening on the main stage, blasted by loud speakers over a large swath of the polo grounds.
Morrissey, however, seemed to be having his own sound problems. He asked the audience how he sounded and said, “It’s rough up here.
—Fielding Buck
–fbuck@PE.com
Check out Conor’s CA-RAZZZZY hat!
My mom loves Paul McCartney. He was always her favorite Beatle. She has his solo records on vinyl, she loves the Beatles, she flew from Baltimore to see him tonight.
Her opinion of Coachella? Thumbs up. She has been very impressed with the organization and the food. She even said it was much better than the old alternative radio festival we went to in D.C.
Sadly, my dad is ill and back at the hotel so this is my shout out to dad, we miss you, but we’re going to get our faces rocked off by McCartney.
I had a chance to shoot Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band. Conor was wearing a very large black hat. And then he talked about how there are 8 universes and we only know ours but we can see ones behind us and in front of us but not on the sides. I am so confused.
I caught M. Ward earlier today. Here are my notes.
M. Ward has taken the stage at the Outdoor Theatre and has mellowed out the crowd for Molotov that was chanting a word that I think was forbidden in my high school Spanish class.
The people here are appreciative and enjoying his mellow music, despite the dance beats coming from the tents around the area.
He had some sound problems at the beginning of his set. His acoustic guitar kept cutting out and he joked that it was still a sound check.
He also played the rockin’ tune off his new album, “Hold Time,” called “Never Had Nobody Like You,” which is my personal favorite.
Morrissey just opened his set on the Coachella Stage with “This Charming Man.”
He sounds great!
I’m looking forward to seeing how much Smiths material he plays and if Johnny Marr shows up. Hey, it could happen.
We’ll be blogging from Coachella here at the Audio File blog, but I’ll also be doing even more updates on Twitter.
Follow along.
Franz Ferdinand just finished a set of their old classics, without much of their new stuff mixed in, at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival.
The crowd loved them. And the band interacted with audience members over and over again.
The throngs are now headed away from the lads from Franz…toward Leonard Cohen’s stage!
Look out, Leonard. More later, fans!
–Charlotte Bray