Dead End Drive-In: Now Showing – ’83 US Festival
Written by Gaz E
Saturday, 11 January 2014 04:00
’83 US Festival: Days 1-3 (MVD Visual)
It has been reported that Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak lost almost $20 million on the two US Festival weekends that he financed in 1982 and 1983. That said, the way in which the events have been remembered, the latter especially, have surely softened the blow: the man himself determined to marry music, technology, television and people in a way that, in pop culture terms at least, proved to be a raging success.
The inaugural festival, spread over Labor Day Weekend in 1982, featured the likes of The Cars, The Police, Ramones, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Fleetwood Mac, Pat Benatar and Talking Heads and was the first major festival since 1978’s California Jam II which wasn’t a charity concert. The follow-up event that took place over Memorial Day Weekend in 1983 pushed the boundaries of Wozniak’s vision ever further and, alongside soaring temperatures, a
combined attendance of 670,000, and some iconic performances, is now high up on any list of all-time rock/pop festivals. Well, Days 1 through 3 at least: a fourth day dedicated to country music that took place a week later is pretty much forgotten.
MVD Visual’s new DVD release, ’83 US Festival: Days 1-3′ (available on a region-free NTSC disc), is part concert film, part documentary, directed by award winning filmmaker and music biographer Glenn Aveni, with added insight from Wozniak and Mark Goodman, the original VJ from a newly-launched MTV who covered the event. This release is the first officially sanctioned on DVD and it is a fine retrospective piece, a time capsule filled to the brim with vintage songs, performances and fashions. But, and it is a big BUT, there a glaring omissions from the film that, no matter for what reason, will leave fans either confused or downright disappointed. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves…
Day 1 of the ’83 US (that’s US rather than U.S. – a common mistake made by us on the other side of the pond) Festival was tagged as ‘New Wave’ day but, while hardly exclusive to bands lumped into that genre, it informed an American public that there was a new wave of artists from across the globe about to assault the U.S. charts with their audio wares.
This film shows six of the nine bands that played on that Saturday at the end of May 1983, starting with the Divinyls. The Australian outfit’s music then was a little more rocking than they would ultimately be remembered for – this was some eight years before their massive hit, ‘I Touch Myself’ – with singer Chrissy Amphlett’s full-on headbanging in the guitar solo of ‘The Boy In Town’, along with her ripped tights, red make up-smeared skin and pre-pop star teeth, certainly of a rougher vintage.
The Beat – known here as The English Beat, known in Australia as The British Beat – returned after a slot on the first US festival, their higher placing on the running order testament to their popularity at the time. The band brought a little British charm to the event, the band’s non-stop stage moves throughout ‘Jeanette’ dazzling.
The fashion faux pas that was INXS in May 1983 – way too much khaki – provided, on this DVD at least, the briefest hint that the music buying public would soon be falling head over heels for the band and its sex symbol frontman, Michael Hutchence leading the band through a great version of ‘The One Thing’, the sole exhibit from the Australian legends, proving just how different things were, musically, at the start of the Eighties: the two songs that follow from Stray Cats – ‘Rock This Town’ and ‘Double Talkin’ Baby’ – celebrated like the second coming of Christ, the trio putting on an incredible performance despite being dwarfed by the size of the stage – a stage that was, at the time, the biggest in the world, and which now resides at Fantasyland in Disneyland. With zero backline, and Slim Jim’s two-piece drumkit, the Stray Cats got every pair of hands for what seemed like miles – has to be seen to be believed – clapping along to their sounds, Brian Setzer soloing atop the bass drum, Phantom running around his ‘kit’ without missing a beat.
Men At Work, mainman Colin Hay interviewed about the festival on several occasions throughout the film, used the darkness of the Saturday evening work to their advantage, their saxophone cutting through the night, ‘It’s A Mistake’ and ‘Who Can It Be Now’ the two songs featured here, before the first real misstep by the filmmaker…
This festival appearance was to be the final show that Mick Jones would make with The Clash. An important moment in rock history, I’m sure you’ll agree. Also, any research you do on the ’83 US Festival will, without much digging, throw up talk of a feud between The Clash and Saturday headliners, Van Halen. David Lee Roth actually talked a little smack regarding the punk legends from the stage in response to a disagreement with Joe Strummer. VH, you see, had agreed a fee of a cool million dollars in advance for playing the festival, yet later demanded another half of that again. The Clash, in comparison, had refused 
to play unless donations were made to charity and other noble causes by Wozniak and some of the other bands: yes, it’s got everything on which great rock ‘n’ roll stories are based, yet all we get on this DVD is a quick mention of a “greedy Van Halen”. Even more disappointing is the fact that you get just one Clash song for your buck: the version of ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’ is great, Paul Simonon’s dancing astonishing, but it just isn’t enough to remember a moment of music history by.
Day 2 of the festival – ‘Metal Day’ – has long been remembered by rock fans as containing timeless footage of some of the hottest hard rock bands around in 1983. Mötley Crüe’s Vince Neil has stated that the incredible attendance on this studded Sunday – reportedly over half a million head-banging, fist-pumping peeps – “was the day that new wave died and rock ‘n’ roll took over.” Sad then that this film does not contain a single musical note from the Crüe; or Quiet Riot, whose appearance would soon propel their album, ‘Metal Health’, to the number one slot on the Billboard chart; or Ozzy Osbourne; or even headliners Van Halen.
You will surely have seen footage of those bands from the ’83 US Festival: Kevin DuBrow demanding that you feel the noize, Ozzy lumbering around like a short-haired loon. I might have just seen the footage on the very computer on which I type. Well, you won’t see it on this disc.
Instead you get Rob Halford riding his bike out to a taped soundtrack of engine revs, the size of the fake Marshall stacks from which he appears meaning that the drum riser is possibly the highest static one in rock history. This could, of course, have been an attempt at keeping then-drummer Dave Holland away from teenage boys. The Judas Priest set is heavy metal in 1983 personified: ‘Breaking The Law’ and ‘You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ a brawl of leather, studs, and both screaming axework and vocals. The crowd shots a perfect precursor to ‘Heavy Metal Parking Lot’ also. The Priest segment to this DVD ends with a fan getting onto the stage, Halford smiling wryly as a couple of burly roadies attempt to pull a sweaty male from his back, the metal-drunk punter’s arms locked around the singer’s waist.
Keeping up with the distinct lack of American bands featured here, the Scorpions appear under cover of darkness to provide two songs that, again, showcase just how much fun heavy metal music was while on the cusp of mass approval. The band knock out ‘The Zoo’ and ‘Can’t Get Enough’, with guitarist Matthias Jabs looking like he’s auditioning to join Roxx Regime, decked out in yellow and black as he chugs away on a voicebox. The band’s set features a three-man human pyramid and culminates in a scrum of Scorps at stage front, Klaus Meine thrashing his mic wildly over Rudolf Schenker’s instrument.
Now this is where metal fans are gonna go really crazy: instead of a solitary song from Mötley Crüe; or Ozzy; or Van Halen; or Quiet Riot; there are three songs from Triumph. Yes, three. More than The Clash, more than INXS, more than anyone else. Nothing against the rockin’ Canadian trio, of course: the three songs represented on the Day 2 segment are cool – ‘A World Of Fantasy’, ‘Fight The Good Fight’ and ‘Lay It On The Line’ – with Rik Emmett tearing it up, both vocally and on the guitar. Three songs, though, when other bands have none – pretty harsh, right? Well it gets harsher because, for some strange reason, there is an extra Triumph song – ‘Magic Power’ – on the Day 3 part of the film. Four songs!
The aforementioned third day – ‘Rock Day’ – featured ten acts, although only five feature in this film: the likes of David Bowie and The Pretenders forgotten as if they never even played.
Berlin are the first band featured, although their moment in the sun, literally, ‘Sex (I’m A…)’, is only shown in part, voiceovers spoiling the performance that looks like new romantic soft porn, a backcombed Terri Nunn rubbing various band member body parts. Nunn had actually auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars: if the universe had formed differently she may well have spent 1983 in a strange place populated by hairy mammals with a basic grasp on intelligence. Oh…
The name Quarterflash might not set off too many bulbs of recognition but the American outfit had sold over a million copies of their self-titled debut album in 1981, the second single from it, ‘Find Another Fool’, represented here, singer Rindy Ross also playing saxophone to great effect, but it’s all a little safe compared to the appearance of Missing Persons. The band, discovered by Frank Zappa, certainly brought the kooky to the Glen Helen Regional Park. ‘Words’ sees future Duran Duran guitarist Warren Cuccurullo and drummer Terry Bozzio slugging it out for best new wave haircut – the performance from A Flock Of Seagulls, who would surely have pushed them to the limit, unceremoniously dumped from Day 1’s footage – but it is Bozzio’s then-wife Dale who steals the show: her combination of blonde/pink/green hair, visor, silver spandex and plastic bra confirming her as the standout image of the entire festival, the singer looking positively alien in front of the jagged silver and blacks of the band’s stage set.
Looking slightly different from the norm too are U2: The Edge with hair, Bono with highlights. The bazillion-selling Irish legends get two songs in the film (half as many as Triumph), ‘The Electric Co.’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, the white flags that would accompany the latter throughout the ‘War’ world tour falling almost still in the sweltering heat. That is, until Bono, proving that he once was a bonafide rock ‘n’ roller, takes to a rope ladder and climbs up onto the roof of the mammoth stage set-up, white flag a-waving, death a-defying.
All that’s left, headliner David Bowie wiped from the memory, is the performance of Stevie Nicks. With the release of her second solo album, ‘The Wild Heart’, then less than a couple of weeks away, the Fleetwood Mac legend teased the swarm of fans still standing late on the Monday night with new song ‘Stand Back’, going back to ‘Bella Donna’, her first solo release, for ‘Outside The Rain’. The costume changes and proper stage set smack of an artist at the top of the tree and Stevie doesn’t disappoint, even going on a walkabout to get nearer to the fans, stopping short of doing a Bono and climbing into the heavens.
The ’83 US Festival is a legendary event in the annals of rock ‘n’ roll history: of that there is little doubt. Television footage and bootlegs from the festival have kept music fans in a cool place between the audio and visual for three decades, which is why this first official DVD release, as good as it is, falls a mile short of being the definitive article on the now-iconic festival.
It’s not that it tries to rewrite history by omitting a wealth of important, oft-historic, rock ‘n’ roll moments, it’s that, by leaving them out, future generations will rewrite history by accident: casual viewers will never know the full line-up of bands that thrilled 670,000 different heat-crazed people over a holiday weekend.
This DVD/film offers vintage thrills, but some of those are killed by the knowledge that so much more took place. This is like digging up a time capsule and finding that some of its contents have been so badly treated by the elements that you don’t even know what they used to be. A Bowie or a Berlin? A Quiet Riot or a Quarterflash? The answers are hidden….in plain sight.
To pick up your copy of ‘US Festival 1983 – Days 1-3’ on DVD – CLICK HERE
