Few bands were better suited to the soft-rock breeze of the early 1970s as America. Slotting comfortably between Neil Young during his Harvest period and the so-called Avocado Mafia (Jackson Browne, The Eagles et al.), the band successfully galloped far and wide. Predominantly, this was on the back of a nameless horse and, to a lesser extent, via a golden hair surprise.
Prior to America’s arrival, support act Rick Price appears on stage with little more than the clothes on his back and a six-string in his hands. Looks can be deceiving, however, as he proceeds to very nearly upstage his top-billing counterparts.
Affable and in fine voice, Price pulls off the rare feat of keeping new material on par with older hits such as ‘Heaven Knows’ and ‘Not A Day Goes By’. Few would’ve complained if he played past his allocated 35 minutes.
With the crowd still filing in from the interval, America graces the stage with a backlit screen rolling imagery of the USA circa 1973. Admittedly, they begin slightly scratchy. ‘Tin Man’ and ‘You Can Do Magic’ fail to snap with the crispness of their recorded equivalents. Co-lead vocalist Dewey Bunnell’s vocals also seem particularly faint.
Any issues quickly dissipate when the band launches into ‘Don’t Cross The River’ and the haunting ‘Daisy Jane’. From there it is a cavalcade of nostalgic hits and iconic covers from their new album, Back Pages.
One of the oft-forgotten strengths of America is their ability to turn a phrase. Take, for example, the dream-inducing lyrics of “seasons crying no despair / alligator lizards in the air” from ‘Ventura Highway’. It’s a song that lets you feel the spray of sand from the bitumen without having to burn along the desert roads of California.
The likes of ‘Only In Your Heart’, ‘Woman Tonight’ and a cover of Joni Mitchell’s ‘Woodstock’ only add to the wistful quality of the night. If holes could be poked it would be that a few key tracks – specifically ‘Muskrat Love’ and ‘Rainbow Song’ – were omitted.
Such oversights are minor when considering the trifecta of hits the band unleashes to close the night, namely ‘Sandman’, ‘Sister Golden Hair’ and, of course, ‘Horse With No Name’. Of the three, ‘Sandman’ is the obvious highlight with its ferocious outro and complementary Vietnam footage.
For a band so irrevocably linked with the soft-rock movement of the 70s, America proved tonight that regardless of time, genre and, style, quality tunes hold true.
– Paul Bonadio
