Altstars – the good old freedom

Old white rock musicians on the way. In the past four weeks, three stars in the 70s, all of whom became famous in the 1970s, have been seen at the Berlin open-air concerts: Bruce Springsteen, Iggy Pop and Neil Young. In the Olympic Stadium, in the Spandau citadel and in the Waldbühne, everything sold out.

You know the three of them enough: rock stars who continue to old age, like their colleagues in jazz and blues. There is nothing surprising; These appearances are like a mixture of expensive, but good food and look at sights in real, in the crowd with other people, we say: the Trevi fountain in Rome. There you can throw in a coin and believe that will bring luck. Or you know that the concert will be good when Neil Young plays as the second song “Hey Hey, My My” (which is more rhyme in the refrain “Rock and Roll Can Never”). Then you sing along like in football.

At Bruce Springsteen, a woman stands in front of the stage with a shield: “30 shows – Time for a Hug?” He makes: Springsteen comes down a small staircase from the huge stage and hugs it. Once he drinks from a mug of beer that a fan holds him. You can see that on three large screens that hang next to and behind the stage. It looks like a concert film, but with a fairly bad sound. From my place in the curve, the real jumping steen is perhaps as big as my little finger. A woman sits next to me, who creams her hands in between, and it smells of chamomile.

Only with Neil Young in the Waldbühne there are no screens. For this one of these man -sized “Big Amps” stands on the podium, as big as a small truck. Is it actually real or just dummy and symbol? In any case, the sound is very loud and very good, the best of all three concert cakes. Music, which is too quiet, often looks like an insult, down to harmlessly. At Iggy Pop you have the impression that his music is turned twice as loud as that of his supporting volume from Berlin, the losers. They are considered punk, but are very nice and wish twice “Have fun with Iggy!”

He comes on stage, throws on »T. V. Eye «immediately his leather vest and – as always – plays the shortest concert of these three legends, maybe 70 minutes, but it is the wildest. Almost only fast numbers, 80 percent are Stooges-songs from pre- and prototype dots, “music that was late 60s early 70s and is still not too late today,” as Diedrich Diederichsen, called this “worship-worthy material”, 20 years ago when he saw Iggy Pop in Berlin.

Nothing has changed except Iggy Pop’s body; It is no longer well trained as you can see on the screens. Now the skin hangs down and wobbles when he quickly lags over the stage with his hip disease. When he sticks to the microphone stand, he lasciviously stretches his left leg, an old sexy pose from him, which he is still good at 78. Rock ‘n’ roll is body, that is the message that actually never dies. And you can move it, always. Perhaps this is the reason why the Iggy audience is most mixed: women and men in T-shirts in young and old, like on a timeless interrail trip, only without a backpack. With 80 euros entry, it is also the cheapest cards – all of them have to stand on stage, as well as Iggy Pop on stage, which only sits twice before the drums.

His entire appearance is a single argument against age discrimination. Be yourself – that is the traditional requirement from the time when Springsteen, Pop and Young became growing up in the beginning revolt of the hippie period, and the Iggy Pop continues to go through. Even if most people may seem too thick, too old or too weak.

Springsteen will be 76 this year. He is the youngest of the three old stars, but has the oldest audience. Mostly 70 plus and mostly men. Some look as if they came from the office, the others, as if they came from the camper. Older men tend to dress too thick. In the full, warm subway to the Olympic Stadium I see them in thermal pants, in jackets and in wool sweaters, from which the wife sitting in front of them sometimes cuts away a lint. The Springsteen fans pay attention to them, in the stadium you can hardly see someone smoking or vapen. Little is also given to the 7-euro beer (standard price for all three concerts).

Bruce Springsteen wears a suit with a vest and tie, which he pulls out very late. Then you can see that his shirt is completely sweaty. He doesn’t move much, begins at 7 p.m., but then plays through for almost three hours, the break between the end of the normal set and the eight encores is maybe 30 seconds. It’s never boring. The mood is deliberately exuberant. With his Rummel-Soul rock, he immediately under control the audience, 1 a performed by a dozen people on stage, including Steven van Zandt as chief guitarist, assisted by Nils Lofgren, although they were once considered competitors and Springsteen’s wife Patti Scialfa in the second row. There are the hits that you expect (“Hungry Heart”, “Born to Run”, “Dancing in the Dark”) – only “Born in the USA” he can no longer get his voice. He tries to sing it milder, but doesn’t sound so good.

In the United States, Springsteen is often busy to prohibit the Trumpists at their events (which is by no means the national anthem for which they think it stupidly). “If the country is ripe for a demagogue, you can be sure that someone appears,” he explains to the Berlin audience in a total of three speeches against Trump, which he thinks is a “criminal clown”, “who sits on the throne and steals what he can never have”. Springsteen does not speak Trump’s name, but so that everyone can follow, his speeches are translated into German on the screens.

It is about the good old freedom, the promise number 1 of the United States, the Springsteen parable in the song “House of a Thousand Guitars”. Freedom, on the okaye, solidarity instead of the variant of everyone, which Trump spreads, acts against the Springsteen like an old, integrative social democrat, which sometimes presents itself like a kind of counter-president. Trump hates him for it and lets a short video run on his channels by hitting a golf ball and shooting jump steels from the stage – it is the assembly of one of his followers.

For Neil Young, the audience of which is a mix of that of Springsteen and Pop (with most long -haired and bearded men over 50), the good old freedom is to sink into the hymnic noise with his four -man band called The Chrome Hearts. Spooner Oldham sits on the organ, who is still two years older than Young, who will be 80 in November. With a hat and joppe, Young looks unspectacular, as has just risen from the tractor on a farm. He does not keep any speeches, only asks two or three times to the audience, whether it goes well, and usually gathers with the second guitarist Micah Nelson (son of Willie Nelson) and bassist Corey McCormick in a semicircle. They put their heads and instruments together like children in the school yard who exchange their playing cards and let these outgoing Neil-Young songs flow: they tear in as melodically and vigorously and take one on long feedback trips. Hardly anyone else can do it. The audience often cheers too early when they are not over yet. One can say that Neil Young plays in the applause. An uplifting experience.

Although he rejects Trump like Springseeen, he doesn’t mention it. Iggy Pop also leaves that. But Neil Young plays an encore. It is “Keep on Rockin ‘in the Free World”. Before that, he says: “It is a crazy world, we have to take care of each other.” Then he bowed in a row with the band.