“Live music at Red Rocks is pretty good,” went the understatement uttered in a French accent by Phoenix frontman Thomas Mars. The romantic indie-rock band, co-headlining the storied Colorado venue with Beck for two nights, got the sold-out crowd bopping and cheering before and after the sun went down, and the 46-year-old Mars had the energy to walk all the way to the last row (there are 70 of them) and come back down to finish a song. It’s been a hell of a climb—no pun intended—for a band Mars formed when he was 10.
Taking the big Red Rocks stage around 9:15 p.m., 53-year-old Beck revealed himself to be even more of a showman than Mars. Those who haven’t seen Beck perform and remember him as the jaded eccentric from “Loser” or the lounge singer from “Where It’s At” would be surprised to see his semi-trained dance moves, his intermittent whirling around with the mic like Roger Daltrey, his improvised love-breaks like Boyz II Men or even Prince, his headbanging with his bandmates like Foreigner or Judas Priest, and—especially—his snarling, adept rock and blues guitar on electric and acoustic.
On the opening “Devil’s Haircut”, the Los Angeles native and ‘90s icon drove the band with his beat-up black Silvertone, churning out wicked fuzz straight out of an old Link Wray record. Looking more 33 than 53, the fresh-faced Beck—flanked by musicians he’s collaborated with all the way back to 1998’s Mutations—kept his tight, energetic, diverse set going for about 90 minutes, only easing things down at times to bless the audience with tasteful versions of classics like “Golden Age”.
In black leather pants, big black shoes, and a dark blue captain’s jacket, Beck lauded his longtime band at one point for nailing the highlights of his catalog, saying that while he might mess around with countless other musicians—including Phoenix, who came out to play the Summer Odyssey Tour anthem “Odyssey” with Beck—“This is the best these songs will sound.”
Related: Jack White Crashes Beck’s Set In Nashville, Covers Chumbawamba [Watch]
A spontaneous mountain breeze appeared, literally cooling the hot summer crowd as Beck sang, “Let the desert wind cool your aching head” during “Golden Age”, but the peak moment might have been the Grammy winner sitting on the stage playing sly, impressive slide guitar as he looked out at the night, colored lights shining on the rock formations all around. His killer acoustic stylings led into his signature “Loser”, which became an improbable sing-along, with 9,000 people (many of them, like me, parents with their teenagers, remembering Mellow Gold coming out when we were teenagers) repeating “I’m a loser, baby / So why don’t you kill me?” each time the music stopped.
But Beck was not at Red Rocks on his first U.S. tour in four years to experiment but to please. Playing the part of a white, Southern California version of Prince as he does throughout Midnite Vultures, he crooned during the slow jam of “Debra” about going “straight to the Beyond section” at Bed, Bath and Beyond to shop for his lover, adding “Girl, you’ve got a social-media profile I just gotta get with.”
Beck and his band really did “ball and shout” as promised, bringing out all three openers (Phoenix, Japanese Breakfast, and Sir Chloe) for a thumping version of “Where It’s At” to close the show in lieu of an encore, sending the audience out into the star-filled Colorado night happy. If there was any disappointment, it’s that Beck didn’t star in Napoleon Dynamite. During the Midnite Vultures section of last night’s show, he asked if the crowd was feeling “mildly sexy,” and that’s a great way to describe a Beck show—rocking, musically diverse, brilliant, accessible, and, not unlike Napoleon’s climactic dance performance, mildly sexy.
Check out a gallery of images from Beck at Red Rocks courtesy of photographer Kit Tincher. The Summer Odyssey Tour continues tonight, August 16th, with another show at Red Rocks. For tickets and a full list of tour dates visit Beck’s website.
