By Brian Mansfield, Special for USA TODAY
MANCHESTER, Tenn. � The Bonnaroo line of the weekend came from Stephen Stills: "If Woodstock had been like this, we'd never have left." Instead of the famed mud from the 1969 New York festival, the 80,000 Bonnaroo attendees were covered in Tennessee dust. A haze of it rose 30 feet into the air on Saturday, making a bandanna worn over the nose and mouth the weekend's de rigueur fashion accessory. Saturday's music included an afternoon of folk from the likes of Old Crow Medicine Show and Alison Krauss & Union Station on the large Which Stage and, at The Other Tent, a gypsy-punk revue that culminated in sets from funk legend Bootsy Collins and San Francisco's Gogol Bordello.
By Jeff Kravitz, FilmMagic
Singer Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells climbed into the crowd during the duo's performance. The fans then passed her back to the stage.
By Jeff Kravitz, FilmMagic
Singer Alexis Krauss of Sleigh Bells climbed into the crowd during the duo's performance. The fans then passed her back to the stage.
Hoop dreams: Basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar screened On the Shoulders of Giants, a documentary that he executive produced, at Bonnaroo's cinema tent. The film, narrated by Jabbar and Jamie Foxx, tells the story of the Harlem Rens basketball team of the 1920s, '30s and '40s. The all-black team was a dominant force in a segregated sport, once winning 88 consecutive games and also claiming the first professional basketball championship in 1939 at Chicago's World Professional Basketball Tournament. "The Rens are important to me because they epitomized what the Harlem Renaissance was all about," says Jabbar, who grew up in Harlem. "Black Americans were trying to achieve real citizenship, and the aspirations of black Americans really started to come into public consciousness during the Harlem Renaissance. The Rens really epitomized that in the field of sports in the same way that the Negro Leagues baseball teams did." During a press conference Saturday afternoon, Jabbar noted that he once harbored musical aspirations: "If I'd had my way, I would've been Bud Powell, but I didn't practice the piano."
Everybody's welcome: The crowd for Mumford & Sons' afternoon set at Which Stage stretched back to the Centeroo marketplace and clogged the paths on the sides of the field. The massive audience prompted the group's Ben Lovett to note, "There are so many more of you than there were last year," when the band played an early Saturday show in one of the tents. By the end of Saturday's show, the stage was overflowing, too, as Union Station Dobro player Jerry Douglas and members of Old Crow Medicine Show joined Mumford & Sons for a rousing, sing-along version of Amazing Grace. The audience included a variety of celebrities as well, among them actors Zach Braff and David Glover, porn star Ron Jeremy and former American Idol runner-up David Archuleta.
The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival took Manchester, Tenn., by storm in its 10th year with 80,000 attendees. Here's the full recap:
Festival-hopping: After Sugarland's Friday performance at the CMA Music Festival in Nashville, the duo's Kristian Bush traveled the hour down I-24 to Bonnaroo. On Saturday, he took in sets by the Black Keys, Deer Tick, Gogol Bordello, Portugal the Man and Brazilian-expatriate group Forro in the Dark. "It's Brazilian world music, and they're doing Temptations moves that we totally have to relearn," Bush says. "They also did a clap breakdown, which I guess is really popular in Latin music. Like, they stop the music and just start clapping, and you have multiple clapping patterns on top of each other. Then they break back into the song, and it's like (Bruce) Springsteen showed up."
Something happening here: "We're Buffalo Springfield," Neil Young told the Bonnaroo crowd. "We're from the past." But in the hands of original members Young, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay, along with drummer Joe Vitale and bassist Rick Roses, the group's songs sound new again ? especially since most members of the mostly young audience could never have heard them performed live before Buffalo Springfield disbanded 43 years ago. The members of the reunited group were clearly having fun: At one point, Young put his hands together above his head, swaying side to side and shouting, "Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo!" The crowd, naturally, followed suit. A threatening storm never quite materialized, though a cooling shower began during the set's third song, Burned. Other highlights included a lengthy guitar jam between Stills and Young during Bluebird; For What It's Worth, the group's sole radio hit; and a set-closing rendition of Young's Rockin' in the Free World.
The Eminem show: Bonnaroo's 80,000 attendees might have been waiting eagerly for Eminem's headlining set Saturday, but the rapper had trouble holding on to some of them early in his set, which lasted a little more than an hour. In the back of the main stage park, chants of "Turn it up! Turn it up!" competed for attention with his early numbers. If it hadn't been for hype man Mr. Porter's frequent exhortations of "Bonnaroo, make some noise!" many would have lost interest all together. But once Eminem hit Love the Way You Lie, he had the crowd all the way to the end of the set with I Need a Doctor, a quick recap of the Slim Shady song cycle and powerful performances of Not Afraid and Lose Yourself that had tens of thousands of people pumping their hands in the air and firing every word right back at the stage at the top of their lungs.
Revisiting Bonnaroo: The organizers of Bonnaroo have always had an affinity for the music of New Orleans. In fact, the name of the festival is a bowdlerization of laissez les bon temps rouler, or "let the good times roll." The name came from the 1974 album Desitively Bonnaroo by New Orleans pianist Dr. John. During a late-night show Saturday, Dr. John recreated that album along with the key musicians who played on it ? the original Meters and producer/pianist Allen Toussaint. The show united not only three famed Crescent City acts, but three of the city's great keyboardists: Dr. John and Toussaint, who sat facing each other across grand pianos, and Meters organist Art Neville. In the audience, Keith Coes, who has attended all 10 years of Bonnaroo, watched appreciatively. "It's old school," says Coes, 50, of Nashville. "You've got to respect where you've been to know where you are now."
Georgina Grenville Shakira Bar Refaeli Tara Reed Radha Mitchell
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