Heart and Cheap Trick grace the BOK Center

Two Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees made a tour stop Saturday evening, May 4th, at Tulsa’s BOK Center. Half a century is a long time to make music and define success in the recording industry and both of the venue’s visitors have been in the business much longer than that. What’s more, most of the fans of their sound products, us diehards who have been listening to them from the first aired cut on our local FM rock station and had the craving bestowed upon us to go out and spend our hard-earned money on the vinyl/8-track/cassette/CD with the sound on them, still follow. That was evident on Saturday evening as the majority of the audience that gathered to hear some sounds from their youth were members of the 60+ demographic. It is a rare and beautiful intangible to have a mutually beneficial relationship where artists can define their fans and their fans can define the artists. Hearing songs we’ve known for so long that were written by the very performers who are live on stage before a house of aging rock-and-rollers is indeed a privilege. The way their world class performance rolled back the hands of time to the 1970s and 80s drove home the point of why all present willingly opened their wallet for the cost of admission more profoundly than any amount of wordsmithing any blogger myself included could possibly muster in the wake of such a show. Many thanks up front to all who made it happen.

Cheap Trick, whose name came from an off-the-cuff comment by a band member while attending a concert by the British group Slade (“…they used every cheap trick in the book”), is about as blue collar as a rock band comes. With roots in Rockford, IL dating back to 1967, they earned their place with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2016 having made a career out of being more often than not an opening act for other headliners. Indeed, the first time I saw them in concert in January 1978 they were opening for Kansas at Tulsa’s Fairgrounds Pavillion. I remember them playing some pretty far out stuff neither me nor many if any of my fellow audience members had ever heard. Between the harlequinesque Rick Nielson with his bill-turned-up baseball cap, bargain basement stage attire, energetic body theatrics with bug-eyed expressions and ever more wild sounds coming from his lead guitar riffs, it took me a long time to process exactly what he, Robin Zander, Tom Petersson and Bun E. Carlos were all about. Despite the ugly falling out Carlos the drummer had with Zander in 2010 leading to his departure from the band and subsequent grueling court battle over who is and is not a member, it is safe to say forty-six years hence that their brand of sound art has endured the test of time. When your names and songs get mentioned in cult movies, you know you are here to stay and your place in music history has been duly burned well into the soundscape of the classic rock genre.

The replacement drummer, Daxx Nielson (Rick’s son) aside, the other three band members are 70+ this month with Rick leading the way chronologically at age 75. Even still they took the stage promptly just before 8 PM and were good for a 52-minute set of some of their less often aired tracks along with covers of The Move’s California Man and Fats Domino’s Ain’t That a Shame. It wasn’t until late in the set that they launched into their more well known stuff most of us love them for like I Want You to Want Me, Dream Police and finished with Surrender proving that they remain on top of their craft even as elder statesmen of it.

After around a 35-minute intermission so the stage crew could make the necessary adjustments the Wilson sisters from Seattle, Ann and Nancy, stepped out and took charge. They then proceeded to delivered to that adoring 60-something crowd an hour and a half set and some seventeen tracks of vintage product; theirs and a few of other classic artists. Ann age 73 and Nancy age 70, who were admitted to the Rock & Roll HoF Class of 2013, showed us they can still produce the magic melodies and harmonies from their early albums. Well known cuts like Dreamboat Annie, Little Queen, Crazy on You, Magic Man, These Dreams, Dog & Butterfly and their video reminders of where we all have been in the past fifty years underscored why everyone put up with the hassle of coming downtown on a Saturday night. They also performed covers of other artists. The first was a seamless segue after Straight On into David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, Led Zeppelin’s Going to California found its way into the set list and solid rock standby, The Ocean was part of their encore. Probably the most moving song of the show was Nancy’s acoustic tribute, 4 Edward, to the late Eddie Van Halen after a personal story of what transpired between them after a discussion of acoustic vs electric guitar application and how the song came to be. The finale that capped off the evening was an encore performance of Barracuda, a song of a very personal story about dealing with a music industry predator and the lesson it taught them. One thing stood out even from the nosebleed level cheap seats and that is the Wilson sisters appear to have beaten the odds. Considering where they began from early career tussles with unsavory agents and opportunistic recording companies to misadventures in personal relationships to simply still being A-list performers in a demanding business while in their 70s, it is hard to refute that assertion. Being one of many who lusted mightily after their youthful beauty some forty-five years ago, it is comforting to see up close that the aging process has been kind to them.

The Wilson sisters are now backed up by a solid group of top-tier musicians. Sharing the stage with their greatness was Ryan Wariner (lead and rhythm guitar), Ryan Waters (guitars), Paul Moak (guitars, keyboards and backing vocals), Tony Lucido (bass and backing vocals) and Sean T Lane (drums). There was some pre-show brouhaha regarding drummer Sean T. Lane playing his bicycle (a specialized percussion instrument of his own invention). It did evoke memories of Frank Zappa (at least in my own head) and Lane did play it briefly during the course of the set, but it was to his credit not a show-stealing demonstration. At the end of the night the professional contribution of all to the evening’s sounds was much appreciated.

It is events and attractions like this that keep us 60-somethings connected to the history that over time has been instrumental to what has shaped our character and made us who we now are. Seeing and hearing the actual souls from where it all originated and who for so long have occupied the stage place in our heads and hearts is the icing on that cake with sugar, cherries and sprinkles on top. Cheap Trick and Heart delivered their money’s worth of talent for two and a half hours of time travel back to our younger selves. If they continue to play, we will continue to listen. Thanks again to everyone involved and thanks for reading.