Here’s who wasn’t taking a load off: the house band at Thursday’s tribute to Robbie Robertson at the L.A. area’s Kia Forum.
Starting a little after 7 and ending at midnight, the all-star show dubbed “Life Is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson” clocked in at just a little under five hours, which had to have been more taxing for the Don Was-led players than it was for the audience in Inglewood. This epic length came even without a single retake being done for the cameras — Martin Scorsese was directing the collection of footage — and with three intermissions turning out to be surprisingly brief. It was epic, but it was a weight the happy, unbothered audience bore lightly.
What the Band-loving crowd got was a show with 37 numbers sung by about 20 brand-name artists, alone or in combination, each getting anywhere from one to three songs apiece. The except to that was a five-song set by Eric Clapton , with his own touring band stepping in for the house band, which finally got to take five near the top of the final hour. Van Morrison was the other veteran afforded the luxury of being able to headline three songs in a row without interruption, mid-show.
There was no hubris involved in making these allowances for Clapton and Morrison to get so much concentrated real estate during the evening; these Robertson buddies more than re-earned the privilege of towering over the homage. Others getting their spotlight moments during the arguably all-killer, n.