Once in a lifetime

Let’s get the ‘was-it-good?’ stuff out of the way first. Yes, it was good. It was better than good. It was incredible, fabulous, dazzling. It was whatever adjective you want to throw at it. I can’t recall seeing a more engrossing pop production, ever.

You don’t just get great songs — come on, you’re not going to quibble about ‘Once in a Lifetime’, or ‘Burning Down the House’, or ‘Slippery People’, or ‘Road to Nowhere’, are you? — played by brilliant musicians. You get them presented in a way no one has thought to present a rock show before.

That way was to remove all fixed points from the stage. Usually, the rock show is governed by its architecture: by the positioning of the drum riser, the keyboards, the mic stands, the amplifiers. The big arena pop shows disrupt that — often the band are partly hidden, giving the star and a supporting cast the run of most of the stage — but even then other fixed points must be navigated: props, ramps, walkways. Without any of those, the entire stage comes into play. But how do you replicate a band without a drummer behind a drum kit? You have six percussionists, each with a piece of handheld kit, or something hanging from their neck. Then you have two backing singers, a guitarist, a bass player, and a keyboard player, and everyone on stage in tightly choreographed motion.

Like Bruce Springsteen’s current Broadway show, though in a very different way, this is far closer to theatre than to a pop concert — a performance to be repeated exactly from night to night. No one casually wanders over to jam back-to-back with another musician: every movement has been planned.