‘Ottawa’ Desert Trip: A Trip Down Memory Lane
INDIO, Calif., — “We know where the music’s playin,’ Let’s go out and feel the night.”
Canadian Neil Young captured the spirit of Desert Trip during his song Harvest Moon at the three-night music festival featuring six legendary rock acts — Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Young, Paul McCartney, The Who and Roger Waters — sharing the same bill for the first time.
As Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood told me back in Toronto during TIFF where the band’s excellent South American and Cuban tour documentary, Ole Ole, Ole debuted, it was “a gathering of the clans.”
But in some quarters, it was dubbed Oldchella given the headliners’ average age is 72. The festival took place on the palm tree-laden Empire Polo Field where Coachella has been staged every year since 1999.
Even Stones frontman Mick Jagger had a laugh at his own band’s expense on Friday night following Dylan’s opening night performance: “Welcome to the Palm Springs retirement home for genteel British musicians!