Brett CallwoodRaw Power: Back in 2016, the Desert Trip Festival at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, the site of the annual Coachella Festival, brought together six of the greatest artists in the history of rock ‘n’ roll. The Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Roger Waters, Neil Young and The Who all played over three days, two bands performing headline-length sets each evening. Some playfully referred to it as “Oldchella,” but the magnitude of the event couldn’t be questioned.
This weekend, the same format will be applied to six of the biggest names in hard rock and heavy metal. Power Trip will feature Guns N’ Roses and Iron Maiden on Friday, AC/DC and Judas Priest on Saturday, and Metallica and Tool on Sunday. That is simply immense.
The bill originally included Ozzy Osbourne, incidentally. When the Black Sabbath man and solo metal legend had to pull out for health reasons, Priest (who, like Ozzy, happen to be from Birmingham, England) was happy to jump in.
“Whether Ozzy had anything to do whatsoever with us taking over, I don’t know,” says Priest’s Ian Hill. “But within a very short period of time from him announcing he couldn’t do it, to us getting the phone call, we jumped at it. It’s a mega bill. Six very well-established, high standing bands all together on the same festival – it was something that you want to get involved in. It didn’t take us very long to say yes, really.”
Hill, a very sweet guy to have a Zoom conversation with, is intrigued about the whole “two bands a night” thing.
“It’s a strange concept, isn’t it?,” he says. “We’re used to European festivals – multiple bands on every day on multiple stages from the beer tent all the way up to the main stage. It might go on for two or three days like that — we’re used to that. Ever since 1970 when I went to the Isle of Wight. So yeah, six bands over three days, everybody gets to see the headliner. You couldn’t get six bands of this stature all on the same bill on the same day. There wouldn’t be the time, or the room for the egos probably. Who would wrap the show up? So yeah, it’ll be interesting. It’s the first thing like this that we’ve ever done. We’ve been out with bands like Kiss and AC/DC before, years ago. So we’ve been on the two-big-act bill, sort of thing. But with the festival theme, I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Tool man Adam Jones is similarly psyched.
“It’s really cool, it’s an honor just to be asked with all of these heavy-hitters involved,” Jones says.
Priest will be playing before AC/DC and Hill says the two bands go way back.
“I will watch them for a bit,” he says. “We haven’t seen them for a long while. I’ve seen them on stage – like I say, we toured with them back in 1980 and we had an absolute blast with them. They’re all great lads. We’d finish the gig and then go out with them afterwards. Travel on the bus with them occasionally. So we got to know them quite well. But that was the last I saw of them for a long, long time. I’ve seen them live on a couple of occasions. But I just didn’t want to go barging backstage. It can be a zoo at the best of times. I’m not gonna add to that. It’ll be great to catch up with them again. I’m looking forward to it.”
Meanwhile, Tool will perform before thrash giants Metallica, fresh from their triumphant shows in L.A. at the SoFi Stadium.
“We’ll definitely be seeing them,” says Jones. “I might bring my son. I think playing on the bill, just Metallica and us, it’s absolutely going to inspire us. We’re excited to be at our best and to microwave the crowd.”
That’s the fascinating, and thrilling, thing about this format — it makes sense that the two bands performing on the same night will push each other, inspire each other to give their best.
“I would say yes generally,” says Hill. “But we’re two bands that are quite wide apart musically, and image wise. We were probably very similar at one point. But yeah, it’s always nice to at least hold your own with bands of a similar stature. Or the headliners in this case. So yeah, I suppose you do get an extra kick out of it and try a bit harder.”
Hill says that while a new album is almost ready to drop (the follow up to 2018’s Firepower), there won’t be any new songs performed at this festival.
“No, it’ll be the celebration of what we’ve been doing for the past 50 years,” he says. “There will be a couple off Firepower on there, and a mixture of the stuff from the past albums. There should be something for everyone there, that has been following us over the years. You can’t keep all the people happy all the time, but you can keep most of them happy with a bit of luck.”
Due to the fact that they were added to the bill late, Judas Priest’s stage setup will be much the same as the one they used on their recent 50th anniversary tour.
“It’s pretty much the same stage set that we’ve just come off tour with,” Hill says. “We’re not even tooled up for the new tour yet. There’s a lot of time to go to get that in and put it together, and manufacture it. So we’ll go with what we’ve got, and it’ll be most of what we had on the 50th anniversary tour. One or two things might not be there – we didn’t have a great deal of time to get everything together. It’s been a matter of maybe a month, that’s all, since we knew.”
Jones says that there might be a few surprises in the Tool setlist.
“We dusted off some tunes that we haven’t played in a long time,” he says. “Songs that we think will be appropriate for the setting.”
Tool (Travis Shinn)
Back to that new album, and Hill says that he believes it’s better than Firepower, although he admits that he would say that.
“It’s funny because you sort of feel uncomfortable touring without a new record,” he says. “It’s just one of those things. We did it recently with the 50th anniversary thing that we did right after Firepower, and it just seemed strange that we weren’t promoting anything, apart from celebrating 50 years and coming out the other side in one piece. At least for the most part anyway.”
Jones says that Tool has been working on new material but they’re a long way from a follow-up to 2019’s epic Fear Inoculum.
“We’re always working on new material, but nothing is currently in a finished state,” he says.
Tool will go directly from Power Trip into a North American tour. Judas Priest, meanwhile, will be taking a well-earned break.
“We did the 50th anniversary thing and the Firepower thing right before that, so we’ve been touring solidly for the best part of four years,” says Hill. “So we decided to take this year off, recharge batteries (they need recharging more often than not these days), but then when this cropped up, we couldn’t turn it down. Something of this stature, you couldn’t say no. So we decided to do it. So yeah, general family stuff. Spending time with the kids and the dog and the wife and what have you. Maybe a holiday or two, a weekend or two away, and the usual family stuff.”
Even metal heroes need a holiday.
Raw Power: Power Trip takes place on Oct. 6 to Oct. 8, at Empire Polo Club, Indio. Visit powertrip.live for more info.
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