It’s also a bitch to get to. My first memory of Copenhagen is a simple one. The Cashpoints don’t make any sense and all the buttons are in the wrong place. Large parts of the screen are either reflective surfaces showing back the burning ball of fire that hangs in the sky called the Sun, the rest seems to have suffered from defective LED bulbs, which means that when I think it says “other” – for those of us with less money than the average bear - what I’m really saying is “I’d like £250 please Bob”.
Which is great if you’ve got £250 in the bank. And if you haven’t… and say you’ve left your bank documentation at home to prevent any risk of further damage should your tent get burgled… and you can’t find anyway of paying money into the bank… and every bank wants to set up an account to pay the money back needs more ID than a passport and desperation… and you can’t get a signal on your mobile phone… so you use a hotel phone… except you ring up Swedish International directory enquiries… and they give you the wrong branch number… and it all gets sorted out. Eventually.
And so to the festival, which is some million acres of green fields, and beer cans. We haven’t even entered the gates when someone – mistaking Anni’s accent and her better-than-native English – for an American party dawdles in with the kind of voice so thick you could slice it and serve it as lard. “Gee yaw cahme froham the States as well? Kewl.”
Oh my God. No, get me in here where we ditch loserboy. Tickets are scanned to prevent ones bought on false credit cards getting in for a prompt Danish Polizi visit. Hmm, Cops. Nice. They carry guns here. I feel like I’ve walked into a weird movie. Bill & Ted’s Danish Journey. Or something.
A pitch found, a tent made sloppily, and an excuse of green field becomes Base Camp. Let me be your sherpa.. we camp next to Attack Of The Danish Metal Schoolgirl Virgins. Ever heard “Futureworld” by the immortal Helloween on the World’s Cheapest Stereo ™ and loads of 17 years olds yelling along whilst they eat hash cakes in the bright daylight. At 2am? Welcome to Denmark.
And the next song on the stereo is the immoral “Dr.Stein”. Didn’t Helloween’s singer audition for the Maiden? Whew, welcome to Hairmetalland. I think the Danish government must sponsor the population to wear Guns N Roses t-shirts. And out of the night, as a quick tribute to the World’s Cleanest Festival Toilets ™, comes a posse of the middle aged Denim Army yelling out “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, apparently the Danish National Anthem, as originally performed by Twisted Sister. What is that? A Twisted Sister pin? On Your Lapel? YEEEEEAAAAAHHHH!
Bear in mind the bands haven’t even started yet. There’s only one stage open on the Thursday – the enormous Orange Stage – and the initiating act are the Deftones. More squalling, goatees, yelling of “Motherfuggah” and stomping for adolescents than the whole of California. Then it’s The Hives.. from Swedne. Imagine this. They look like Pulp and Kraftwerk. They all wear black shirts, black suits, white ties, and play 50’s thrashabilly. Their first number is an instrumental featuring the self-appointed World Champion Rock’N’Roll Singer. And the Danish go mental for them.
After this Wyclef Jean is pure comedy. Imagine Jazzie B in a flourescent orange puffa jacket, performing a set of covers and telling Denmark that “Germany – you’re Number One!” three times before he gets the hint and a low flying bottle of piss. His set starts with a DJ for 5 minutes, before he comes on and plays (get this) – No Woman No Cry, Jump Around, another cover, er , another cover, er… he even does, well, some Fugees songs with the vocals coming off a DJ CD. Then more covers - I can’t remember but its pretty bad. I think he even does a Elton John song. It’s like watching a cabaret covers band at a bad party who lucked into the big time. It’s the encore before he plays one of his own songs. Twat.
And onto the positively monolithic Tool. The themes of their lyrics seem to be about the failure of communication. Which is good, because the singer spends the whole set in darkness, and barely says a word to the entire crowd. Of 80,000. After the firsty three songs total 35 minutes, I start to feel that perhaps the organisers could have scheduled someone well, less boring, to headline the first night. Even someone on the second stage like Nick Cave would’ve gone down better than this.
OK, Friday. Yet more bitching. George Thorogood & The Destroyers are forever 1974 rock boogie. He even says “Any women who are getting divorced, or thinking about, come on down and do the bump’n’grind with Georgie!” before playing Bad To The Bone. I was almost tempted, as Hairmetalland goes mad. I sleep with my eyes open.
So to Beck. A whirling one man cabaret dervish, who comes on stage playing “Pay No Mind” on an acoustic.. and as he sings ‘everybody give the finger to the rock n roll singer” 99,998 fingers rise into the air. Not mine of course, so Beck falls over and admits “I’ve forgotten the words” as he collapses in giggles. Then comes his afro-mad, wizard semi-Prince backing band, as he races through Pourple Rain, sorry, I mean Midnight Vultures classics like Debra, Nictoine & Gravy, and a cover of Bowie’sb “Diamond Dogs”. It’s paordy, it’s Vegas, it’s sheer entertainment, it’s bloody hilarious, as his whole band moonwalk across the stage, playing air guitar solos, punch their chests shouting “Hail Metal!” and demolish everything they can find, as I wander off to see the dark prince Nick Cave yell about the Devil in broad daylight.
Now Nick Cave is brilliant, but this isn’t. Daylight, in a field, covered in dust? Nah. Not working. And so over to Neil Young, who is really very good, if you like that kind of thing, but this allegdly legendary Crazy Horse just look old and not anywhere near as heavy as critics would have you believe. I was expecting a wild swirling, brave rock n roll noise, but I got Neil Young, and a really quite old band playing very competent – but unthrilling – rock. The lyrics seems good, if you can make them out from the traditional Crazy Horse song structure which is – intro (4 minutes of guitars) , vocals (1 minute), guitar solo (4 minutes), vocals (1 minutes), extended rock-wig-out ending (5 minutes). Like A Hurricane is 15 minutes. I go away and watch another band play 3 songs. When I come back he still hasn’t finished Like A Hurricane, and he’s been on 2 and a half hours. Yowsa. At 12.53am he finishes, and its still almost daylight.
After that it’s Senor Coconut – I think – who perform a set of Latin/Mamba Kraftwerk covers in white matching shirts and looking like office workers. We Are Showroom Dummies indeed.
After the bands more shouting by metalheads and finally some dim traces of sleep. They love metal here, as evidence by Mayhem who perform at 3pm iun boiling sunlight, except. They brought their own steel barbed wire crucifix with a goats head on it. And they have a special “Fire Roadie” who ensure the everlasting flames that burn around the monitors are infinite. The singer cuts his arms on stage. It’s a weird site to see him do that, and blood to trickle onto the floor. The average song titles I can make out are “Time To Die” and “armageddon”. Each one is about 90 seconds long, and the entire lyric to Armageddon is “Apocalypse/Four Horsemen/Everybody Dies/Armageddon” Genius.
After that I have rocked so hard all I can do is sleep. Patti Smith is next. Next. Bob Dylan, who can prove that genius stinks. His backing band never know what song their performing. Actually neither does Bob, who slurs and burps his way through a set of barely recognisable stinkers. Knocking On Hgeaven’s Door? Go Bob, do that. It’s torturous. He ignores the crowd, doesn’t say one word, and ruins classics. In fact, I think a busker took the wrong turn. Absolute crap.
Robbie Williams though is absolute genius. Apart from the rain. He is a complete star – controlling the crowd as if he was born there – and rampaging through new songs and covers like U2 and Limp Biskit’s “RollinRollinRolin!”. Oh dear. He even plays football with the crowd, and slags off Copenhagen audiences. God, I almost want to shag him. The rain is torrential. So we listen to the Stereo MC’s plough through their reheated old 90’s groove in an excellent way, but it’s dated. And then Faithless bring the house down – if you don’t mind swimming through the field. As mad danish people yell Iron Maiden songs and eat Pasta. “Ja Eyeve Sheen Mahden in Copenhaghgen, Rockilled, and Lahndahn, ‘Ome of the Hammhers..” I am told before the chant runs around a little corner of a damp filed.. HEAVY ISH BEHST HEAVY ISH BEHST
OK, Sunday. After a mutual agreement to never camp in a swimming pool again, the next thing is the Asylum Street Spankers. Country & Western played on washboards. In blinding sunshine. Hard to believe that this place was a swamp nine hours ago.. And Queens Of The Stone Age. I swear we saw this lot on Thursday and they were called Deftones at the time. To the final strait of Apolcalyptica. Who are fucking genius. 4 Cellists headbanging playing a set of stuff like For Whom The Bell Tolls, Master Of Puppets, Nothing Else Matters, Roots, South Of Heaven, and the classic Enter Sandman. It’s absolutely awesome.
And Apocalyptica support Aqua, who are a bouncy, shiny, thing full of sparkly stuff in a dayglo padded cell full of shiny happy pop. They are awesome, if you switch your brain and let your hips do the talking. They come onto an explosion, detonate fireworks, and do all the things they shouldn’t. And then it’s The Cure – after Patti Smith performs an abortion of Pearl Jam’s “Alive”. What a silly silly old haggard senile grandmother of rock.
The Cure’s only gig of the year sees them playing their ickle hearts out, but it’s a weird, curiously muted affair, as the choice of songs reflects. Not one song from the main set is a single, that is, all slow, depressing LP tracks, and a hefty dose of the most recent, maudlin Bloodflowers, which is a great record, but erm, not really stadium material. During one song Perry’s guitar packs up, which is the nearest fun we see all night, except when the static Kraftwerkian Roger O Donnell on keyboards hits the wrong note and says “Ow” very loudly. Robert Smith just looks scared as he bores 60,000 people with some losercreeprock and watches his career slowly slip away. It’s only the encore, brief renditions of Inbetween Days, Just Like Heaven, and the shortest version of A Forest ever that reminds us that The Cure were once, bloody good. In fact they still are, but it’s not the kind of good you want to spend too long. Beiung about 3 feet from the stage, all I can really add wa sthat it was boring. The crowd did nothing except stand around confused, waiting for one of their 40 or so hit singles, which just weren’t coming. And isolated pockets of suicidal brusheads yelling the words to obscurities like, say, “39” and “End”.
Well well well. Four days at Europe’s biggest festival, and that’s what we get. From here on, it’s fire, anarchy, erratic buses that arrive once every three hours (i.e. not hourly as stated), mad demented crushes to get on buses, driving around as the Sun comes up, and quiet, peaceful Swedish streets. And when we get back to England, its worse. It’s as if the whole of Britain closes at 5:30. How backwards. Welcome to the year 2001, or something.
