Hyde Park Calling 2007 - Sunday

United Kingdom | by Nick Bruce | 24 June 2007

With most of the country was on high alert with flood warnings, it was parents on high alert for thier daughters as Aerosmith rocked into Hyde Park...

Hangover or no hangover The Answer shred the stage to pieces early on Sunday morning. The Irish band have a sound that is so extremely rock n’ roll, they make Ozzy Osbourne look and sound like a gibbering idiot. They are pure long-haired, head-banging rock with mega riffs and ear-bleedingly loud tunes.

Then Jet walk on stage to become possibly the most disappointing act of the weekend. Following the storm that is The Answer they look decidedly on autopilot. Lead singer Nic Cester is sedate, wrapped up in a nice cravat as he lumbers through hits, ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ and ‘Look What You’ve Done’.

A starched and tanned Chris Cornell pouts on stage as though he is shooting an ad for Dolce & Gabbana. His set is a montage of Sound Garden, Audioslave and Rage Against The Machine tracks, with some of his own solo tunes thrown in for fun - and they are all very, very good. The only downer is when he mistakenly performs the theme tune he penned for the latest James Bond film. The song is bad, the performance is slick: the man is a sell-out. Yet he redeems himself with an acoustic solo rendition of ‘Black Hole Sun’ which is fantastic.

When Aerosmith launch on stage, to the sound of rapturous applause, the weather has broken, again, into heavy rain but both Steve Tyler and Joe Perry are unstoppable on stage. Steve Tyler looks like a cross between Mick Jagger and a Gelfling from ‘The Dark Crystal’. He is extremely charismatic and bellows out hits, ‘Dude Looks Like A Lady’, ‘Love In An Elevator’ and the massively popular ‘Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ with incredible vigour. He talks to the crowd in a voice that has real experience behind it which adds all the more to the performance.

Aerosmith bring an exotic excitement to the proceedings that someone like Peter Gabriel will never be able to do. They’re loud, unpredictable, even dangerous onstage, and the audience love it. Despite the weather, the crowd is a heaving throng of hands-in-the-air, Jack Daniel’s drinking rockers, and for an hour and ten minutes, Hyde Park is no longer in London but a park outside Motor City USA.

It’s dirty, it’s naughty, and it’s exciting and finally, after almost a day’s worth of music, Hyde Park Calling has managed to hit exactly the right note.