Beck Basks in Majesty with LA Phil at Hollywood Bowl: Concert Review

I am a winner — that was probably the feeling of everyone who attended Beck’s performance with the LA Philharmonic on Saturday night. It was the apotheosis of the kind of pop-star-at-the-pops event the Hollywood Bowl was truly made for, with Beck often breaking away from his live-artist image to showcase the languidest parts of his repertoire for maximum symphonic synergy. You might be tempted to call it an “LA-only” night if you didn’t know that this show is one of seven Beck is performing with resident orchestras across the country this month, effectively making the Philharmonic a pickup band for the occasion. Sharing is good; other cities and other coasts deserve a piece of this great musical victory, too.

Seeing Beck with an orchestra seems more inevitable than it would be with almost anyone else, even if he hasn't dabbled in it much before as a concert performer. His father, David Campbell, is one of the most celebrated orchestral arrangers in rock circles, well beyond his work with his son. (A quick search of the site Variety The critics’ archives remind us that Campbell arranged for the Who’s orchestral tour that came through the Bowl five years ago, and conducted the strings on a Dave Matthews Band concert there the year before, for starters, in addition to all the recorded work he’s done. Campbell didn’t conduct Saturday night—that honor went to Steven Reineke—but his presence was felt in arrangements that Beck said were largely inspired by what had been recorded in the past, particularly for the twin albums “Morning Phase” (2014) and “Sea Change” (2002). Campbell Sr. also reportedly oversaw all the new arrangements that were created for this tour. In the world of enhanced symphonic rock, Phil’s spotlight on the work Beck did with his father probably counts as the closest thing we’re going to get to “blood harmony.”

There is some very limited precedent for Beck for this: In 2008, he devoted the second half of a headlining set at the Bowl to eight songs with David Campbell leading the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra. Beck's 20-song set with the Phil this weekend (not counting a three-song encore segment without orchestra) more than doubled the amount of time he was previously able to devote to his symphonic side in a show. It gave him a chance to bask in the half of Beck's brain that, on any standard tour, will always be relegated to the realm of recessive genealogy. The highlights of Saturday's show suggested that this slow-moving thing might even represent his better half; it almost seemed like a letdown, relatively, when he threw in “Devil's Haircut” and “Loser” at the end of the show as a bone to the audience. (Emphasis added) almost; no real complaints about a banged-up exit.)

Little of what Beck focused on could be called celebratory. After the instrumental opener, “Cycle,” the artist’s first vocal number was the title track of “The Golden Age,” which was the general public’s first introduction to the idea that Beck, as a musician, could be a depressed man. “Let the golden age begin,” he sang in the first verse, but less as a promise than as a faint hope for some kind of cure for “the difficulty of getting by.” But as a decorator, then as now, “The Golden Age” was not and is not exactly depressing. This album and other modern classics of his more contemplative albums tend to have an understated grandeur that makes it hard to separate the melancholy from the majesty. And why separate them, as a listener? Listening to songs like this and “Round the Bend” at the Bowl, you feel the thrill of that sweeping quality, never quite knowing what you’re being dragged into around the bend. One of David Campbell’s great gifts as an arranger is his ability to tease the ears presagewhich can be easier when you have songs as ambiguous and grandiose as Beck's.

The subtitle of the concert could have been “Summertime Sadness,” if it wasn’t already. If you like to embrace those mixed emotions – the feeling of boredom somehow mixed with a sense of wonder – then the first peak of the setlist could be “Lonesome Tears.” It’s a song that contains some pretty strong emotional spoilers in its title, but there’s a strangely tempered elation to be felt in experiencing the song’s extended climax, which in concert saw Beck step back to let the 80-piece orchestra spiral forward; whether we were going up or down was hard to tell.

The most moving songs in Beck’s orchestral repertoire typically begin with strings and add brass at a key moment in the dramatic chorus. But some songs offer simpler pleasures without that dramatic dynamic, especially when Beck has turned to a particular world dialect. “Tropicalia,” a track from 1998’s “Mutations,” lived up to its Brazilian-inspired name, with “Missing,” from 2005’s “Guero,” “a song we don’t get to play too often,” also in that vaguely Brazilian vein, perfect for what Beck called “a tropical night” (the balmy twilight of mid-’70s Los Angeles).

Similarly, “We Live Again” was nothing short of beautiful, even if its mortality-themed lyrics could be considered dark. Beck shared a funny anecdote about how he came to grips with the song’s inspiration: “I want to dedicate this song to one of my favorite singers who passed away two weeks ago, Françoise Hardy, a great French singer. I was listening to her a lot around the time I did ‘Mutations.’ I met her on a French TV show—she pulled me aside; she didn’t speak very good English—and she said, ‘I know you copied my song… That song, ‘We Live Again,’ that’s my song.’ I said, ‘Yes, that’s yours.’ For many years on tour, I would put my headphones on the bus and listen to her records. She was my medicine.”

Beck had indicated in interviews before the mini-tour that only his band's rhythm section would accompany the orchestra during the main part of the set, with the full band waiting to take the stage only for the final songs. That proved false, in the end, as all four members of the band were on stage for the main set: guitarist Jason Falkner, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr., drummer Joey Waronker, and bassist Justin Meldal-Johnson. But they knew how to play smoothly; there was no sense of the literal battle of the bands that one sometimes heard at the Bowl, when an artist's regular touring band didn't learn to turn down the volume to make room for Dudey. (Forgive the colloquialism for Dudamel or his bandleader understudies.) The only time the stage’s rock ensemble really kicked things off was during “Paper Tiger,” which was, perhaps not coincidentally, the song Beck had chosen to play on television the other day with his band and the dozen or so string players who could fit on the set of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Resuming the song with Phil in full at the Bowl, Beck again had it start with just his band before the full ensemble joined in for the second verse—and he again, as he had on the talk show, handed over to Falkner to play it, resting his hand on the guitar’s shoulder during the climactic solo.

As for the songs in his catalog that didn't demand a full symphonic component, there were different approaches. “Blue Moon” used the strings simply as a color, or augmentation, though the Phil's harpists were in full bloom. There weren't many of Beck's more upbeat songs inserted into the main symphonic set, but the exceptions to that rule were fun – including “New Pollution” from “Odelay,” which began with a jaunty, almost circus-like fanfare, and “Where It's At,” where the Phil eventually let the band take over but added appropriately loud accents on the choruses.

“Wave” suffered a bit from the reverb on Beck's vocals being cranked up to the point where it sounded like he was singing in the world's most cavernous bathroom – not a huge deal, but it did have the effect of making his performance stand out from the orchestra on an otherwise beautiful track. Meanwhile, if there was only one song to cut from the set, it would be the middling Colourbox cover of “Tarantula,” a repetitive number he recorded for the “Roma” soundtrack. It wasn't anywhere near the range of the two (count 'em) Scott Walker songs he covered, “It's Raining Today” and “Montague Terrace (in Blue),” or even the “Eternal Sunshine” soundtrack track “Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime,” which reached the level of a “Sea Change”-era original sound.

At exactly 10:30 a.m., Beck dismissed the orchestra members, explaining that they had to leave after 90 minutes. From there, he did a comical number of exploring the suddenly empty stage on his own: “Which chair should I sit in? … This one’s really hot—these violas, they have a lot of body heat.” Noticing that the timpani player had taken off with his mallets rather than leave them behind for Beck’s antics, the singer pulled out a harmonica for an enthusiastic solo rendition of “One Foot in the Grave,” then called on his band to join him for “Devil’s Haircut” and “Loser.” (They apparently had another penultimate choice planned, canceled without notice when they were reminded of the 10:45 p.m. curfew.)

The bulk of the show was incredibly beautiful stuff, but it didn't really represent all of Beck's moves. So it was refreshing to find him, at the end of “Devil's Haircut,” on his knees, unleashing unbridled bursts on an electric guitar that were at odds with the exquisite caution of much of the material that followed. By symphonic standards, the guitar bullshit was in poor taste—and it was just what was needed to cement at the last minute the fact that this was, in fact, a rock 'n' roll show, even after all its useful beauty.

Jessica Pratt, now on the rise after a 10-year recording career, proved a perfect choice to open the Bowl show – performing music with a continental edge with her small, drumless ensemble and sounding like someone Beck would have been influenced by, like Françoise Hardy, if only she were 40 or 50 years older.

Beck's remaining orchestral dates:

July 10 – Berkeley, California – Greek Theatre (with the Berkeley Symphony)
July 23 – Lenox, Massachusetts at Tanglewood (with the Boston Pops Orchestra)
July 25 – Philadelphia, PA at the Mann Center (with the Philadelphia Orchestra)
July 27 – Vienna, Virginia at Wolftrap (with the National Symphony Orchestra)
July 29 – New York, New York at the Perelman Stage at Carnegie Hall (with the Orchestra of St. Luke's)