On Saturday, they got what they paid for. Foreigner, which weathered the departure of frontman Lou Gramm to feuding and health concerns in the early 2000s and guitarist Mick Jones to Parkinson’s disease in recent years, played almost all of their biggest hits, from “Hot Blooded” and “Cold as Ice” to the 1984 ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
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Skynyrd, taking the headline slot, was led as usual by Johnny Van Zant, younger brother of Ronnie Van Zant, the frontman who died in a plane crash in 1977. That band swaggered through most of their own best-known songs, including “Sweet Home Alabama” and the epic that has become a punchline for the church of rock ‘n’ roll, “Free Bird.”
While both groups have long been part of the canon (Foreigner was finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024), the double bill provided some stark contrasts. Foreigner’s new singer, Luis Maldonado, was a dynamic presence – a wiry crowd-pleaser with the lungs of an opera star.
Born in Mexico, he grew up in Arizona and came to prominence when he joined the San Francisco band Train. A few years ago, he said, he was thinking about taking a break from the music world. While camping somewhere on Mount Kilimanjaro, he got a call to join Foreigner. He seemed genuinely thrilled to sing the band’s songs.
On “Urgent,” keyboardist Michael Bluestein, who grew up in Brookline and studied jazz at Berklee, celebrated his birthday by trotting out a keytar.
Midway through the band’s set, Maldonado joined guitarist Bruce Watson at center stage for an “American Idol”-esque rendition of Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” The choice was intended, he said, as an antidote to the “noisy” times we’re living in.
Lynyrd Skynyrd have embraced some of that noise in recent years, but they mostly set aside their jingoism to give the people what they wanted – their patented Southern rock guitar army. Opening with a video tribute to “Hell House,” the swampland cabin in Florida where the original band woodshedded (also the name of the band’s new whiskey brand), a voiceover noted that the musicians worked out the parts of their songs “like a jigsaw puzzle.”
“Every note played was a tip of the hat to the ‘Simple Man,’” the voice intoned solemnly.
When the group launched into “I Know a Little,” a hillbilly romp written by the late guitarist Steve Gaines, Van Zant asked the crowd if they were ready to put on their dancing shoes.
He, however, remained flat-footed. He’s a literal interpreter of the band’s lyrics – raising three fingers on “Gimme Three Steps,” and aiming two like a .22 on “Saturday Night Special.”
“You guys still love our country?” Van Zant asked with a wry smile as he dedicated “Simple Man” to America’s military and first responders. Earlier, after wrapping up “Don’t Ask Me No Questions” (“and I won’t tell you no lies,” as the full lyric says), he mentioned how much he loves singing that one.
Guitarist Rickey Medlocke, who sang and played drums for Skynyrd briefly in the early 1970s, rejoined the group on guitar in the 1990s. He played slide on “The Ballad of Curtis Loew,” an affectionate tribute to a composite character who was “the finest picker to ever play the blues,” and he took the forefront on the inevitable encore.
For that, Van Zant perched a symbolic gambler-style hat on his microphone stand and gave way to vintage black-and-white footage of his late brother singing the famous “Free Bird” verses. But the band’s best moment may have come a few songs earlier, when they played their invigorating cover of J.J. Cale’s “Call Me the Breeze.”
“Ha-HA!” Van Zant crowed. “Nothing in the world like a Lynyrd Skynyrd crowd, baby.”
James Sullivan can be reached at jamesgsullivan@gmail.com.
LYNYRD SKYNYRD + FOREIGNER
With Six Gun Sally. At the Xfinity Center, Saturday