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\u2019s disease in recent years, played almost all of their biggest hits, from \u201cHot Blooded\u201d and \u201cCold as Ice\u201d to the 1984 ballad \u201cI Want to Know What Love Is.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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 \u201cSweet Home Alabama\u201d and the epic that has become a punchline for the church of rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, \u201cFree Bird.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s new singer, Luis Maldonado, was a dynamic presence \u2013 a wiry crowd-pleaser with the lungs of an opera star. <\/p>\n
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\u2019s songs. <\/p>\n
On \u201cUrgent,\u201d keyboardist Michael Bluestein, who grew up in Brookline and studied jazz at Berklee, celebrated his birthday by trotting out a keytar. <\/p>\n
Midway through the band\u2019s set, Maldonado joined guitarist Bruce Watson at center stage for an \u201cAmerican Idol\u201d-esque rendition of Simon & Garfunkel\u2019s \u201cBridge Over Troubled Water.\u201d The choice was intended, he said, as an antidote to the \u201cnoisy\u201d times we\u2019re living in.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 their patented Southern rock guitar army. Opening with a video tribute to \u201cHell House,\u201d the swampland cabin in Florida where the original band woodshedded (also the name of the band\u2019s new whiskey brand), a voiceover noted that the musicians worked out the parts of their songs \u201clike a jigsaw puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery note played was a tip of the hat to the \u2018Simple Man,\u2019\u201d the voice intoned solemnly.<\/p>\n
When the group launched into \u201cI Know a Little,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
He, however, remained flat-footed. He\u2019s a literal interpreter of the band\u2019s lyrics \u2013 raising three fingers on \u201cGimme Three Steps,\u201d and aiming two like a .22 on \u201cSaturday Night Special.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou guys still love our country?\u201d Van Zant asked with a wry smile as he dedicated \u201cSimple Man\u201d to America\u2019s military and first responders. Earlier, after wrapping up \u201cDon\u2019t Ask Me No Questions\u201d (\u201cand I won\u2019t tell you no lies,\u201d as the full lyric says), he mentioned how much he loves singing that one.<\/p>\n
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 \u201cThe Ballad of Curtis Loew,\u201d an affectionate tribute to a composite character who was \u201cthe finest picker to ever play the blues,\u201d and he took the forefront on the inevitable encore. <\/p>\n
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 \u201cFree Bird\u201d verses. But the band\u2019s best moment may have come a few songs earlier, when they played their invigorating cover of J.J. Cale\u2019s \u201cCall Me the Breeze.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHa-HA!\u201d Van Zant crowed. \u201cNothing in the world like a Lynyrd Skynyrd crowd, baby.\u201d<\/p>\n