Like a Shakespearean comedy, this year’s Bacchanal to the Future began with drama, ended with a wedding and was filled with utter confusion in between, including what is believed to be the first reenactment of a Civil War battle involving zombies.
As is the case most years, this account of Bacchanal XI was pieced together from a combination of video footage, police reports and accounts of the participants and organizers, many of whom were not available to discuss the events until days after they occurred.
More than 130,000 fans filled NashVegas’ Centennial Park for the festival, whose motto this year changed from “Nothing Exceeds Like Excess” to “Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” in keeping with a format change that expanded the festival to three full days. Many had come expressly to see the reanimated co-grand marshals: Hunter S. Thompson, the high school journalism teacher of QCurl Sharif who in many ways inspired the event, and, making his first public appearance since his death a year ago, former South African president Nelson Mandela.
But these two luminaries were overshadowed by unscripted opening for the show Friday morning, when Julia Roberts and Hugo Chavez were set to serve in the traditional roles of Aphrodite and Charon. Instead, Bakers’ patron and sometimes booster Shiva the Destroyer of Worlds appeared with the actual Greek gods Charon and Aphrodite, who portrayed themselves in the restaging of the “birth of Venus” that has launched past Bacchanals.
“After we had to bump her for Marilyn Monroe last year, Julia had been really looking forward at last to playing Aphrodite,” said festival co-host Mos Ded on Saturday afternoon. “And we already have Pam Grier lined up for 2015. But what are you gonna do?
“And I can’t say it didn’t make for a hell of an open. Something special invariably happens when Shiva is in the house. I thought we were heading sideways there for a minute when Aphrodite made that crack about the Parthenon looking like a cheap Chinese Gucci knockoff, but it all got smoothed out.”
With the Greek immortals joining in, emcee Haven Hamilton opened the Bacchanal with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Then, asking the crowd to observe two minutes of silence, Hamilton dedicated the festival to Evelyn Rotier, the park-area restaurateur who died the week before — and whose son, Charlie, has been a fixture at past Bacchanals, occasionally dispensing free “medical supplies” via slingshot from the Parthenon roof.
“She was like a surrogate mother to me and Mos Ded” a tearful Sharif told Vice President Joe Biden later in the VIP lounge. “She gave us jobs as dishwashers after our first arrest, which was the result of a misunderstanding by the police. And when one of the cooks bullied me, she shot him in the leg and then fired him. I owe an awful lot to that woman.”
When the silence ended, Charlie Rotier, speaking from a megaphone atop the Parthenon, announced that the first 50,000 attendees who had received sequentially numbered festival wristbands when they came through the main gate would receive a free Rotier’s cheeseburger on French bread, made possible by a gift from the Jorgé and Melinda Linardo Foundation.
With the crowd still roaring, Hamilton introduced the Bacchanal’s new co-emcee, a reanimated Don Cornelius, who lit the festival’s ceremonial torch that burns throughout the weekend and shouted, “Are you ready to get on with the get-on?”
Cornelius introduced the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, who made his Bacchanal debut thanks to a nifty assist from Cambridge owner Dave the Animal, one of the original members of Morris Day and the Time. Near the end of his 90-minute set, Prince dedicated one of his biggest hits to DTA, saying, “In 15 years Animal will party like it’s 1999” — a reference to DTA’s backward travel through the space-time continuum.
Cornelius then quieted the masses before leading them in the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” demonstration that lasted several minutes as a show of support for the troubled citizens in Ferguson, Missouri. The moving demonstration of unity noticeably created tension for the Metro Police and National Guard units assigned to keep a semblance of order within the area covering the park and surrounding city blocks. In a shocking point of emphasis, country star Tanya Tucker, dressed as a peace officer, stepped onstage and shot Cornelius in the back as his arms were raised. Following a few intense moments, the big former host of Soul Train raised himself up from the floor, revealing it to have been an act. He and Tucker embraced and engaged in a long kiss, signifying the festival’s universal theme of love.
“I remember the night in LA when she really shot me — after huffing a few rails off my back,” Cornelius said to the relieved crowd. “She and Glen had been fighting. She would have come after me with anything. If the gun hadn’t been handy, she’d have grabbed whatever was close. I’ve always said ‘guns don’t kill people—people kill people. And, in some cases, people kill themselves. Oh yeah, it’s all coming back to me now.’”
Amid the music — Friday’s lineup included Bacchanal perennials Steely Dan, Warren Zevon, Freddy Fender, the Butthole Surfers and Little Jimmy Dickens — one of the highlights of the first day involved the kind of Hollywood spectacle for which the festival has become renowned. To commemorate the sesquicentennial of the Battle of Franklin, organizers unleashed 5,000 zombies from Sharif’s Bobberhead Lodge, all dressed in Confederate butternut uniforms, who stormed into the park from Dog Park Hill west of the Parthenon. The undead soldiers, led by a reanimated veteran of Franklin, States Rights Gist, were met by several thousand festival-goers who paid $20 each for the opportunity to fire reproduction Sharpe’s carbines and field artillery into the advancing Rebel zombie line. Upon a pre-arranged signal, the Confederates retreated, leaving roughly half their forces dead or re-dying on the field.
“We had both production lines at Hohenwald going three shifts for weeks to get this done,” said a tired but exuberant Sharif afterward. “And with a live-fire event like this, you can imagine the permitting and insurance were hell. But I think it was worth it. Before he re-died, General Gist told me it had been his great honor to come back – kind of like his ‘Field of Dreams.’”
After the “battle tribute,” in a break with tradition, Levon Helm led the crowd in singing “The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down,” which has closed the Bacchanal every year since it began. “It just seemed right to do it this way,” said Sharif, who accompanied Helm, Robbie Robertson and Garth Hudson on jew’s harp until he was overcome by emotion during the final chorus and left the stage.
In another departure from previous years, Saturday’s festivities began promptly at 8 am, and the bleary-eyed revelers who arrived early or stayed all night were greeted with a surprise — an unannounced performance by Led Zeppelin. With a bit of special effects staging courtesy of Shiva, Robert Plant descended to the Parthenon stage from what one reviewer described as a “cosmic escalator,” as Jimmy Page played the opening chords of “Stairway to Heaven.” Later in their two-hour set, the band were joined by NFFA founder Jorgé Linardo on “Houses of the Holy” and “Going to Kashmir.” Then Sharif provided soulful blues harmonica on “When the Levee Breaks,” and the band followed with “Black Dog,” which Plant dedicated to Jim McMahon, who had to be awakened by
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| Goodrow on air guitar during Led Zep's encore. |
Justin Timberlake after he apparently fell asleep in the VIP Lounge, where Thompson and a reanimated Ed Bradley had been holding court all night. Halfway through Zeppelin’s encore, “Dazed and Confused,” an obviously intoxicated Dave “Goodrow” Goodridge, who had been named by Ded as “Master of the Vomitorium,” wandered onstage, attempting to play air guitar before exiting with the band with hands aloft amid the crowd’s cheering.Saturday’s chariot race, which has become a crowd favorite since the Bakers and Beelzebubbas made a civic gift of the Centennial Park Hippodrome in 2008, featured General John Bell Hood driving “Rebel Hell” for the Bakers and Marty Stuart holding the reins of the Bubbas’ “Mandolin Wind” ride. Rounding out the field were two winners from an earlier qualifying heat: the Black Dogs’ “Chariot of Fur,” helmed by East Nashville mayor Todd Snider, and the Corsairs’ “Hot Rod LinkedIn,” whose driver, George Frayne IV, earlier in the afternoon had made a triumphant return to the Bacchanal main stage as Commander Cody with his Lost Planet Airmen. General George Washington Leonard, accompanied onto the track by his current girlfriend, Scarlett Johansson, served as flagman.
At the request of Bubbas radio announcer Art Bell, who broadcast continuously from Centennial Park during the nearly 56 hours of the festival — some of his live interviews with Bacchanal participants could be heard via speakers throughout the park — before the starting flag dropped race attendees observed one minute of silence for Rob Bironas, the winningest coach in Bakers history, who died tragically in a mystery-shrouded car crash at the beginning of the season. On the gray afternoon, the festival’s Singapore-based technology team projected holographic video images of Bironas into the sky, allowing the dark clouds to serve as a screen and creating a haunting, larger-than-death effect.
During the race itself, while attempting to control his team of horses with one arm (his other limb was lost at Gettysburg), and reportedly dosed heavily with artisan-crafted Corsair laudanum, Hood lost control while running strongly in second place, overturning his chariot and enabling Stuart to coast down the final straightway for the Bubbas’ second consecutive win at the Hippodrome. Hood, whose left leg was severed in the crash, insisted on having a tourniquet applied while his chariot was being righted. The general then finished the race before receiving medical attention from the Bakers team physician, Dr. Timothy Leary, and being rushed back to the Hohenwald compound for regenerative treatment.
“You saw a real warrior out there,” Sharif told Bell an exclusive post-race interview that aired live on Unserious Satellite Radio. “I think we found more than a driver today. J.B. might be our new linebackers coach. And, the laudanum connection doesn’t hurt.” Sharif also indicated that, if the parties could come together on a contract, a reanimated Bironas might return next year as the permanent charioteer for Team Baker.
The race’s other casualty was Cam Newton, who crashed the Animals’ Methlon ZLC (Zero Liability Corporation) chariot in a preliminary race. Newton, who suffered an injury to his lower back, has been cut from the Cambridge team.
Snider, meanwhile, blamed his third-place finish not on Hood’s wreck but on “some last-minute inspirational vaping that turned out to be performance-de-enhancing. Folks in the Nasty understand that we represented.”
Saturday afternoon involved another Bacchanal innovation: an unprecedented procession of “one-hit wonder” acts performing their one hits: Archie Bell & the Drells, Mungo Jerry, Norman Greenbaum, Brewer & Shipley, Zager & Evans, Carl Douglas, Tommy Tutone, The Surfaris, Nena, the Jim Carroll Band, the Neon Philharmonic, Mark Dinning, the Big Bopper and Sir Mix-a-Lot, among others.
Later in the day a reanimated Lowell George and Little Feat elated the crowd in their Bacchanal debut, followed by Howlin Wolf, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tony Joe White, the proto-punk giants Black Flag and John Coltrane, before the evening’s headliner, Willie Nelson, took the stage.
“Believe it or not,” said the Bubbas’ Chuck Barris, who handles most of the artist bookings each year, “Willie has never played a Bacchanal before now because he said it wasn’t’ different enough from most of his own shows. Whatever – we’re just glad he finally came. This was a big get for us.”
As the highlight of his two-hour set, Nelson paid tribute to old friend Waylon Jennings with emotional renditions of “Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” and “I Don’t Think Hank Done It This Way.” During Nelson’s encore, the crowd rose as one to its feet after “Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain,” when Iraqi President and Bacchanal veteran Saddam Hussein appeared onstage and joined Willie for a rousing, 10-minute version of “Whiskey River.”
Sunday morning saw the arrival of a procession led by U.S. President and Friend of the Bakers Barack Obama, accompanied by Sharif, Mandela, Marty Stuart, Pops Staples and the Staple Singers, who asked the crowd to join them in “It’s a Long Walk to D.C.” Behind them were 5,000 marchers who had walked with them to the Parthenon from the old Tennessee State Prison. Along the route they stopped outside the fortified perimeter of Club Gitmo, where volunteers from the Bubbas’ Women’s Auxiliary dispensed bottled water and energy bars. After the group’s arrival and before joining Bakers investor Petro “Chocolate King” Poroshenko in the VIP Lounge, Obama remained onstage with the Staples, providing the background “Help me, help me’s” during the chorus of “I’ll Take You There.”
Among Sunday’s other highlights:
• The first performance of the reformed Wu-Tang Clan, which also included several songs from Ghostface Killah’s new solo project.
• Bacchanal favorites Dr. John and the Meters, who performed this year with a reanimated Professor Longhair
• Nashville rappers Dr. Krunkenstein performing the songs from their new LP, “White Noise,” whose timely “500 Watts” is reportedly being slotted as a single for college radio by the band’s label, Nastyville Records.
• The original cast of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” whose performance of “Let’s Do the Time Warp (Again)” sent the crowd into such a frenzy that the show had to be halted for 15 minutes.
• A reanimated Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight, who announced a “unity tour” around the cause of “killing cops”
• A 12-foot chocolate statue of Athena, a gift of Poroshenko, on a platform surrounded by an ankle-deep pool of melted chocolate; attendees were allowed to approach and ritually lick the statue after removing their socks, shoes and pants. Mo and Cash Money, daughters of NFFA Commissioner William D. Money, frolicked conspicuously in the chocolate pool as Sea Hogs owner Tirik O’Bobber looked on, wearing only an ankle-length fur coat, hat and platform shoes he bought from Walt Frazier.
• The Village People, joined by Goodrow and former Green coach Stuart Smalley, whose appearances together are fast becoming a Bacchanal tradition.
• The reunion of Kinky Friedman and the original lineup of the Texas Jewboys
• Polka kings Brave Combo, which stirred the crowd at the Dionysus Stage — which prominently included Black Dogs assistant coach Stumpy Legg — to dance as the band played all the sings in order from its seminal “Polkatharsis” LP.
• Bell’s live video remote — the video was taken down within 24 hours by YouTube — from aboard George Clinton’s “Mothership,” which, according to Bell, took him to the cloaking-device-shielded planet of Lovetron just beyond the solar system’s asteroid belt on Saturday night and returned him in time to interview Obama on Sunday morning. A spokeswoman for YouTube refused to comment, saying only that the video was suppressed on the orders of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
For many, a highlight of the festival each year is the “Artists’ Tribute” segment on Sunday afternoon, when a select group of performers serenade Sharif in word and song. This year, Sir Paul McCartney, who also played at Sharif’s funeral six months earlier, was joined by Paul Schaefer and The Late Show band for a rousing version of “Back in the USSR,” a nod to the still not fully explained months that Sharif was officially missing near the Ukrainian-Russian frontier and erroneously declared dead. Then Dr. Linardo, with a Chinese-made AK-47 hanging from a strap around his neck, strummed the weapon like a guitar while he and McCartney sang “Happiness Is a Warm Gun.”
Nelson, who spent Saturday night at Sharif’s West End Treehouse, returned on Sunday to perform “You Were Always on My Mind,” which he dedicated to Bakers PR maven Faith Popcorn, who has not been seen in public since her reported arrival from Kiev in September. Many, including Sharif, wept openly as Dolly Parton sang “I Will Always Love You,” which she dedicated to Bakers mascot Mr. TD, whom she described as “my weekly companion for checkers, ice cream and Turner Classic Movies.” Music City insiders have long speculated that the two had been married at one time.
At the end of the tribute, Taylor Swift appeared in what was intended as a gesture of reconciliation between her and Sharif, whom she attempted to assassinate two years ago on that very stage. Just as she approached the Bakers owner to hug him, Kanye West emerged from backstage, grabbed Swift and used the stage elevator to lower the two of them beneath the proscenium and out of the audience’s view. For an awkward 15 seconds, screams could be heard by those standing nearby until Hamilton took the microphone and announced, “Don’t worry, folks, it’s all part of the show. Who’s ready for some bluegrass!”
To longtime Bacchanal observers, however, it was not clear whether Swift’s abduction was scripted. Neither Swift nor West has been seen in public since the event. “I’m sure she’ll turn up. People here always do, eventually,” said Bakers fan Powers Boothe, who said he witnessed the affray from a video monitor in the Viva Shiva tent.
“To tell you the truth, I thought it was a pretty damned inspired bit of staging. They had this whole Demeter-Persephone underworld thing going on, which couldn’t be truer to the Bacchanal, plus a saucy hint of Mandingo. Plus, you couldn’t help but view this as a big ‘fuck you’ to Miley Cyrus, you know what I mean? I thought it was specfuckingtacular.”
Sharif could not be reached for comment for nearly a full week after the festival. Sources said he and a small group of guests, who may have included Vice President Biden and Fox News’ Megyn Kelly, were holed up in Sharif’s Treehouse celebrating the Bakers’ win over the Bubbas, which clinched a playoff spot for the franchise that many had written off as an irredeemable disaster just a year ago. Sharif reportedly told Biden and Kelly, as reported later on Fox News, that the Bakers’ season had been “a triumph of love over death; of heart over fear; of cocaine over ecstasy.”
Sharif’s abrupt departure left him unavailable for the climactic surprise of the festival — a hastily organized marriage ceremony on Sunday afternoon between Hamilton and Aphrodite.
Observers said Hamilton immediately fell under the goddess’ spell and proposed on Saturday night. Actor Gavin McLeod, summoned specially for the day and wearing his captain’s uniform from “The Love Boat,” officiated. Also summoned for an encore from the “One-Hit Wonder” segment were The Shocking Blue, who sang, as Shiva escorted Aphrodite down the aisle, “A goddess on a mountain top / Was burning like a silver flame / The summit of beauty and love / And Venus was her name.” Thousands in the crowd, who had earlier consumed mushrooms that fell from the sky, shouted out the chorus: “She’s got it / Yeah, baby, she’s got it / I’m your Venus, I’m your fire / At your desire!”
A beaming Vice President Biden stood in for Sharif as best man, and Julia Roberts served as maid of honor. As co-grand marshal, it fell to Thompson to bear the cup of ambrosia, the nectar of the gods that confers immortality, for the ceremonial drink between bride and groom. After McLeod spoke the words, “I now pronounce you man and Venus,” Shiva ascended above the Parthenon and then drew the new couple and Thompson into the air with him before they all disappeared.
A reanimated Slim Pickens, who attended as a special guest of his nephew, Mos Ded, watched it all from his seat in one of the VIP luxury boxes nearby. “I’ve seen London, I’ve seen France, I’ve been to umpteen goat ropings, two world’s fairs and a snake roundup, but this was the got-damnedest thing I’ve ever been around,” he said afterward. That was some unholy matrimony.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever had a wedding here before,” Ded reflected later. “At least not one that was consensual. And this thing may have set the bar so high that we can never really do another one. I’m not even sure we can do another Bacchanal after this.”
Around sunset on Sunday, all the performers joined on one stage to close the show. In a welcome return to normalcy, Sly & the Family Stone performed one of the co-official theme songs of the Bacchanal, “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin.” Then, together, everyone sang REM’s “It’s the End of the World (as We Know It)” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” before Ded thanked everyone for coming and Cornelius dismissed the crowd with “Pax vobiscum, drive safely, and keep the flame burning fiercely in your hearts.”
