There were no appearances by Satan or Shiva this year (so far), but by all accounts the annual Bacchanal to the Future topped even last year’s celebration as a spectacle. A crowd estimated at more than 200,000 people jammed Nashville’s Centennial Park and well beyond.
Based on accounts pieced together from the survivors, at least those who were willing to speak about the experience, here is a partial rundown of the day’s events.
The celebration dedicated to “love, music, whatever,” which corresponds to the second meeting between the 12th Avenue Bakers and West Nashville Beelzebubbas, brought much of the city to a virtual halt on Saturday. The morning began with the first annual Half Nude Marathon (in the spirit of the original Greek Olympiad), as 5,000 runners departed from Centennial Park and finished the race at Grey Goose Stadium.
Meanwhile, more than 50,000 people packed both sides of Broadway/West End for the inaugural Bacchanal Parade, which ran from Riverfront Park to Centennial. Police officers who lined the route wore throwback Bakers and Bubbas jerseys over their uniforms. The mile-long parade included Grand Marshals Danny Bonaduce and Susan Dey; the TSU Marching Band; the Hohenwald Zombie Precision Mini-Motorcycle Team; five captured Taliban fighters from Waziristan, shaven hairless and accompanied by General George Washington Leonard; drum major R. Crumb; Billy Bob Thornton as Santa Claus; NFFA owners QCurl Sharif and Boyd X. Biggs; giant balloons of Dick Cheney, Underdog, and the entire pantheon of Greco-Roman deities; the original Delta Tau Chi “Deathmobile”; and others too numerous to mention.
Bonaduce, Dey, Biggs, Sharif and Harry Connick Jr. rode atop ornate floats. Sharif’s ride included a replica of his infamous West End treehouse, while Biggs’ “Waziristan Safari” float was fashioned (if the media kit was to be believed) entirely from human ears. Each threw beads and plastic skulls to the throng, along with what some witnesses claimed were tabs of LSD. These reports could not be confirmed (or denied).
The Bacchanal kicked off in earnest around noon with the ceremonial “birth of Venus,” one of the highlights of each year’s festivities. This year — evidently taking Sharif’s “Nothing exceeds like excess” motto to heart — festival organizers expanded the opening ceremony to include four nude Aphrodites. Susan Dey took the prime spot at the Centennial Park bandshell and was driven by Bonaduce via chariot to the Parthenon. Sharif confidante Amy Winehouse was driven by honorary grand marshal Randall “Tex” Cobb. Country music starlet Taylor Swift was charioted by Hank III, while surprise guest Bristol Palin, seven months pregnant and in full bloom, was escorted by fiance Levi Johnston.
After the four chariots converged on the Parthenon, emcee Haven Hamilton led the crowd in the pledge of allegiance before Bonaduce and Dey fired a 12-pound Civil War-era cannon to signal the start of the music festival.
Winehouse opened with a half-hour set that appeared to be cut short. During her performance of “Rehab,” six armed Metro police officers in throwback jerseys rushed onstage, announced they were conducting an intervention, and seized the singer, who repeatedly screamed, “No!” The crowd, which apparently thought the action was part of the staging, cheered all the louder as Winehouse was led away. Later, Bakers PR maven Faith Popcorn confirmed that coach Snoop Dogg had ordered the intervention. Sharif reluctantly consented after Snoop assured him that Winehouse would be out in time for the Bakers organization’s Dirty Santa party.
The Bacchanal grew so large this year that area businesses were incorporated into the official event. The Olympic pool at Centennial Sportsplex was transformed into a giant Roman bath. Twelve new vomitoriums were added throughout the park. For 24 hours, the McDonald’s near the park’s entrance became a Cracky D’s franchise of Dave the Animal. The Valvoline 30-minute oil change shop at the corner of Elliston and 25th reinvented itself as “Saturn’s playpen.” (It was also the site of the day’s first arrests, involving reanimated silent film star Fatty Arbuckle and Black Dogs GM Buddy Ryan, who, according to one police source, “were involved in lewd acts that would have shocked even the Nashville Diocese.”) Ryan later denied any knowledge of the alleged crime, claiming that unknown assailants had abducted him from his East Nashville home and “slipped me a [expletive] mickey as part of an obvious [expletive] frame-up job.”
The day’s biggest new addition involved a Roman chariot race in the newly opened Nashville Hippodrome — a gift to the city from the Bakers and Bubbas — on the west side of the park near 31st Avenue. More than 30,000 spectators jammed into the facility to watch the 40-lap event. Besides Cobb and Johnston, the racers included a reanimated Charlton Heston and Stephen “Masala” Boyd; Dustin Serpas; Charlie Rotier; Jake Lloyd (the child actor who portrayed the young Anikin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace); Danica Patrick (the eventual winner); Hurman Murrman (brother of Scouts owner Thurman Murrman); and Mojo D (who finished last) in the Team Mojo chariot. Actor Nicolas Cage, who had not originally been invited, showed up with his own chariot just before post time and demanded to enter the race. After a brief negotiation, papal legate Giorgio Cardinal Leonardo, who fired the starters pistol, allowed Cage to participate. Tragically, former Bakers coach Vince Lombardi, who had been reanimated especially for the event, was re-killed when his chariot overturned in the fourth lap, after being sideswiped by Mojo D.
The emotional highlight of the day involved a memorial service on the Dionysus Stage for Furious George, the childhood friend of Sharif who died in September. During the service, Biggs quoted George’s favorite poet, Aeschylus: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." Biggs noted that he had often heard Furious recite these words in moments of reflection on his own life, as the two of them shared evenings of single-malt scotch atop Love Circle. During “Vincent,” performed as a tribute to Furious, Sharif was overcome and had to be led away when Don McLean sang the words, “This world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.” At the end of the service, thousands wept openly as Peter, Paul and Mary invited the crowd to sing along to “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
But the Bacchanal quickly returned to its customary groove when the music resumed with a blast from the shared past of Sharif and George — a reunion performance by the 70s TV band, Lance Link and the Evolution Revolution. Furious had served as the band’s original drummer before their scandalous Isle of Wight concert in 1971. The flower chimps brought the crowd to its feet as they performed their
eponymous No. 1 hit and ran through “Eve of Destruction,” “In the Year 2525,” “Love Is All Around,” “All the Young Dudes,” and the folky “Shrimpboats Are A-Comin.” To conclude their set, Link was joined by regular Bacchanal attendee Joe Walsh for a psychedelic rendition of “Rocky Mountain Way” — followed by another Furious George cousin, Felonious Monkey, in a memorable performance of “Straight, No Chaser.”
NFFA GameDay host James Brown took the stage next and ran full-bore through a medley of his biggest hits, capped off by “Sex Machine.” Taylor Swift jammed with Def Leppard before Bonaduce and Dey reinterpreted the old Partridge Family standard, “Heartbeat, It’s a Lovebeat” as a calypso number.
Sir Elton John revved up the crowd with blistering performances of “The Bitch Is Back,” “Madman across the Water” (which he dedicated to “the captives of Fidalgo Island”), and “Burn Down the Mission.”
Longtime Sharif friend Ringo Starr, who followed Furious George briefly as an uncredited session drummer for the Evolution Revolution, dedicated “It Don’t Come Easy” to the Bakers historic breakthrough season, and then sent out “You’re 16, You’re Beautiful and You’re Mine” to Sharif’s housekeeper, Cherry Parade.
Bacchanal veterans Steely Dan stoked the audience further with almost technically perfect renditions of “Black Friday,” “Your Gold Teeth,” “Josie,” and a 30-minute extended jam version of “Boddhisatva.”
Many in the crowd erupted in cheers and shouts of “Kill Money” at the introduction of Memphis rappers Dr. Krunkenstein, reportedly linked to an attempted assassination of NFFA commissioner William D. Money, until Sharif admonished the audience, “That’s not what we’re all about.” The band performed their debut CD, Muscle and Blow, in its entirety, including “She-body Hotel,” “My Li’l Christmas Ho-Ho-Ho,” “Glock of Ages,” “Crunk in the Trunk” and “Dat Stuff Make U Sick.”
In one of the trans-genre spectacles for which the Bacchanal has become renowned, the Finnish band Leningrad Cowboys, backed by the Russian Red Army Chorus, sent the crowd into a frenzy with a freewheeling version of
“Sweet Home Alabama.” Afterward, Biggs was moved to comment, “I’ve been to five Bacchanals, two worlds fairs and a goat rodeo, and this was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”
Outdoing even himself, Sharif introduced the duo of Gail and Dale, most recently of The Lawrence Welk Champagne Music Hour, who performed Brewer and Shipley’s
“One Toke over the Line” as a gospel number. Brewer and Shipley, longtime Bacchanal attendees who serve on the board of Sod Bakers Grass Care, were guests of Sharif in luxury suites erected atop the Athlon Building.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the throng was treated to a succession of stellar performers, including the
Drive-By Truckers, Wayne Newton, Robert Plant with Allison Krauss, will.i.am, Dr. Dre, David Bowie and the reunited Spiders, Willie Nelson, Megadeth, Mavis Staples, My Chemical Romance, neo-punkers The Dishonorable Discharges (who serve as the house band at Club Gitmo), and Jack White. Dave Matthews, who serves as informal spiritual adviser to Thurman Murrman, took the stage just after dark and set a record by consecutively performing eight different versions of “All Along the Watchtower” before ending his set with “Cortez the Killer.”
Though there were fewer reanimated performers than in past Bacchanals, the festival organizers emphasized quality over quantity. In fact, perhaps the crowd’s most frenzied reception was for Freddie Mercury, who joined the still-living Roger May in an hour-long set that included “We Are the Champions,” “Fat-Bottomed Girls,” and “Killer Queen.” Biggs joined them onstage for the encore, “Bohemian Rhapsody,” to sing the words “Beelzebub has a devil set aside for me.”
Near the end of the afternoon, Lewis Had the Weed thrilled the crowd not only with their set but with the announcement that the beloved Cherry Bomb Café would reopen that night. Via projection on a big screen, Sharif said that the first 500 patrons would receive free Touchdown Tasers™, and then proclaimed, “Everybody Wang Chung tonight!”
Meanwhile, word spread that at Club Gitmo at 1 a.m., Jorge Linardo would perform simultaneous same-sex weddings for 16 members of the Cambridge Animals, whose marriages had been placed in legal jeopardy by the recent Prop 8 referendum in California. By virtue of Linardo’s status as a Choctaw holy man, and because Club Gitmo stands on sovereign Native American land, the NFFA founder could legally perform the weddings in that area of West Nashville.
After 12 hours of nearly nonstop performances — including an unprecedented, tri-generational set by Hank III, Bocephus and Hank Williams — the show concluded just before midnight with the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ interpretation of the unofficial Bacchanal anthem, “Thank You (for Letting Me Be Myself Again).” In a special effects triumph, festival organizers provided natural lighting with a twist as 200 volunteers from area churches were lashed to 10-foot-high wooden poles and appeared to be set on fire — an homage to Nero, who used Christians as human torches to light his garden parties. (The effect seemed so real that Popcorn later had to issue a statement to the media explaining that no one had actually been harmed in the display.)
Finally, as many of the day’s performers who could still be located assembled onstage and joined in ‘The Night They Drove Ole Dixie Down” — a staple of the Bacchanal since its inception. To close out the evening, Haven Hamilton and the Mighty Clouds of Joy led the crowd in the traditional “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?”
About this time, however, all hell broke loose. At the encouragement of Sharif, Bacchanal organizers had planned what was billed as a special remembrance of the 30th anniversary of the Jonestown disaster in Guyana. They had not envisioned, however, that the tribute would be hijacked by the Bakers’ Pacman Jones, who held court under a huge tent bearing a sign “Welcome to Jonestown.”
During a rambling spiel, Jones claimed he had been called by God to preach against Commissioner Money and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. Jones then insisted that visitors drink the “Goodell & Money Kool-aid” as a protest against “oppression and corruption.” One by one, spellbound guests drank punch from paper cups that, according to laboratory tests performed hours later, were laced with PCP.
According to several witnesses, it was in the wake of this event that Black Dogs wide receiver Plaxico Burress announced he was going to kill team owner Money, who he believed had ordered his benching several weeks earlier, and inadvertently shot himself in the leg. (Police later took Burress in for questioning about the alleged assassination attempt on Money two weeks ago.)
Nearly 2,000 people who drank the Kool-Aid began rampaging through the festival grounds. Order was restored only after General Leonard ordered his Marine security detail to fire tear gas into the crowd. Scores were injured in the melee, leading Biggs and Sharif to the unprecedented step of canceling Day 2 of the Bacchanal.
“Safety is always our utmost concern,” noted Sharif, without irony. Then he added, “I don’t think we really had anything planned for Day 2 anyway, at least not after our technicians in Hohenwald told us Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye wouldn’t be ready. We were pretty much out of ammo after Day 1. Well, we had plenty of real ammo, of course, but you know what I mean. I just wish we had known the tear gas was coming. A lot of our guests are looking for that kind of experience, and we could have probably gotten Ticketmaster to jack the admission price by another $10.”
