Metallica brings the pyro and power as Rock in Rio USA closes its first weekend

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, May 10, 2015 | 12:30 p.m.

Twice this weekend, I ran into Roberto Medina randomly at the Rock in Rio USA festival. The first was Friday afternoon at the very first performance of the festival, the set by Saints of Valory on the Mercedes Benz Evolution stage.

I turned around and there he was, the man who founded this festival 30 years ago, wearing a white Rock in Rio baseball cap and smiling at his surroundings. “It is here!” he said, and no doubt it was.

The second Medina moment was in the teeth of the festival on Saturday night, at the Rock Street U.K. stage, as hundreds of fans danced happily in circuitous fashion to the Celtic/Brazilian fusion rock band Terra Celta. As the sound and lights blazed from the stage, I turned to my left and there was Medina again, flashing that million-dollar grin.

“This is good, isn’t it?” he asked.

In that moment, it was good, as Rock in Rio executed a fine time and safe landing on a parcel that, just a year ago, was considered blight on the Strip. Not officially, mind you, but that darkened 50-acre parcel has long served as source of dashed hopes and frustration.

The scene has since exploded, for real, with the Rock in Rio USA festival, a $70 million investment (including the $25 million from operating partners MGM Resorts, Cirque du Soleil and the The Yukaipa Companies) that is to be back on that site in 2017 and 2019.

The official weekend turnout, an oft-discussed topic around the opening of Rock in Rio USA, was 82,000. The ticket sales as noted by Medina himself have been 130,000 over both weekends, with tickets still on sale for Pop Weekend starring Taylor Swift on Friday night and Bruno Mars on Saturday (click RockinRio.com for ticket information).

Original estimations were for 85,000 tickets sold for each of the first two weekends, a number that was drawn down to around 50,000 as the festival neared. But Medina says he is pleased that the first event has finally played out to thousands of fans on the Strip.

“It has always been our dream to bring Rock in Rio to the U.S., and it is truly amazing to see this dream become a reality,” Medina said in a statement issued today. “We’ve felt so welcomed during the process of creating the Las Vegas edition of the festival and are grateful to have celebrated the debut with such a great crowd. We look forward to doing it all over again next weekend.”

One of the stars booked to the Main Stage for the upcoming Pop Weekend was Sam Smith, who was due to perform just before Mars on Saturday night. But Smith has since been forced to cancel his appearance to undergo surgery on his vocal chords, and there has been no announcement of who or how he is to be replaced.

Medina’s advance research indicated that the top festival draws for an event in the U.S. were Mars, No Doubt, Swift and Metallica — with the latter easily the most popular hard-rock band. The crew of heavy metal graybeards took the stage around 11:40, about a half-hour later than scheduled and 20 minutes after the festival's second-night fireworks show.

“We have an announcement to make!” Metallica frontman James Hetfield said before the band vaulted into “Fuel,” with Hetfield growling, “Gimme fuel, gimme fire, gimme that which I desire!” The band charged through a set heavy with classics over its 33-year career, “Master of Puppets,” “Enter Sandman,” “One” and the cover of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page,” among them.

Seeming to sense the crowd’s lengthy stay on the site (many arriving as the gates opened at 3 p.m.), Hetfield said, “It got all quiet out there! That scared me!” He was in a grateful mood nonetheless, telling those massed near the Main Stage, “Whoever you came to see, you’re with us now! Welcome!” The set didn't conclude until a little after 2 a.m., with many fans shuffling slowly from the venue.

Rock in Rio USA served as what it was destined to be during the weeks of preparation, a fine marketing performance for what would come in future shows. Medina has made a fortune and developed a powerful reputation with his shows in Rio, Lisbon and Madrid.

The countermarketing of Las Vegas with those already established festivals should boost the Rock in Rio USA brand internationally — but the larger question is if we have not approached the tipping point with festivals in this country, and even in Las Vegas. Rock in Rio USA now vies for attention, dollars and even acts with Life Is Beautiful, Electric Daisy Carnival (there is a busy EDM lineup at Rock in Rio USA in the venue’s glowing “Spider” stage), and the shows booked at MGM Resorts Village to the south.

And Coachella, the reigning king of music festivals, is in Indio, Calif., just a month before Rock in Rio. As Gary Bongiovanni, president and editor in chief of Pollstar, told the Associated Press last week, “At some point, we're going to reach saturation.”

The strength of the Rock in Rio USA experience was in line with the advance description of the event by Medina himself. The Rock Street programming was outstanding, a well-calibrated mix of music and cultural effects from the U.K., U.S. and Brazil. The footprint itself was easy to navigate (though some VIPs wondered why that tented fortress was located so far from the Main Stage).

The food offerings were not as inspired as the lineup of chefs at Life Is Beautiful, but the cuisine stations were plentiful, diverse and intelligently mapped out. As for the RFID wristbands used by fans in the cash-free event, they do require some getting used to. Registration onsite required patience because cell service was often hit-and-miss. But once you are properly outfitted, making purchases is easy — in some cases, maybe too easy (cha-ching!).

For novice festival-goers (and such massive outdoor events are still a relatively new phenomenon in Las Vegas), a music experience over several hours can be a taxing exercise. The crowd’s energy ebbed and flowed through the festival.

Late Saturday night, Linkin Park thundered through the insistent rocker “Wasteland,” with vocalist Chester Bennington wailing about “more power, less people!” The vibe from the thousands watching the performance, many relaxing on the venue’s artificial grass, ran comfortably counter to the noise emanating from the Main Stage.

A veteran Las Vegas entertainment figure was among those fans and recalled watching a show many years ago by the British prog-rock band Muse in Switzerland. Twenty thousand fans leapt and roared in unison to the point where this person said, “I was actually scared.”

There was no such fear at Rock in Rio USA. We had some jumpers and shouters, mind you. But so far the new theme park of music is a lesson in measured pace. Rock in Rio USA has legs but needs to stretch a bit before it can really leap for the sky.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.