First concerts

Wendy Redfern at

  Under the Radar asked me to do a couple of illustrations for their “Wasted on the Youth” issue. The idea behind the issue was to talk to various musicians and actors about childhood experiences and memories that affected them in some way. The feature she assigned to me was about first concert experiences. I had a number to choose from and I settled on Jamie Liddell’s first concert: he saw James Brown during his “Living in America” tour.

I have a pretty clear childhood memory myself of seeing “Rocky IV” and being affected by the pageantry of James Brown’s performance during Apollo Creed’s pre-match entrance extravaganza. All in all, it was a memorable moment in a legendary career and perhaps the funkiest snapshot of the year 1985.

I approached the piece by trying to create a lot of brightness and swooping linear movement, without cluttering it up too much. I focused on saturated color and clean lines in an effort to fill the space with activity and flash but keep the focus on the relationship between James Brown and the kid in front center stage.

The second piece I did for the same feature is about the feeling of your first arena rock experience. My very first concert experience was one of these (although it wasn’t the hair-metal sort of thing depicted here). I saw U2 in 1992 during a strange unscheduled performance at an arena near my hometown. They announced the show the morning of the day it was happening, and pretty much every kid I knew was lined up and waiting immediately. I was lucky enough to squeak through and had a pretty incredible time. Say what you will about U2 and artists that have reached their level of mainstream success, but I still think that on a good day they’re one of those bands who can make a huge space feel intimate and establish a palpable connection with the crowd.

That’s what this piece is about for me: that moment where you establish a connection, however brief, with a guy on a stage in a dome filled with thousands of people. It’s a really particular kind of excitement. Every kid should have a moment like this.