RHCP to give a free show in Las Vegas
(Reuters)
The Red Hot Chili Peppers, a rock band once famous for stage costumes consisting of single, strategically placed sweat socks, will star in a free concert July 2 to celebrate the Las Vegas centennial.
The Grammy-winning band will play in the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority parking lot at Paradise Road and Convention Center Drive, which was once occupied by the Landmark hotel.
Tickets will be distributed starting at noon Monday through a Web site, www.vegasrocks100.com. About 50,000 tickets will be available, with a limit of four per person. Weezer is the opening act.
“July 2nd is the date. In the parking lot. We’ve really made it. We’ve really hit the big time,” Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith said Monday morning at a news conference to announce the evening event.
“Lock up the children!” bassist Flea added.
Bruce Eskowitz, president of Clear Channel Entertainment Properties, which is coordinating the concert, said, “Las Vegas is a city absolutely unlike any other city.” The Chili Peppers “embody, I think, the spice of what we’re trying to accomplish in terms of the city of Las Vegas and the 100th anniversary,” he said.
Taxpayers aren’t footing the bill for the show. Instead, private producer Clear Channel aims to offset its costs of staging the event through sponsorships, food and beverage sales, and merchandising, centennial celebration spokeswoman Lori Nelson said. The arrangement was worked out in an agreement negotiated between Clear Channel and the city last year.
The location of the show is the closest feasible site to the Strip, promoters said, and was chosen for its visual potential even though the concert will not be televised.
Asked why a parking lot instead of the more comfortable Sam Boyd Stadium, Eskowitz said: “We wanted to keep it much like a European festival format. The Chili Peppers, outside, under the stars with the backdrop of Las Vegas behind it, seemed like the perfect place to have this show.”
Sam Boyd Stadium director Daren Libonati said: “We were never brought into the loop. We would have been open for business if they would have asked.”
So if 50,000 people will fill the parking lot, where will they park?
“There will have to be a huge parking plan, possibly a park-and-ride program,” Deputy City Manager Betsy Fretwell said.
Mayor Oscar Goodman, who keeps his office radio tuned to classical music, said Monday that he is unfamiliar with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, despite their 40-million album sales.
But he had nothing but warm comments about the two band members after meeting them. Singer Anthony Kiedis and guitarist John Frusciante did not attend the news conference.
Particularly, the mayor had nice things to say about the group’s bassist.
“Flea and myself bonded,” Goodman said Monday.
The mayor said he and Flea agreed to get their families together in the future.
“His daughter is looking for a college, and I told him my wife does counseling. So we’re going to set something up,” Goodman said.
Councilman Steve Wolfson also said he was unfamiliar with the Chili Peppers’ hits, which include the funky Grammy-winning “Give It Away” and the ballad “Under the Bridge,” about lead singer Kiedis’ struggle with heroin addiction.
“If you ask me where John Tesh is appearing, that I could tell you,” Wolfson said. “Yanni, sure. The Chili Peppers? No.”
