RED ROCKS, Colorado—Visitors heard the 84-year-old musician and singer Willie Nelson tell his audience—a mix of local and foreign tourists including some from the Philippines—recall his performance at the open-air Amphitheater here.
“The weather was fine, then it began to rain, then the sky cleared up again, but I discovered the audience never left,” the song-writer, author, poet, actor and activist told the socialized audience, comfortably seated before a big screen.
Easily among the country’s most recognized artists in country music, Nelson—born Willie Hugh Nelson—was addressing the audience through a documentary on the 9,525-seat natural outdoor theater, built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
Nelson, who sang “Always On My Mind” at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New York in 1990, was one of the main figures of outlaw country, a subgenre of country music that developed in the 1960s as a reaction to the conservative restrictions of the Nashville sound.
“Always On My Mind” was written by Johnny Christopher, Mark James and Wayne Carson, recorded first by Gwen McRae—as “You Were Always On My Mind”—and then by Brenda Lee in 1972.
Hundreds of other performers from here and abroad—the first performance at the amphitheater was in 1941, five years after construction began—included The Beatles and John Denver, the latter described by AllMusic as “among the most beloved entertainers of his era.”
It has held regular concert seasons every year since 1947, according to officials.
Born Henry John Deutschedorf, the American musician, singer-songwriter, record-producer, activist, actor and humanitarian, began his music career with folk music groups during the late 1960s.
Starting in the 1970s, Denver was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the decade and among its best-selling artists, that by 1974 he was firmly established as America’s best-selling performer, 23 years before he died at age 53 on Oct. 12, 1997.
Others who had the opportunity to perform at the 351-hectare Amphitheater, 6,400 feet above sea level, were the Beatles, the English rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960, who visited the Philippines in the 1960s.
The Beatles’ performance on Aug 26, 1964 at Red Rocks was the earliest notable rock-and-roll performance at the geologically formed amphitheater, the only concert not sold out during their US tour.
The members—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—became popularly regarded as the foremost and most influential group of the rock era, less than a decade after the hip-swinging Elvis Presley ruled the rock ‘n’ roll stage with his “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Jailhouse Rock,” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” among other tunes popular in the air lanes at the time.
Rooted in skiffle beat and the 1950’s rock and roll, the Beatles later experimented with several musical styles that ranged from pop ballads and Indian music to psychedelic and hard rock, often, in the eyes of music critics, incorporating classical elements and unconventional techniques in innovative ways.
When Ringo Starr returned to Red Rocks with his All-Starr Band on June 28, 2000, he asked if anyone in the crowd were at the Beatles concert 36 years earlier.
On Aug 26, 2004, the East-Coast-based Beatles-tribute band “1964” was flown to Denver to re-enact the Beatles concert at the site exactly 40 earlier to the date.
The unique setting has led to the venue becoming a favorite for many performers: Jimi Hendrix played at Red Rocks on Sept 1, 1968, along with Vanilla Fudge and Soft Machine.
Amphitheater officials said the first performance of each season had been the “Easter Sunrise Service,” a non-denominational service every Easter Sunday.
The open-air Amphitheater is a rock structure, 16 kilometers west of the state capital Denver, owned and operated by the City and County of Denver located in the Red Rocks Park, part of the Denver Mountain Parks system.
Officials take pride in their Red Rocks, whose design consists of two natural monoliths—Ship Rock and Creation Rock—standing 300 feet each, which provide acoustic protection for any performance during any of the four seasons here.
There is a large, tilted, disc-shaped rock behind the stage, a big vertical rock angled outwards from stage right, several large outcrops angled outwards from stage left and a seating area for up to 9,525 people in between.
Amphitheater officials said in the first decade of the 20th century, John Brisben Walker had a vision of artists performing on a stage perched on what they called the perfect acoustic surroundings of Red Rocks, which might have been witnesses to the shuffle of Ube tribe in earlier times.
Between 1906 and 1910, Walker produced several concerts on a temporary platform.
From his dream, officials said, the history of Red Rocks as an entertainment venue began.
Aside from the platform, Walker also built the Mount Morrison Cable Incline funicular railway which carried tourists from a base at what today is the parking lot of the amphitheater up to feast on the view from the top of Mount Morrison – the incline operated for about five years beginning in 1909.
Geologically, the rocks surrounding the amphitheater designed by Denver architect Burnham Hoyt, officials said, are representative of the Fountain Formation.
The place was originally known as the “Garden of the Angels” (1870s-1906), and then as “Garden of the Titans” during the Walker years (1906–1928).
But the park had always been known by the folk name of “Red Rocks,” which became its formal name when Denver acquired it in 1928.
The amphitheater’s rocks—mainly composed of iron oxide, which gives them their color red—are named “Creation Rock” on the north, “Ship Rock” on the south, and “Stage Rock” to the east.
As Nelson’s “you were always on my mind” faded out and the big screen before the audience started rolling up the credits, musicians in the audience knew the artists would be playing da capo al fin.