BETHLEHEM, Pa. — As Musikfest opens its 40th year today, just as the festival has evolved from a local celebration into the nation’s largest free, ungated music festival, its main stage headline music acts have evolved, as well — as has the stage on which they appear.
But as Musikfest enters its fifth decade, who have been the best of its 370 headline acts?
- Musikfest, which starts its 40th year Thursday night, has had 370 headline acts perform on its main stage in its 39 years
- It has had three main stages: Kuntzplatz, RiverPlace and the current Steel Stage
- Rain and heat have played a part in many Musikfest memories, but so has great music
Musikfest started in 1984 with headliners such as “An Evening of Bluegrass” and Touchstone Theater — and the biggest name on its first lineup, “American Pie” singer Don McLean.
This year, it has shows by hit brother-trio pop group AJR, which is on the verge of selling out; 2000s hitmakers Train and Goo Goo Dolls, both of whom also are nearing sellouts; country acts Marin Morris, Dan + Shay and Walker Hayes; and others.
So Musikfest’s headliners definitely have gotten better.
Better main stage, bigger acts
So has the festival’s main stage.
It started with Kuntzplatz — a bandshell stage on what was then a grassy area on Moravian College’s Main Street campus. For Musikfest’s first 20 years, it was free and drew crowds estimated at more than 20,000 to shows by Ray Charles, KC & The Sunshine Band and others, but made for crowded, unpleasant experiences.
When Kuntzplatz added 5,000 paid seats closest to the stage, it still drew thousands of people who simply watched for free from behind them. But those ticketed seats also paid for better acts.
For example, in that first year of paid Kuntzplatz in 1999, New Kids on the Block’s Joey McIntyre performed the first concert of his first-ever solo tour.
In 2000, Kuntzplatz was replaced by RiverPlace — a fully modern festival stage built on Bethlehem’s Sand Island along Monacacy Creek — but it had its own problems. When it rained, there was a lot of mud, and dust when it dried, and drew legions of bugs.
Performers frequently commented from stage that they had swallowed bugs while singing.
But again, its 6,500-seat paid capacity let Musikfest get even better acts.
Weather and Musikfest memories
The 2011 opening of Steel Stage, a temporary stage erected on the parking lots at South Bethlehem's SteelStacks, has given Musikfest a far more pleasant main stage experience. In its first year, Steel Stage had a seating capacity of 7,500, and Musikfest had an even stronger headliner lineup.
Maroon 5 that year, at only the second concert ever at the Steel Stage, sold 7,150 tickets. Because Musikfest has since reduced the capacity of Steel Stage to something above 6,400, that means Maroon 5 still holds the record for the festival’s largest paid-ticket headliner.
Rain figures a lot in memories of Musikfest shows.
Certainly among the most memorable Musikfest headliners was Jane’s Addiction in 2012, when, with a storm approaching, the group packed more into 33 minutes on stage than many acts do in a full concert — an assault on the eyes and the ears of seven songs, including one against the wishes of Musikfest officials.
Then, days later, the band let any Musikfest ticket holder attend the band’s show at Philadelphia’s The Mann Center — free.
But great weather also was a part of some of Musikfest’s best headline shows, as you’ll see in this list.
Musikfest's 10 best headliners ever
Here are my Top 10 best Musikfest headline concerts:
1. Savage Garden, Aug. 9, 2000, RiverPlace. The pop duo was at the height of its popularity with its triple-platinum disc “Affirmation.” Its performance was wonderfully nuanced — alternately heating up the stage and cooling it down, performing each song as if it might never again. Indeed, at the end of the tour, Savage Garden broke up.
2. Keith Urban, Aug. 10, 2014. On the festival’s closing night, Urban warmed a cool summer evening by playing more than two hours and 24 songs, 13 of them No. 1 hits.
3. Don Henley, Aug. 10, 2016. Henley, and his song says, got down to the heart of the matter. He showed he’s among those rare artists whose songs through the years take on new meaning as they, and you, age.
4. Steve Miller Band, Aug. 8, 2011. Returning to the festival six years after a lightning storm forced him off stage the first time he played Musikfest (and first time weather forced a headliner off stage), he made up for it with a two-hour show packed with hits and a fervent performance.
5. Maroon 5, Aug. 6, 2011. A show seemingly so perfectly choreographed that when singer Adam Levine sang, on “She Will Be Loved,” the line “out in the corner in the pouring rain,” the skies opened in a cloudburst.
6. Santana, Aug. 4, 2017. On Musikfest’s opening night, at age 70, Santana remained one of rock music’s greatest guitarists, and from the opening notes of his opening instrumental, his sound was distinctive and recognizable. It was Musikfest’s earliest sellout, with tickets gone six months before the show.
7. Lady Antebellum, Aug. 13, 2016. After a storm evacuated the arena, then cleared, the group played a triumphant show that packed its shortened concert with hits, performed the heck out of them and seemed to have a blast doing it.
8. Joe Cocker and Huey Lewis & The News, Aug. 6, 2012. Cocker was flat-out great: conveying feeling and expression beyond the ability of almost any other contemporary singer, and not once appearing to give less than his all. Lewis added a show full of hits and had a crack band to play them. Cocker died two years later.
9. Darius Rucker, Aug. 9, 2013. Rucker also played a lot of hits, and was more country than most any other country act out there — a surprise considering he had stepped away from Hootie & The Blowfish just five years earlier. Even the Hootie songs he played sounded country.
10. Duran Duran, Aug. 6, 2015. Duran Duran first played the festival in 2011. But in 2015, the members of the British new wave band, then in their mid-50s, still were the “the wild boys” they sang about in 1984, surrendering nothing to age nor the 34 years since it had become the prototypical 1980s video band and ruled the airwaves.
EDITOR'S NOTE: John J. Moser has been a music and entertainment reporter for years. In 2020, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Music Writing from the Lehigh Valley Music Awards.
