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In the Olympics Rock Band competition, days of competition boiled down to the night when England met America for the gold medal match. After the Yanks performed first, British captain John Lennon sent the boys in Led Zeppelin out on stage to open their team’s hour-long set. Skipping the acoustic sounds and the Middle Earth mythology, they went right for the jugular with some of their hardest tunes, reminding everyone of their status as heavy metal pioneers. “Black Dog,” “Heartbreaker,” and “Immigrant Song” led to a finale of “Good Times, Bad Times,” the first track off their debut album. Joe Strummer and The Clash then ran on stage, kicking off “London’s Burning” before the applause for Led Zeppelin even had a chance to die down. Their sneering punk attitudes came across as only slightly more finessed than the Ramones’ performance during the American set. They toned it down with the reggae of “The Guns of Brixton” and closed with a perfectly placed jab at the Americans by singing “I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.”
The final three bands came on stage all at once, forming a super group the likes of which had never been seen. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who proved that the whole truly could be greater than the sum of the parts. They performed a three-song medley, opening with Keith Richards, George Harrison, and Pete Townshend in a triple guitar attack on “Satisfaction.” Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney shared vocal duties, while Keith Moon and Charlie Watts manned dual drum kits. Ringo Starr was relegated to tambourine, and Bill Wyman played bass. At the end of a Ronnie Wood guitar solo, Roger Daltrey grabbed the mic and spat out, “People try to put us d-d-d-down!” and launched the band into “My Generation.” With John Lennon on backing vocals and a bass duel by McCartney and John Entwistle, the tune kicked into overdrive at the modulation. Jimmy Page then ran back on stage and played a monster guitar solo, which segued the band into the final song.
Everyone expected one of the Beatles’ sing-along hits like “Hey Jude,” but this was not that kind of gig. Instead, the chaotic sounds of “Helter Skelter” issued forth like some sort of rock manifesto. At one point, Starr and Moon (clever, eh?) were soloing simultaneously, while Townshend began smashing his guitar across his amp. Daltrey dove into the crowd, followed by all of the members of The Clash. Richards, Harrison, and Page duked it out with guitar solos, and Jagger just leered into the crowd. When the dust settled, the exhausted audience fell to their seats and awaited the judges’ scores.
The final score was England 742.667, America 709.5. Rock and roll may have been born in the US, but it was the hometown favorites who emerged victorious in this match. America would even the score the following night, however, when the individual rock artist events were held. Team USA featured five rock legends: Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, and Bob Dylan. England countered with David Bowie, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Sting, and Peter Gabriel, but they couldn’t quite keep up. When the Americans closed the evening with a funky and soulful version of “Like a Rolling Stone,” they wrapped up the gold medal, leaving the Brits with silver and the Irish, led by Van Morrison, with a second bronze.
In other events, the Jamaicans, led by Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, won the gold medal in reggae, with England and Cote d’Ivoire taking the silver and bronze. The United States boasted a pair of dream teams that won gold in jazz and hip-hop. The jazz team included captain Louis Armstrong with Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John Coltrane. The rappers featured Public Enemy, Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, Tupac Shakur, and Dr. Dre. Neither squad was ever challenged as they flew through their matches like Michael Jordan and his legendary 1992 basketball squad. The Afropop category was the most closely contested during this year’s games, as Fela Kuti and his Nigerian squad barely eked out a victory over Ali Farka Touré and Tinariwen from Team Mali. South Africa won bronze over Congo.
In the Romantic Era of Classical Music Event, the heavily favored Germans were stacked with talented composers: Mendelssohn, Schumann, Wagner, Brahms, and Strauss. They were able to fend off the Italians in the semi-finals and went on to defeat the Russians in the championship. As the final chords of the final musical event drifted into silence, the world looked ahead to Rio 2016, where the hometown crowd will be defending their long string of gold medals in the samba event.
