The Cult Perform Electric at Roseland in NYC

By: Robert Cavuoto

Billy Duffy

The Cult’s Ian Astbury yelled from Roseland Ballroom’s stage, “Put down your cell phones, your 238 loser Facebook followers don’t want to see your blurry videos. This is a not social media event, this is live… this is rock ‘n’ roll”.

And that’s what fans got, two hours of hard driving, riff blazing rock ‘n’ roll.

The Cult are currently out on the road touring for the 25^th anniversary of their 1987 release, Electric.

Back in 1987 the band tried to make an album with Steve Brown who produced their Love album. Originally dubbed Peace, when the album was finished it didn’t sound right. The band wanted a heavier and more American rock ‘n’ roll sounding LP.

Enter Rick Rubin who extensively remixed the album and re-recorded one song. The band called this version Electric. Both versions were recently released in a double CD package called Peace.

Billy Duffy told me that Electric was no bullshit rock n’ roll and that’s what the band delivered tonight. The first part of the show was Electric played in its entity, except for the Steppenwolf cover, “Born to be Wild” which is clearly an overplayed and boring song.

Ian put it best when he said, “We don’t play “Born to be Wild”, because we don’t play it”. That works for me! In its place was “Zap City” which was originally on Steve Brown’s version. The energy of the live performance matched the energy heard on Electric.

The band was on fire and played all the songs fabulously; stand outs in the set were “Love Removal Machine” and “Outlaw”. Billy’s ferocious sounding solos were the icing on the cake for the night, as he stomped pedals, worked the Wah Wah, and threw his signature windmill strums in when needed.

Noticeably missing in the first set was Billy Duffy’s trademark Gretsch White Falcon. Billy told me that because Electric was primarily played with a Les Paul and a Marshall stack he wanted to recreate that vibe on stage for the fans. The sound in Roseland was spot on; obviously Electric is a two guitar album, so touring guitarist James Stevenson was added to the mix. Have no fear Billy’s Gretch made it into the second set.

Nonetheless, it’s evident that Ian is still the band’s primary strength, stemming from charisma that hasn’t changed since the bands formation. He still packs the vocal ability fans expect, and provides the colorful rants. One particularly funny rant was when he said, “Please stop throwing weed on the stage, I find it distracting!”

After 37 minutes the band took a quick break and played a short artsy film based on their CD, Born Into This.  Returning back to the stage, Ian asked the crowd what they thought of it. The audience reaction was mixed, “Oh well, we tried to put some poetry in between the meat” and with that The Cult launched into “Rain”, “Honey From the Knife”, and “Sweet Soul Sister”.

The final few songs of the two hour set included “She Sell Sanctuary” and the closer “Sun King”

After Thursday night’s show I think most in attendance would agree The Cult still embraces the raw essence of post punk and hard rock that still appeals to the fans as much now as they did decades ago, without sounding stale or  “nostalgic”.

Editorial note: At the last minute the band requested that Rob limited his shooting to Billy Duffy from the sound board at the back of the venue, hence the reason why there are no photos of the other band members.

GALLERY