What’s hot at the amphitheater and ilani this year?

This will be the last time you can yell “Free Bird” and mean it. If the “farewell tour” buzz can be believed, that is.

Legendary Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd, who come to the Sunlight Supply Amphitheater July 26, is the latest classic band to announce that it’s calling it quits. Probably. Pretty much.

But so did the Eagles, The Who, Ozzy Osbourne and even, all the way back in the 1970s, a prematurely burned-out Elton John. None of those farewells stuck. The Eagles even released a live album of their 1994 reunion tour and titled it “Hell Freezes Over.” Elton John recently announced another farewell tour, the “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” farewell tour, of course. He insists it’s real this time.

The classic rock ’n’ roll generation was born in the 1940s and 1950s, hit stardom in the 1960s and 1970s, and is now finding “how terribly strange to be 70,” as Paul Simon wrote, if not long past it. While many keep right on rocking, there’s also been a recent wave of retirement announcements (and, alas, passages to the Great Gig in the Sky).

Peter Frampton, whose farewell tour comes to the ilani casino in October, has been diagnosed with inclusion body myositis, a rare, progressive muscle disease. So the 68-year-old has said he’s playing and recording as much as he can, as fast as he can. Lynyrd Skynrd founder Gary Rossington, a grandfather, has said he’s dealing with health problems, too. After the band’s extended, 14-month farewell tour and a well-earned rest, he has teased: “Who knows?”

Some rock-star goodbyes are only to the insanity of mega-tours rather than continued studio work, small concerts and TV appearances — as we have seen with everyone from Simon, just this year, to The Beatles, back in the day.
Meanwhile, get ready to wave your lighted cellphone — since there’s no smoking inside the amphitheater, only on exterior patios — and scream for what Rolling Stone magazine has called “easily the most requested live song in existence.”

Park and ride

We’ve rounded up the 2019 concert seasons at Clark County’s two biggest venues, with artists, dates, prices, website links and the latest word on ticket availability. The amphitheater offers lawn-seat four-packs at a discount; it also offers VIP packages featuring great seating, souvenirs and sometimes even a meet-and-greet with the talent. You may be used to forking over an additional $6 parking fee to attend events at the fairgrounds/amphitheater complex, but there’s no parking fee if you’ve bought a concert ticket. Still, the lot does fill up and is famously slow to empty again, so the venue encourages concertgoers to consider shuttling from the nearby Salmon Creek Park & Ride, 1112 N.E. 136th St., Vancouver.

On Saturdays and Sundays, C-Tran provides shuttle service before and after concerts for $2 per person, round trip. Exact cash fare is required. On weeknights including Fridays, the amphitheater provides its own shuttle service for $5, round trip. Learn more about this at the amphitheater website.