Farewell to the Palace, hello to LCA, in a bustling Detroit music year

Brian McCollum, Detroit Free Press Pop Music Critic Published 6:00 a.m. ET Dec. 31, 2017

For nearly two years, a time-lapse camera on top of the Town Pump Tavern and the Park Avenue House captured the building of Little Caesars Arena. Kathleen Galligan/Detroit Free Press

I didn’t expect to get sentimental about a doomed building in the Detroit suburbs.

But when Bob Seger’s show wrapped up late Sept. 23 at the Palace of Auburn Hills, I found it hard to leave my seat in familiar old Section 113, and lingered for a good 20 minutes to soak in the scene one final time.

From the moment the Detroit Pistons had announced their move to Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena, the days were numbered for the Palace, the region’s leading entertainment arena for nearly 30 years. For many devoted concertgoers, it was a home-away-from-home, providing too many special nights to count; for someone who covers the stuff for a living, it also served as a friendly office-away-from-the-office.

Sitting there after the Seger finale, flashing back through the past two decades, I could happily forgive the multitude of beers spilled on shoes and notepads, the periodic parking-lot mishaps, the high frequencies that surely got sheared off my hearing there in Section 113. Nostalgia was the order of the night, with tearful ushers and other familiar faces on hand to drive home the point.

September was also when the Palace gave way to LCA, the sparkling new facility built by the Red Wings and now alone as metro Detroit's big-dog arena. A nearly $900 million project teeming with state-of-the-art amenities, LCA promptly asserted itself with a slew of prime-time shows: Paul McCartney, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga, Guns N’ Roses, Jay-Z, Janet Jackson.

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And then, of course, there was Kid Rock.

The Michigan star’s six-night opening stand had been announced early in the year with hoopla and excitement. By the time Sept. 12 came along, the mood was far more mixed: Rock’s recent forays into politics — a teased Senate run, his outspoken Trump support, a White House visit — prompted a burst of backlash among Detroit activist groups, some who cited his previous displays of the Confederate flag.

And so Little Caesars Arena got an opening night with an unwanted distraction, drawing crowds of noisy protesters outside as Rock launched a run that ultimately drew about 90,000 fans.

Rock continued to grab headlines, toying with political watchers and media for months as he insisted his U.S. Senate deliberations were no joke — before gleefully confirming, on the eve of his November album release, they’d been precisely that.

The Kid Rock saga was just one flashpoint in an especially eventful and newsy Detroit music year, from the opening of Jack White’s Third Man vinyl plant to the death of Mike Ilitch, the pizza magnate who rejuvenated downtown entertainment.

The rock world awoke May 18 to the shock of Chris Cornell’s death in a Detroit hotel room, where his body was found soon after Soundgarden’s Fox Theatre show. The singer’s death was later ruled suicide by hanging.

Like Kid Rock, Eminem thrust himself into the political fray, albeit from a very different direction: The Detroit rapper burst back onto the scene in October with a scathing rap attack on President Trump, a theme he’d return to on his December release, “Revival.” Em’s ideological pronouncements weren’t enough to spare him from music critics who may have been politically sympathetic — the once-invincible superstar drew the worst reviews of his career.

While the Palace's closing marked the end of one era, there were hints of an even more poignant finish line ahead for a couple of significant Michigan music institutions.

Aretha Franklin, who started the year with talk of retirement, was booked for the inaugural Detroit Music Weekend in the city’s theater district. In an emotional Free Press interview ahead of the June event, she granted that it might be her final hometown performance, and as she arrived for the festivities looking elegant but frail and sickly, it was easy to understand her state of mind.

Seger was another iconic artist dropping hints, quietly billing many of his national tour dates as “one last time” at the respective venues. That tour is now on hold anyway: After developing a threatening neck condition, he was rushed to surgery in October and continues to recuperate.

Seger hopes to get back out in the spring to make up his 19 postponed dates. In a 2018 that's already got some interesting stuff on tap — a new Jack White album that looks promising, a likely Eminem concert, a potentially major year for young band Greta Van Fleet — here's hoping Seger has at least "one last time" in store for his hometown too.

Sting shown onstage at the Palace's opening concert,

Sting plays the Palace's first concert, Aug. 13, 1988. PS&E

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