Taylor Swift Kicks off US Eras Tour at Super Bowl Stadium

Taylor Swift arrives at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Taylor Swift arrives at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)
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Taylor Swift Kicks off US Eras Tour at Super Bowl Stadium

Taylor Swift arrives at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)
Taylor Swift arrives at the 65th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 5, 2023, in Los Angeles. (AP)

Taylor Swift opened her US concert series with a three-hour tour of her career.

Swift kicked off the first concert of the 52-date Eras Tour with a six-song set from her album “Lover” on Friday night at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, where the Super Bowl was played a month ago.

“I don’t know how to address the way this is making me feel right now,” Swift, who hasn't toured since 2018, said early in the show.

She ended the concert with a seven-song set from her latest album “Midnights," closing with the song “Karma.”

In between she played clusters of songs from most of her albums — and just one, “Tim McGraw,” from her 2006 self-titled debut. In the end it took 44 songs and just over three hours for her to span her 17-year career.

Having not toured for her previous three albums, this concert series is intended to play catchup by providing the live debut of many of those songs. When Swift announced the tour in November she called it “a journey through the musical eras of my career (past and present!).”

Swift seemed to acknowledge the Ticketmaster furor that sullied the run-up to the tour when she told the crowd of more than 70,000 that she understands it took “considerable effort” for them to be there.

After another show at the same venue Saturday night, the tour moves on to Allegiant Stadium outside Las Vegas and then AT&T Stadium near Dallas.

It concludes with two Los Angeles-area shows in August.



UK Blues Legend John Mayall Dead at 90 

English blues singer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers, on the stage of the Miles Davis hall during the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, late Monday, July 7, 2008. (AP)
English blues singer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers, on the stage of the Miles Davis hall during the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, late Monday, July 7, 2008. (AP)
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UK Blues Legend John Mayall Dead at 90 

English blues singer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers, on the stage of the Miles Davis hall during the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, late Monday, July 7, 2008. (AP)
English blues singer John Mayall performs with his band The Bluesbreakers, on the stage of the Miles Davis hall during the 42nd Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, late Monday, July 7, 2008. (AP)

John Mayall, the British blues pioneer whose 1960s music collective the Bluesbreakers helped usher in a fertile period of rock and brought guitarists like Eric Clapton to prominence, has died at 90, his family said Tuesday.

Mayall, a singer and multi-instrumentalist who was dubbed "the godfather of British blues," and whose open-door arrangement saw some of the greats in the genre hone their craft with him and his band, "passed away peacefully in his California home" on Monday, according to a statement posted on his Facebook page.

It did not state a cause of death.

"Health issues that forced John to end his epic touring career have finally led to peace for one of this world's greatest road warriors," it said. "John Mayall gave us 90 years of tireless efforts to educate, inspire and entertain."

Mayall's influence on 1960s rock and beyond is enormous. Members of the Bluesbreakers eventually went on to join or form groups including Cream, Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones and many more.

At age 30, Mayall moved to London from northern England in 1963. Sensing revolution in the air, he gave up his profession as a graphic designer to embrace a career in blues, the musical style born in Black America.

He teamed up with a series of young guitarists including Clapton, Peter Green, later of Fleetwood Mac, and Mick Taylor who helped form the Rolling Stones.

In the Bluesbreakers' debut album in 1966, "Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton," John Mayall enthralled music aficionados with a melding of soulful rock and gutsy, guitar-driven American blues featuring covers of tunes by Robert Johnson, Otis Rush and Ray Charles.

The blues music he was playing in British venues was "a novelty for white England," he told AFP in 1997.

That album was a hit, catapulting Clapton to stardom and bringing a wave of popularity to a more raw and personal blues music.

Mayall moved to California in 1968 and toured America extensively in 1972.

He recorded a number of landmark albums in the 1960s including "Crusade," "A Hard Road," and "Blues From Laurel Canyon." Dozens more followed in the 1970s and up to his latest, "The Sun Is Shining Down," in 2022.

Mayall was awarded an OBE, an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, in 2005.