“A clean-cut man in his mid-twenties or thereabouts, wearing a white polo shirt with some sort of armed-services insignia, is being passed overhead, crowd-surfing toward the runway that extends from the stage. No biggie, except that this crowd-surfer is a soldier, and he is seated, if that’s even the right word, in a wheelchair. Creed’s roadies scramble to help the vet onto the catwalk, and soon he is flanked by the visibly moved Stapp and Tremonti as they rip through the big finish of “What’s This Life For.” The fans are freaking, like Pentecostals taken by the spirit, only in this case that spirit bonds classic-rock triumphalism to Dixie patriotism and Christian exceptionalism. The vet raises his arms and soaks up the crowd’s thunderous howls of affection, pausing only for a moment to try to catch—gasp again!—a prosthetic leg (not his own) that has been tossed up like a beach ball from the maw of the mosh pit. When the song ends, chants of “USA! USA!” ring through the thick night air. The soldier is wheeled to the side of the stage, his vantage point for the remainder of the evening. The leg is passed through the crowd back to its owner.
What can you even say?
