American pop rock icons Maroon 5 on Monday evening wowed the Israeli crowd at the their sold-out show in Tel Aviv, kicking off the summer concert season with a bang.
The band's first-ever concert in the Holy Land had the crowd of nearly 50,000 fans at HaYarkon Park dancing for almost two hours, with another show scheduled to take place later on Tuesday. The performance will also close the band's first-ever tour of the Middle East.
Tens of thousands of enthusiastic fans, some appearing too young to have been born when the group's debut album came out in 2002, arrived on Monday afternoon at the huge compound in Tel Aviv, and as the night fell, the hot weather was replaced by a cool breeze - perfect for a concert.
After a short opening act performance by Israeli pop stars Agam Buhbut and Jonathan Mergui, at 09:15pm sharp, the eyes of the 55,000-strong crowd looked up to the stage in anticipation of the band and its vocalist Adam Levine, who has become a star in his own right, to emerge.
Maroon 5 - This Love
(Video: Asaf Magal)
After a brief light show, opening guitar riffs playing the band's hit "Move like Jagger" rocked the park, prompting loud cheers from the crowd, which sang every word of the song.
Once the song ended, the guitar riffs seamlessly shifted to the familiar tune of the band's first hit song "This Love," which came out in 2002 and is celebrating this year its 20th anniversary.
It wasn't until after a series of a few more hit songs that Levine finally decided to catch his breath and talk to the adoring crowd hanging on his every word. "I can't explain to you how excited we are tonight to be here," he said as he turned to the crowd and joked about how young they were. "Our first album came out in 2002, none of you were even born yet."
The singer also said the band had wanted to come to Israel for years, but never had the chance. "This is a dream come true for us," he said.
But one of the most exciting moments of the concern came when Levine invited Israeli street musician Coral Bismuth to the stage to perform together the band's song "Sunday Morning." Levine prefaced the performance by saying he had heard the musician play the song outside his hotel room in Tel Aviv a day earlier.
Right before Maroon 5 closed their set with the hit song "Sugar," Levine whispered "I love you" to the crowd and took off his shirt to the screams of the fans, which by his own admission during the show, were mostly female.
Clearly, Levine and the band know their audience well.