Hitmaker Mars ginger up Intuit Dome opening

Image: Intuit Dome and Walter P. Moore

It likely wasn’t the first time Bruno Mars (American singer and songwriter) played his song ‘Billionaire’ in front of an actual billionaire.

‘Los Angeles Times’ stated that but as the pop-soul hitmaker sang about wanting to “buy all of the things I never had” not long into his concert on the night of August 15^th at Inglewood’s (US) new Intuit Dome (which opened on August 15^th), you couldn’t help but scope out Steve Ballmer who’d used his vast wealth to do just that by building a long-awaited home for his beloved National Basketball Association (NBA) team the Los Angeles Clippers.

Peter Gene Hernandez, known professionally as Bruno Mars, is an American singer-songwriter and musician. He is known for his stage performances, retro showmanship and for performing in a wide range of musical styles including pop, rhythm and blues (R&B), funk, soul, reggae, disco, and rock.

The 18,000-capacity Intuit Dome is an indoor arena in Inglewood, California, South of SoFi Stadium (US). It is the home venue of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The venue opened its doors on August 15^th, 2024.

Image: Intuit Dome and Walter P. Moore

The Los Angeles Clippers are an American professional basketball team based in the Greater Los Angeles area (US). The Clippers compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the Pacific Division of the Western Conference. The Intuit Dome serves as their home ground.

Steve Ballmer is an American businessman and investor who was the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). He is a Co-Founder of the Ballmer Group, a philanthropic investment company.

‘Los Angeles Times’ further stated that sitting a few rows back from the stage in his signature light-blue button-down shirt, Ballmer clapped along with Mars’ peppy tune and happily received a round of backslaps from the pals seated around him.

August 15^th soldout show, the first of two at the arena by Mars, served as the grand opening of the Intuit Dome, a state-of-the-art arena that cost more than $2 billion and will begin hosting the Clippers in October (after years in which the team shared downtown’s 20,000-capacity Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles with the NBA team Los Angeles Lakers).

Image: Intuit Dome and Walter P. Moore

“Y’all, we are part of California history right now,” Mars told an audience that included Jennifer Lopez (American actor and singer, American actors Angela Bassett, Courtney B. Vance, Ashton Kutcher (American actor and film producer), and Simu Liu (Canadian actor), among other celebrities.

As openings go, it had some bumps: Hyped in advance for its high-tech touches, the venue’s entry-by-smartphone and opt-in facial-recognition systems weren’t working as planned on August 15^th which led to a giant bottleneck at the main entrance as the building’s staff struggled to inspect fans’ digital tickets one by one. The show, which had been scheduled for 8 pm, ended up starting at 9:40 on social media, concertgoers complained about long lines and a lack of clear signage and reliable Wi-Fi – hardly a tragedy, though embarrassing enough for a tech baron like Ballmer, who made much of his estimated $120-billion fortune as the head of Microsoft.

Yet, if there’s one entertainer who can smooth out a wrinkle, it’s Bruno Mars.

Performing in the Los Angeles area for the first time since 2018, the 38-year-old singer put on a two-hour display of the effortless charisma and deep musical knowhow that have earned him eight No. 1 singles, 15 Grammy Awards and gigs at not one but two Super Bowl Halftime shows. He wore a silky red bowling shirt and a neatly trimmed mustache with heavy ’70s-playboy vibes, he led the crack eight-piece band he calls the Hooligans like a suave combination of James Brown (American singer and dancer), Michael Jackson (American singer-songwriter and dancer), Frank Sinatra (American singer and actor), and Elvis Presley (American singer and actor). (Watching Mars, you’re never far from remembering that he got his start in show business as a pint-size Elvis impersonator in his native Hawaii.)

Mars’ music is a catalog of durable styles – rock, pop, R&B, funk, reggae – and he offered up bits of each in songs like the sweaty ‘Calling All My Lovelies’ which featured an extended comedic bit where he pretended to call a lover on a gold-plated phone, the effervescent ‘Treasure’ which evoked the glory days of Earth, Wind and Fire and the swaggering ‘That’s What I Like’ into which he threw a bit of salsa music just to show he could.

Near the end of the show, he brought out Lady Gaga (American singer-songwriter and actor – he called her “pop royalty” – to premiere their brand-new duet ‘Die With a Smile’ with Mars wearing a cowboy hat as he strummed a guitar and Gaga in a giant beehive wig as she played an electric piano.

The August 15^th show was proof that as quickly as pop music evolves these days, Mars’ old-school skills remain valuable. When a fan on the floor needed medical help at one point, Mars had his band vamp for a few minutes as security guards found the guy and carried him out.

“This is what professionals do,” he said with a grin as he steered the players back into the show.

And what of Intuit? Los Angeles already has plenty of other venues this size including the Crypto.com Arena, the 17,500-capacity Hollywood Bowl and the 17,505-capacity Kia Forum which Ballmer also owns and which sits just a mile up Prairie Avenue from the new building. Yet, the room sounded great on August 15^th: Crisp and detailed with less of the boominess you usually encounter in an arena.

Mars nodded to Intuit’s location as he introduced one of his earliest hits ‘Nothin on You’ which he said contained “the four chords that changed my life”.

“I used to live not too far from here driving around in my Honda Accord,” he concluded, a little misty from the memory. “I’ll never forget the day – I was rolling around here and I heard this song on the radio.”

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