Fool in Love spotlights classic R&B outside SoFi Stadium in Inglewood

Dressed in white and silver paisley-print jackets that shimmered in the afternoon sun, the members of Stylistics steadied themselves as a revolving stage carried them before an audience gathered on the asphalt outside SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Moments earlier, Tower of Power had been entertaining the crowd with their muscular, horn-driven funk. Now, as that group slowly receded from view, it was time for Philadelphia soul greats (or at least a modern version of them) to take over at Saturday's Fool in Love festival.

“Let’s get pregnant again,” said singer Jason Sharp, cueing the band to slip between the still-silky sheets of “Break Up to Make Up.”

The turntable-shaped stage — a sort of classic R&B turntable — was just one part of the plan devised by Fool in Love organizers to showcase the dozens of acts that will be featured at the inaugural one-day festival. Among the other artists spread across four stages were (take a deep breath) Lionel Richie, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson, Al Green, Chaka Khan, Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick, Santana, Nile Rodgers & Chic, Charlie Wilson, and the Isley Brothers, as well as more modern versions of the Temptations, the Spinners, the Delfonics, the Chi-Lites, the O'Jays, and Kool & the Gang.

The show started around 11 a.m. and ended about 12 hours later; some of the artists who performed earlier in the day, including the Pointer Sisters and Evelyn “Champagne” King, had 10 to 15 minutes to do their thing. At one point in the afternoon, after Knight started her set a little late, it looked like Khan was going to appear on a neighboring stage before Knight finished — an epic battle between the divas was brewing. Thankfully, they worked out the transition; peace reigned on the grounds of Hollywood Park.

Produced by C3 Presents, which also organizes Chicago’s Lollapalooza and Tennessee’s Bonnaroo, Fool in Love was the latest in a string of recent festivals built, unlike the deliberately eclectic Coachella, around a single genre or scene. Think of last year’s emo-focused When We Were Young in Las Vegas, or Besame Mucho, a Latin music buffet served up at Dodger Stadium in December.

Fans complain vehemently on social media about the inconveniences of these packed shows: the long lines, the overpriced drinks, the overlapping sets that mean you have to choose between your two favourite bands. Yet the festivals’ continued popularity (both When We Were Young and Besame Mucho will return later this year) points to an appetite for a real-world equivalent of the one-stop shopping experience offered by digital streaming.

Things to complain about at Fool in Love, which drew a crowd in the tens of thousands, included Warwick's 12:30pm set time (though you can imagine that may have been at his request) and the nightmarish bottleneck that formed near the so-called Cruisin' Stage as people struggled to get in to see Robinson and Green; one group of fans solved the problem by ripping apart a section of fencing to create an, shall we say, alternative entrance behind a row of portable toilets.

Overall, though, Saturday's show seemed to go as smoothly as the spin of that turntable, as long as one didn't mind walking a half-mile to see Morris Day & the Time after seeing the Commodores, who were currently without Lionel.

And how was the music? You couldn’t say that either heavyweight felt particularly inspired by their proximity to one another—in fact, many of the easily crowd-pleasing achievements fell short: How cool would it have been if Rodgers had shown up during Ross’s performance to play his immortal “I’m Coming Out” guitar riff? Or think of Ross and Richie teaming up to sing their classic duet, “Endless Love,” live and in person for the first time in a long time.

Unfortunately, these standout moments were never to be realized, either because of routine or a lack of instinct for how valuable viral moments are created.

That said, no one on Fool in Love was anything less than a joy to behold, even if Richie probably could have left his goofy EDM remix of “Running With the Night” in Las Vegas, where he has a residency at the Wynn. He spent more time than you might have expected on old Commodores tracks (“Easy” and “Brick House,” of course, but also “Zoom” and the lovely “Still”) amid the polished pop hits that made him one of the biggest artists of the 1980s. And he told canned jokes that made you smile despite yourself.

“I have more songs,” he said near the end, and so they did: a pensive “Say You, Say Me,” a grandiose “We Are the World” (which he introduced with a hard-to-parse speech about what he learned about humanity during the pandemic), an inevitable “All Night Long (All Night).”

Lionel Richie sang a rich array of Commodores hits like “Brick House” and his own pop songs like “All Night Long (All Night)” on Fool in Love.

(Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)

Ross glided through her repertoire of old Motown and disco hits with the ethereal insouciance she has exuded for decades. “You know I’m 80, right?” she asked after changing from one sequined dress to another. Robinson wore matching red leather pants with a flowing red shirt as she delved into the eternal romantic ache of “The Tracks of My Tears”; Green tossed roses into the audience as his horn section accented the pleading, soft “Let’s Stay Together.”

At a festival where flashy outfits abounded, Wilson was perhaps the most eye-catching in a light-up jacket that pulsed to the robotic-soul beat of Gap Band’s “Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me).” And Khan, unsurprisingly, may have brought the most impressive vocals of the day, jamming with undiminished rhythmic agility as his tight, small funk band played “Ain’t Nobody.”

Are there any big takeaways from Fool in Love? Maybe you left the show thinking about all the ways technology has shaped R&B over the past 70 years. Maybe you noticed the racial and generational diversity of the audience and wondered what it is about this music that speaks to so many different people (probably the eternal heartache).

“You can't rush love,” Ross sang in The Supremes' glorious song of the same title, an aphorism everyone in Fool in Love was quick to reiterate.