Peter Viney's Blog

Cliff Richard

Bournemouth International Centre
Wednesday 17th October 2018 19.45

Bournemouth International Centre

SUPPORT: The Flyboys

SEE BELOW MAIN REVIEW

CLIFF RICHARD SET LIST:

1950s
Heartbreak Hotel
Peggy Sue
Wake Up Little Susie
Move It
Living Doll
1960s
Love Me Do
Summer Holiday
The Next Time
The Young Ones
The Minute You’re Gone
Congratulations
1970s
Bright Eyes
Miss You Nights
Devil Woman
1980s
Beat It
The Best Of Me
Daddy’s Home
Misteltoe & Wine
1990s
From A Distance
The Millenium Prayer
All I Have To Do Is Dream
2000s
The Miracle of Love
Rise Up
Reborn

encores
Reelin’ And Rockin’ / My Kinda Life
We Don’t Talk Anymore

BAND

I didn’t shell out £15 for a souvenir programme. The last time I did that was Marvin Gaye in 1976 and the announcements were hard to hear.

Drums
Bass guitar
Saxophone, clarinet, flute
Lead guitar
Keyboards / Synthesizer
Backing vocal, Acoustic guitar – Jim (from Fly Boys)
Backing vocal, acoustic guitar – Dave (from Fly Boys)

I’ve never seen Cliff live. I did lights on a The Shadows show in the 60s. I once queued for tickets as a Christmas gift for several hours and found they were sold out. Five years ago, I did the Toppermost selection, (LINK TO TOPPERMOST WEBSITE) and this show covers seven out of my list of ten.

As I wrote back in 2013:

“100 albums exactly by September 2013. 47 studio, 7 soundtracks, 11 live and 35 compilations, but I wouldn’t really count compilations. 154 singles. 46 EPs. More EPs than any other artist, British or American. Fourteen UK #1 hits (at the time of writing). It’s a mountain. What percentage of it have I even heard? What percentage of that can I actually remember? How can you possibly approach it sensibly and extract ten songs?”

I checked Wiki now …  67 Top Ten singles, or 130 Top 20 singles and EPs. He’s been in the singles chart in every one of its six decades. While I’m mainly a pre-1965 fan, I shared the outrage when BBC Radio decided not to play his latest single years ago, and bought one at Woolworths when that was his way into the charts. I was also appalled at the media witch-hunt of the last few years.

In this show, he’s eschewing some of his own hits in favour of several covers from The Everly Brothers, Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Art Garfunkel and Michael Jackson.

The show is themed in sections, with a stunning minute or so of laser light projection in the dark marking the transition between decades. It goes straight in from the warm-up act The Fly Boys too.

The transition between decades looked like this throughout

For the BIC, the sound was very good. Not up to Leonard Cohen / Paul Simon levels of clarity, but far better than the average from the Centre Upper Gallery.

the 50s

Heartbreak Hotel is the starter, and the band is shorn of the two backing singers from The Fly Boys, who are no doubt still getting their costumes changed, not that he’d need them. It’s Cliff as Britain’s answer to Elvis in 1958 mode, and from our seats he looks just the same as he did at seventeen too. I have heard it better … but that was Scotty Moore on guitar, D.J. Fontana on drums from Elvis’s original band, backing a Welsh Elvis impersonator. Scotty reprised his definitive guitar solo six or seven times as we applauded.

Peggy Sue is more suited to Cliff’s voice, and a tribute to the influence of Buddy Holly. Wake Up Little Susie saw the two Fly Boys duo back with acoustic guitars and added vocals to cover The Everly Brothers. They’re an important part of the act, performing either side of Cliff whenever there’s a Shadows number, and doing better versions of The Shadows walks than the originals.

Move It! Original 45

Cliff does good intros throughout the evening. He explained how Move It, his first record, got to #2 in the chart. He was seventeen, a boy band age really. That was the 25th October 1958, so a week more than exactly sixty years ago tonight. Elvis Presley was #3, the Everly Brothers were #4, and #5 was Tommy Edwards on It’s All In The Game, later a major 60s hit for Cliff. I have a CD of the early rock TV series music from Drumbeat and Saturday Club. It all sounds mild and a bit swingy until Cliff bursts in on CD, and immediately it rocks harder as he performs his early records live (High Class Baby, Apron Strings, Mean Streak, Dynamite). He got on the pink jacket for Move It, and I’ll have to say, tore it up. Astonishingly so. He was great live in that era. Roger Daltrey recounted in this week’s Sunday Times how good Cliff was when he saw him as a fifteen year old. He cut a live album with The Shadows in 1962 Live At The ABC Kingston. It wasn’t released for forty years and proves to be one of the finest early live rock band recordings.

He then narrated the lead in to his first #1, Living Doll and from the balcony, I could see a sea of grey and bald heads immediately start swaying. Lionel Bart wrote it. It doesn’t sound like rock really, but it is first rate pop music.

The 60s

The 60s set started with a decent cover of Love Me Do, The Beatles first hit. The lead guitarist added nice harmonica. Cliff explained how much he’d loved it, said that #17 was excellent chart placing for a first record (Duh! We recalled his first was #2) then said “Now I’m going to play five of my number ones from the 60s.” And did. I would have thought The Beatles were the end of his rocking era to an extent. He was born on 14th October 1940, so still seventeen when Move It entered the charts, but eighteen when it reached #2.  Hank Marvin was a year younger. I think of Cliff as “The pre-Beatles era.” That 1958-63 period (let’s date The Beatles era from Please Please Me getting to #1) seems a different half-generation to The Beatles, so my sister’s era, not mine. Then it struck me … John Lennon was also born in 1940, and I just checked … on the 9th October, so was actually five days OLDER than Cliff. Ringo Starr is three months OLDER than Cliff. (Paul McCartney was June 1942, George Harrison February 1943). I’ve never seen it that way. I’m sure Cliff does, but in music terms he always seems a different period. He’d been a major star for four years when they first broke through.

Summer Holiday came out of chronology (January 1963) but it set the heads swaying again. I noted before I went, talking to my grandkids that they knew Summer Holiday. Everyone does. Maybe it’s the thought of The Shadows in Greek soldiers’ skirts with balaikas. The original single, which I have, was a great double sider, with Dancing Shoes on the B-side. The Fly Boys were either side for great Shadows moves.

The Next Time followed, also from the Summer Holiday film, so another #1. But is it? The British chart ignored “Double A sides” until 1965, and both sides were promoted. The B-side was Bachelor Boy, significant in giving decades of headlines about Cliff Richard. In a pub quiz situation, I reckon the vast majority regard Bachelor Boy as the A -side … and it was co-written by Cliff Richard and Hank Marvin. Cliff was very much a double A side artist at that point. In The Next Time I thought there was the first, slight hint of a wobbly vocal.

The Young Ones was from the earlier film. As I said on Toppermost:

OK, there’s this old theatre that’s going to be demolished. We need to save it. Let’s put on a show! Whaddya know? We gotta show? … a cliché, but the best teen flick realization of that cliché ever.

 I love the song. It still thrills, never more so than seeing Cliff actually doing it, and yes, given the lyric, there is an air of irony: To live, love, while the flame is strong, because we may not be, the young ones very long. Cliff proved he’s got through fifty-five years of it. He played acoustic guitar (unusually), with the Fly Boys either side. The Shadows trio moves looked great again. We heard him on the Clive Anderson radio show a few years ago, accompanying himself on solo guitar … he was very good then too. To me The Young Ones brings back memories of Student Union end-of-term cheap bus trips from Hull to London in the late 60s, with everyone warbling it. At youth club, one lad had seen The Young Ones over seventy times, and had his trouser pockets sewn up just like Cliff to avoid spoiling the line. From Toppermost again:

There are many positive feelings. Some of my happiest teenage moments were spent watching The Young Ones and Summer Holiday, both endlessly repeated at the local News Theatre, which was basically a teen snogging venue with films on constant rotation all day. So you could watch a film twice on a cold wet night. I liked the films so much that I timed to arrive as the main feature started, leaving the heaviest snogging for the Edgar Lustgarten Presents B-movie and so watched the songs with attention

It’s around 1964 that my attention had left Cliff Richard. We’d stopped trying to learn Shadows numbers too, and were generally dismissive. So The Minute You’re Gone (1965) was never a favourite, though I did enjoy his rendition tonight.

There are twenty Cliff singles between Summer Holiday and Congratulations. I’ll put my hand up, not one of them would draw me to put money in a jukebox. Mega-swaying heads were reserved for Congratulations (1968). I don’t get Eurovision irony, and I know both Sandie Shaw and Lulu loathed their Eurovision successes. I confess … two of the 60s songs I loathe most are Congratulations and Englebert Humperdink’s Release Me. But I did feel the vibe of around 4,000 people loving every second of it, and got over Cliff doing his Eurovision dance exactly as he had fifty years ago.

The 70s

We enter the 70s with Art Garfunkel’s Bright Eyes. I’m now getting fascinated by the constantly changing lighting, one of the very best light set ups I’ve seen, using so many elements. It’s always a lovely melody. Cliff nailed it perfectly, I thought.

Miss You Nights is 1976, and from I’m Nearly Famous, an outstanding album after a relatively fallow period (sorry, Cliff fans, but I wasn’t into the period). I bought the LP for I Can’t Ask Anymore Than You, which he didn’t do, but he launched into a third single from the album, Devil Woman. It was always slightly incongruously raunchy for Cliff’s image, but written by Terry Brittan, mentioned and praised often this evening. It only reached #9 in Britain, but it was, at last, the breakthrough record in America, reaching #6. It was a long time coming. Back in the early to mid 60s, I sent my cousin in Toronto regular batches of unobtainable Cliff 45s and EPs, which is why in return I have Canadian Philles label singles of The Righteous Brothers and others more to my taste then. Devil Woman was a big rocker, a return to big rockers if you like, and was an ideal song to take us to the interval.

THE INTERVAL

The 80s

Beat It

The 80s representative track was Beat It, with the (very fine) lead guitarist joining Cliff Richard front stage, and performing Steve Lukather’s lead guitar part AND the incredible Eddie Van Halen guitar solo from the original, while Cliff did the Michael Jackson moves and poses. The lead guitarist looks very tall, but suddenly Cliff looked tiny next to him.

The Best of Me (1989) skipped chronology but was in place because it had been his 100th single. There are a LOT of such numbers in this review. I enjoyed it, though it had never been a song I could have hummed if you’d asked me. Daddy’s Home (1981) skipped back to the start of the decade. The original was on the Wired For Sound an album which must have sold extremely well, because there are vast numbers of secondhand copies around. The original was live, and it’s a cover of Shep & The Limelites doo-wop original from 1961. I thoght it obscure but lots of people covered it before Cliff did.

Red and green lights … flashes of bauble yellow, and yes it was Mistletoe & Wine (1988) so familiar blasting out in your local mall between Merry Xmas Everybody, Last Christmas and Wonderful Christmastime from November 1st to December 25th every year. I don’t know how shop staff can take it. I looked down. People in the stalls (fan club, I assume) were holding chains of LED Christmas lights and waving them. Must be a tradition. Add that added vowel sound Christ-ee-an rhyme. OK, so warmly familiar it made me fancy a mince pie.

Misteletoe & Wine. Cliff centre in twin follow spots becomes stardust

90s

Not a cover! I thought it the best musical arrangement of the night too, From A Distance (1990).From the Toppermost article:

This song was made famous by Nanci Griffith, though written by Julie Gold. Bette Midler did a significant cover version, as did the reformed Byrds, then Elaine Paige. It’s a pretty melody, somewhat swamped by Midler. We wanted to record a new version for an educational textbook (English As A Foreign Language) and sat down with several versions, and Cliff’s live version, to our amazement, leapt out at us. We had also had an issue with the lyric (the voice of every man) as educational publishers fight very shy of ‘man’ to refer to both genders. Cliff had changed it to the voice of every one and made it fit perfectly.

So it’s incredibly familiar to me. I thought he did it superbly, even with the drums n bass beat intro. It signalled an army of female fans walking up to the front of the stage to stand, as if pre-arranged (pre-ordained, looking at the next song). It must happen every night … I’m sure the buses parked along the street follow the tour.

Not 100%, but I think this is From A Distance

For a change The Millenium Prayer (1999) failed to irritate me. It usually does. A lot of singing along. I began to feel I was at a rally.

Around this point, I wondered about the synth string tracks. At one point the keyboard player was playing piano setting, and the synth strings were soaring above. Possibly a pre-recorded track was being punched in … I don’t see he had enough hands to play it all.

Our two Fly Boys moved either side of him with acoustic guitars, and he repeated his admiration for The Everly Brothers, so was going to do what he said was their biggest hit All I Have To Do Is Dream. Maybe, but in chart terms, my money’s on Cathy’s Clown. Cliff reminded us that he had performed it with Phil Everly in 1994  … another Toppermost article I did was Phil Everly (linked). I would have gone for She Means Nothing To Me, their duet hit single from Phil’s album.

00s

The new record

The 2000s really meant the 2010s. It opened with The Miracle of Love getting a tad ‘Come to the Mission’ for me, but it’s from the forthcoming Rise Up album (due 23 November 2018)

Then he did two more songs from the album. The first single was Rise Up and Cliff reference his recent troubles, eliciting a “Boo” on mention of the BBC. He said then fairly that the issue was the heirarchy (i.e. those at the top of it) rather than the BBC DJs, producers and engineers he’d worked with over the years. Lots of applause. Well deserved.  Then he pointed out that BBC Radio Two had made it ‘Record of the Week.’ I should think so, though small recompense. The song is extremely appropriate and it went down superbly.

He followed it with Reborn, due for release the day after the concert. I didn’t fight my way through to the concession stand, but I could only see T-shirts and “souvenir programmes (£15).” A lost opportunity? He should have had boxes of both singles and he’d have moved hundreds, I reckon.

I liked the perfunctory few second gap before the encores. No milking it by going off stage for minutes as so many do. Like Van Morrison, he ignores that stuff and gets on with it.

The first encore was Chuck Berry’s Reelin’ and Rockin’ blending into My Kinda Life. The latter is from 1977, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before. I actively disliked his take on Reelin’ and Rockin’. The band was pumped up into 1980s mode and steamrollered it and swamped it. It needs … dare I say it … a touch of The Fly Boys swing to it and lighter backing, as one would with Chuck Berry’s cover of Route 66. I can see why he’d want to do Chuck Berry, and at this point in the evening a narrative song would be inappropriate. I think Hail, Hail Rock & Roll or Roll Over Beethoven would have served the ‘Long live rock’ mood better.

We Don’t Talk Anymore (1979) from Rock ‘n’ Roll Juvenile was announced as his biggest selling record. I’d have guessed Congratulations or The Young Ones but I can see why I was wrong. It was his biggest American hit and topped the charts in many countries, including the big ones outside the USA, the UK and Germany. Fabulous. A great song, and a sublime version. A great way to end.

THE FLY BOYS

Jez
Chris
Jim
David

Approximate set list (There were odd bits in other songs)

Dynamite / 1944
Livin’ La Vida Loca (Ricky Martin cover)
The Way You Make Me Feel (Michael Jackson cover)
Thriller (Michael Jackson cover)
Thinking Out Loud (Ed Sheeran cover)
S’Wonderful
Your Song (Elton John cover)
For Once In My Life (Stevie Wonder cover)
Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Andrews Sisters cover)
Living On A Prayer (Bon Jovi cover)
Get Back (Beatles cover)

They’re a warm-up act in a traditional, sense, trailing cheerleaders for the main attraction. Two of them, Jim and Dave are Cliff’s backing singers. They always stress Sir Cliff too, which Tom Jones, Van Morrison and Paul McCartney don’t do on stage. Their web site doesn’t state the names clearly, but they’re all experienced West End Musical performers and it shows – superb dancers and singers.

Their USP is that they do modern songs in the swing style of the “Thirties and Forties.” It’s an interesting concept, rather like California band Big Daddy doing songs in the style of the late Fifties. I thought, hang on, this is Cliff’s idea of what “old people” want – the hits of a previous generation, but no, that was when Cliff was young. Old people now only go back as far as Cliff himself.

In stage musical terms, singing and dancing, they’re stunningly good … but to me it was high class cruise ship karaoke. I say karaoke, because they sang to a recorded backing track, and even as support, with an audience of thousands, I think that inexcusable. OK, they would need a traditional horn section added to Cliff’s band, which Cliff manifestly doesn’t need. But live karaoke? Not for me. I know pre-recorded music is common in modern ballet, and I know it’s common in touring musicals, and it’s a specially-recorded arrangement for them. Nevertheless, I don’t like the principle next to live musicians on stage.

Livin’ La Vida Loca reminds me of a story of a radio interview with Ricky Martin, when he was asked if he’d written it. He affirmed that he had. Then the interviewer asked him what the chords were. He had no idea (a friend was on the same show).

Best song? Your Song was interesting with the style applied to it, and survived it well. Get Back and Thriller didn’t.