Peter Viney's Blog

P.P. Arnold
(Pete Josef support)

Poole Lighthouse
Friday 13th June 1945

SET LIST
What’cha Gonna Do (When I Leave You)
Though it Hurts Me Badly
Baby Blue
Different Drum
Everything’s Gonna Be Alright
I Believe
Medicated Goo
I’m A Dreamer
(I Love The Lord)
Eleanor Rigby
Angel of The Morning
Soul Survivor
First Cut is the Deepest
ENCORE
Life Is But Nothing

MUSICIANS
P.P.Arnold – vocals
Alan Phillips – electric guitar, acoustic guitar, vocals
Tony Gould – drums
Phillip Patel- bass guitar, harmonica, vocals

P.P.Arnold is prominent currently. Her autobiography is one of the best rock autobiographies I’ve read, then she has a career retrospective 3 CD box set which has a third CD of collaborations and outtakes.

So is there any justice in this world? In the Concert Hall we have a one bloke solo show, blind comedian, Chris McAusland. The car park was nearly full when we arrived. The lobby was packed, then Chris McAusland started at 7.30 and it was near empty. So instead of one bloke telling jokes, the much smaller theatre hosts a rock icon, a true legend, with a band, P.P. Arnold. How many were there? 120? 150? She mentioned that her publicity had worked hard so where were the audience? All Poole Lighthouse seems to do is stick hundreds of glossy fliers in the lobby, and assume that people will park and walk cross a dual carriageway to go and browse the fliers. But they don’t. And they didn’t do a P.P. Arnold flier either. I’m on Poole’s mailing list so how did I hear about it? Not from Poole. I got an email alert rom buying her 3 CD box set recently. Nothing from Poole. It seems odd, it’s not part of a long tour at all. Maybe it was designed as a warm up for her Glastonbury appearance in a fortnight.

She has just a three piece band, far fewer than I’ve seen her with before. Given the size of the audience, it would have to be economic. First thing, her voice has not lost an ounce of its power.

What’cha Gonna Do (When I Leave You) begins at the beginning, when she arrived in England as an Ikette, backing Ike & Tina Turner. She got to sing lead vocal on this.I wish I had a copy – a US one sells on Discogs for a highest of £230. A UK pressing is £170. I said she was iconic. The guitar got an Ike Turner feel too.

Though It Hurts Me Badly was on her first LP, The First Lady of Immediate and was her first composition. That was a shock, as recorded strings joined in, played from the sound board. We were somewhat karaoke shy after the support act. The bass player added some harmonica. This was a conundrum throughout. She has a superb 3 piece band, but some (but NOT all) needs augmenting with strings or horns. In many ways they were better without it, as a pre-recorded track fixes what you do, and that’s why she eschewed it on stuff where she wanted to hang loose and go for the soul. It means an extra one on stage, but couldn’t this be done sufficiently well with one person paying a keyboard synthesizer live?

Baby Blue is a favourite from the Steve Craddock produced New Adventures of P.P. Arnold from 2019. Again, there were pre-recorded additions. We saw the 2019 New Adventures tour. Her voice is still the same.

Her cover of Different Drum is the best version of a great song, written by Mike Nesmith in 1964 and it was a hit in 1967 for The Stone Poneys (with Linda Ronstadt singing). P.P. Arnold did it in 1998. You need to see the original video HERE. Or you could try the live on TV video here. Or like me you could play one or other on repeat. Alan Phillips moved to acoustic guitar and the guitarists both added backing vocals. Tremendous. My ‘third favourite’ P.P. Arnold track. You can gues the first two.

Everything’s Gonna Be Alright was a Northern Soul floor filler, though it dates from 1967, an Immediate single release.No additions from memory, just the three piece.

I Believe was written with her son, and didn’t surface until New Adventures. A strong song, it gives her the chance to emote and really give it soul.

Medicated Goo was a great lost track. Eric Clapton produced her cover of the Traffic song back in 1972. There were no soundboard additions and it benefited, especially as she restarted the song a way in. It surfaced finally on The Turning Tide album in 2017.

I’m A Dreamer is by Sandy Denny. We saw her do it at the 2012 Tribute To Sandy Denny show at Basingstoke, where we agreed she completely overshadowed everyone else on the show. She had to finish that show – no one would be daft enough to try and follow her on stage.

At this point, she ‘did a Judy Collins’ that is mention a song in her life (singing gospel) and just launch full into an unaccompanied fragment of I Love The Lord.

Eleanor Rigby was done on her second album., Kafunta. This is extended and she gave the band a chance to show off their chops. Even better was going into a kind of rap at the end about lonely people, and she managed to attack the Labour government’s withdrawal of older people’s winter fuel allowance in it. Well, we applauded.

Angel of The Morning came next. What a song, it is. It has a history. Evie Sands did it first on the Cameo Parkway label, which promptly went bust, killing the single. Billie Davis in the UK covered it next, with P.P. Arnold as a backing singer. Then she did it on Kafunta in 1968. She then rendered subsequent versions redundant, as she proved again tonight. She also did it simply with the band. A great moment for me (again). If you’re able to get the Soul Survivor set, check disc 3 where Chip Taylor and P.P. Arnold sing Temptation (NOT The Everly Bros song).

Soul Survivor gives its title to the book and to the 3 CD set. She is. She’s magnificent.

She gave the intro to The First Cut Is The Deepest, and reminded us that her definitive version predated Rod Stewart by ten years and that at Glastonbury, Rod is on the main stage, she is on a side stage. As at the start, there is no justice. They had to add the soundtrack strings at the start.

The encore was Life Is But Nothing with the bass player only on harmonica (and beautifully too).

There was to be no second encore. The drummer said something about lights up to prompt the sound engineer who may have been expecting one. But when your audience is far too small AND the support act stayed on a full FIFTY-THREE minutes, you can’t expect it. See below.

PETE JOSEF

Oh, dear. I am usually generous to those doing the unenviable support set. I tend to buy their records. I’m encouraging, but sometimes it has to stop.

He annoyed me right away by walking on and checking his tuning before speaking. Don’t leave an acoustic guitar under stage lights (though current LED lights are far less of an issue). Check the tuning in the dressing room, come on and start. There’s no band, so no need for a chord to key them in. Then he announced that it would be forty minutes of continuous music with no breaks to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his album Colour. Face it, Pete. None of us had heard of you. None of us had heard of your album. We had no nostalgia for it. Then he asked us not to leave in the forty minutes saying security staff were instructed not to let anyone out. Good job he did, otherwise I’d have been off to the lobby in five minutes. Why was he thought suitable support for a soul singer?

So he had a pre-recorded keyboard part to augment his guitar, just like a busker in Bath with a boom box and a sign by a credit card machine saying ‘Tap here to Tip £3’ (Bath). It’s £2 in Chicester, only £1 in Poole. The thing is, the busker would have been performing a song many of us know. OK, I’ve heard Streets of London too often but it has a pleasant melody and a good lyric. So does Baker Street. The lyrics here were banal romance in a whining voice to a repetitive Radiohead on a bad day keyboard part. Sometimes he used a bass part. Sometimes he played keyboards, and on the instrumental bits on the piano setting, he started to sound pretty good, but I was praying ‘Pleas, please don’t sing!’ Lyric snatches included I won’t lie to you. I’m sad. True, really sad. Then I will take the high road and you will take the low road but then it wittered into something else. I was hoping for And I’ll be in Scotland afore ye!. There were bits of horns. A computer bass track.

Then he was on FIFTY THREE FUCKING MINUTES. I know. I kept checking the time. Support? Thirty minutes maximum. Do at least ONE song the audience know. A cover, not an original. Back in my day, a support who did FIFTY THREE MINUTES would have been right off the tour the next day and when the word went round, never appear on another one. FORTY was an arrogant imposition anyway, but it wasn’t forty. Then don’t tell us you sound better with a band. You’re a support. Solo. Live with it. You are being given an opportunity to reach new fans. They didn’t come to hear you. Do your thirty minutes, and get off.

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

P.P. Arnold, 2019, Arlington Arts Centre, Newbury
The Manfreds, P.P. Arnold 2003
The Manfreds, P.P. Arnold, Zoot Money, Nov 2016
Sandy Denny Tribute