Yes, my lovely wife sure knows how to make an aging would-be (some would say “has-been”) rock star happy.

Seriously. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday treat (at least not one I could write about here ).

My lady and I drove to the city that I’ve fallen in love with all over again, through Hunt’s Cross, which held so many fond childhood memories, past the John Lennon Airport with it’s huge sign aptly subtitled “above us only sky” and on to Speak. To be specific - Speak Hall - set in its beautifully manicured gardens on the banks of the Mersey.

But today we hadn’t come to partake of this magnificent Tudor mansion’s historical charms. We were a mere stone’s throw from the place that was the birth of the Mersey Sound and we were here to take a magical mystery tour to Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields and to the childhood homes of two of the twentieth century’s most prolific songwriters, name of John and Paul.

We needn’t have arrived early - but I’m glad we did. The tours were running late due to technical problems, so we had time for a nosh in Speak Hall’s restaurant. Nothing posh, but bloody good - and precisely what you’d have been eating in Liverpool during olden times.

The main course choices were Scouse Pie and Pan Haggerty. Being veggies we chose the latter and it was the nicest cheese, onion and potato pie I’ve tasted. The Wet Nelly was a new one to me, a citrus sweet northern version of one of the traditional English bread-based puddings. Hmm delicious. And all washed down with a bottle of Curiosity Cola. Give the National Trust their due… when they take you back in time, they do it in style.

Fully sated we boarded the mini bus to John Lennon’s former home, Mendips, on Menlove Avenue, where an extremely knowledgeable custodian gave us a full and frank potted history of when John met Paul, and how they used to practise their faltering early compositions in the tiny front room. The house had been restored to its former glory after being donated to the trust by Yoko Ono in 2003. When it first opened to the public, Paul McCartney had apparently told the custodian they used to practice singing in the front inner porch because of the fantastic acoustics. We each of us today took the opportunity to follow suit.

Did I mention Sir Paul? Next stop was the McCartney’s childhood home, 20 Forthlin Road, a couple of miles away in a less salubrious area of Allerton. And having joked en-route about expecting Sir Paul to have a nice cup of tea ready for us, I alighted from the mini bus to be greeted by… Paul McCartney!

Okay, after rubbing my eyes and taking a long hard look, I realised it wasn’t actually Sir Paul himself - but I tell you, had John Halliday not been gainfully employed as custodian of 20 Forthlin Road, he could make a very good living as a Beatle look-alike. No only that, he had the same mannerisms and even sounded like his multi-millionaire alter ego.

The former factory worker informed me he still couldn’t believe his luck being paid to live the house of his childhood hero and spend his days talking Beatle talk.

The framed photographs taken by Paul’s younger brother Mike McCartney, vouched for the authenticity of the trust’s restoration program.

Jayne even got to sit upon the former Beatle’s throne, having missed the sign for the new visitor’s toilet on the next outhouse along. When she emerged, to the surprise of one elderly lady queueing for the real toilet, Jayne told her she hoped she hadn’t flushed away any historical …erm …deposits, the poor lady couldn’t stop laughing at the thought and almost wet herself on the spot! She was still giggling as we all got back on the mini bus for the return trip.

It was a lovely day. It brought back fond memories of the time I was an Executioner, tinged with a little regret that I never actually met the Beatles when I played the Cavern, the Iron Door and other landmark venues back in the sixties. Although I didn’t appreciate the significance at the time, I am so glad I lived through that area. Jayne, bless her, missed it of course. She was knocking out a beat with a rattle on the side of her pram in Hyton whilst I was a mile or two down the road rattling the Cavern’s foundations with my bass guitar.

Happy days!

The Beatles tours are run from Speak Hall Wednesday to Sunday and Bank Holidays from April to October,
at 10.00, 10.50, 14.30 and 15.20. Please note there is no direct access to these properties by car or foot. You can book tickets via www.nationaltrust.org.uk/beatles or telephone 0151 427 7231.
Prices: Adult £15.00, Child £3.00, NT Member Adult £7.00

It really is a great day out!

After all that rain yesterday, you’d have expected the rock festival to have been a complete washout.

However, there was no chance of last night’s event ever degenerating into a communal mud bath, because this was the first outdoor festival to be held indoors!

The summer of love has come to Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre in the form of Jim Cartwright’s play Eight Miles High. The whole theatre was transformed into a farmer’s field. All of the theatre staff - and many of the audience too - were dressed in Caftans and had flowers in their hair. The set was magnificent, with the grassy stage extending right into the auditorium so that those occupying the front rows were actually sitting on the grass, picnic style, as the whole audience effectively became part of the show as festival-goers.

This is a play about the music, the hippies, the free love and flower power of the sixties.

My favourite of the whole evening was the Beatles number “A Day in the Life”. I never did get to know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall - but at least now I know how many actors it takes to fill the Royal Court.

This extremely talented cast performed a whole raft of iconic numbers from the days of Sargent Pepper, with a good sprinkling of Hendrix, Dylan and the like, thrown in for good measure!

They gelled like a rock band who had been performing together forever. They produced a sound every bit as good as any band I have seen playing live - in fact better than many! Remarkable when you consider they are a bunch of actors brought together a few short weeks ago to rehearse for this play.

They were all great. Paul Broughton (remember Eddie Banks in Brookside) portrayed a very convincing Hell’s Angel. For me though, the star of the show was Royal Court regular Andrew Schofield (pictured) who played the archetype hippy. Yeh! Far-out maaan!

Last night was the first performance of the play’s month-long run. It is a unique experience not to be missed. Do make sure you get to see this show before it ends on August 16th. It is fan-bloody-tastic!

Update:  See the last nigh review in “comments” (below)

I’m not too sure that my lovely wife Jayne would approve but I must admit that under normal circumstances I would quite happily fantasise over the prospect of sharing a sauna with her and Kylie.

Last night was no kinky threesome however. There were at least 18,998 other people crammed in there with us and the “sauna” in question was the much overrated Manchester Evening News Arena.

Sadly, the Kylie X 2008 concert was completely ruined by the venue’s oppressive heat and diabolical sound quality.

Don’t get me wrong, what her lungs produced was pure Kylie - and what they were wrapped in was, of course, as delightful as ever. But oh dear… her much heralded new band sounded like a recently-formed group of teenage wannabes bent on blowing out the windows at their local village hall!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not averse to loud music per se, but what they delivered last night was a distorted mess that completely drowned out the voice of our diminutive, delectable iconic Aussie heartthrob.

Kylie darling: please sack your sound engineer. We really had no way of telling good your band was through all the distortion

And my message to the MEN Arena: (definitely NOT a darling of mine): Sort out your acoustics …and your air-conditioning …and your seating …and your car parking and…

Better still, knock the whole place down and build a proper arena geared more to customer experience than money-grabbing jam-packing.  And as far as the over-steep upper tiers are concerned, the only customers who might actually enjoy the experience of scaling these would be seasoned rock climbers!

The MEN should take a lead from Liverpool’s excellent new Echo Arena and Glasgow’s equally brilliant SECC.

Biggest doesn’t necessarily mean Best!

EDIT: check out the comments…

Since we discovered Liverpool’s Royal Court Theatre earlier this year, we’ve only seen comedies. We’ve also only ever sat “up in the Gods” - mainly due to booking at the very last minute.

Last night was different. Very different.

This time we were in the stalls of this lovely old theatre, which are set out with tables and chairs in cabaret style. You are escorted to your table (ours was right in front of the stage) by an usherette who took the time to explain how to get to the toilets and the bar. We were really made to feel special.

And the price of all this decadence? - Ten quid!  And if you arrive an hour before curtain-up, you can even enjoy a fine meal prepared by the Royal Court’s head chef Simon Collard – winner of the TMP New Dish For Liverpool.

As for the show itself.  It was the 1987 Stephen King Thriller, Misery.  I must admit, I had doubted a thriller such as this would translate into a stage play.  Boy was I wrong!  The publicity had promised we’d be on the edge of our seats - and they were damn right!

Ex Coronation Street and Early Doors actress Joan Kempson was convincingly psychopathic in the role of the terrifying Annie Wilkes.

Playing opposite her was Andrew Schofield.  Andrew was the archetype scouser in the previous two performances we’d seen at the Royal Court: “Brick up the Mersey Tunnel” and “On the Ledge“.   He was so very funny in both these comedies. 

In “Misery” he is cast in the role of Paul Sheldon, a famous american author, and his performance was nothing short of brilliant.

These two talented actors got a well deserved ovation from the first-night packed house and I can thoroughly recommend it.  Misery runs until July 5th.

A synopsis of the storyline can be found below: Continue »

We’ve just enjoyed another great night out in Liverpool.

The evening began with a nosh at the Everyman Bistro. Who cares if it’s like sitting in a school canteen - the food was brilliant. Loads of vegetarian choices and lots of gluten-free dishes too. (It truly is the mark of a good, caring, restaurant when they acknowledge the one in fourteen of us who are veggies and the ever growing number who are medically intolerant to wheat). The atmosphere in there was great too. And it was interesting ear-wigging Matthew Kelly and his chums on the next table!

Our theatre tickets, however, were for elsewhere. So we left the Matthews Rixon and Kelly to perform their Endgame at The Everyman and walked back into the city centre.

Alan Bleasdale penned On The Ledge some fifteen years ago, and has rewritten parts of this black comedy for it’s current airing at the Royal Court Theatre.

It is set three stories up Continue »

Meat Loaf he ain’t

…but Hell, you wouldn’t know! - He’s got the hair, the belly, the look and charisma.

As we drove down to the venue, Jayne remarked “This Hollis guy’s going to have to be good to sound like the real thing”!

She needn’t have worried. Sure, Hollis was a Dead Ringer for Michael Lee Aday (Meat Loaf to you and me) - but most of all he’s got the voice too.

This wasn’t just another tribute band.  This was the Meat Loaf Rock Opera, and as the story unfolded, Hollis, his singers and his band delivered a superb performance from start to finish.

Close your eyes and it WAS  Meat Loaf.  Open them again and you still found it hard to believe that this wasn’t the man himself, delivering song after powerful song from the stage at Rhyl’s Pavilion theatre.

I honestly couldn’t fault it.  The band were brilliant - and kudos to their new bassist who delivered a flawless base line throughout despite this being only his third appearance with the band.  He was really living the dream and he did it effortlessly.  I’ll wager not many of the audience even picked up on the fact he was having to keep one eye on the sheet music as he gave it his all.

Sound quality - so often left wanting at this type of event - was spot on.  The two sound engineers did a great job.

The four girl singers - all from Cornwall - were not just decoration and backing vocals.  Each of them performed solo numbers which proved what talented singers they were.  One of the newest, who played the dippy character Daisy, had a squeaky “little girl” speaking voice and an authentic New York accent.  You found it hard to believe where the sound was coming from when this delightfully diminutive creature belted out “Devil Gate Drive” with such gusto that would have put Suzi Quatro herself to shame. Absolutely brilliant!

Jayne and I came away with our ears ringing, hands stinging and our feet still tapping.

If the Meat Loaf Rock Opera tour includes a venue in your area - don’t miss it!  Hell! If it ISN’T visiting your area - still don’t miss it!

You’ll find the tour dates on their web site:

www.thedeadringerfromhell.co.uk

The last comedy we went to see was Alan Ayckbourne’s Bedroom Farce at  Venue Cymru in Llandudno.  And a farce it was too - but not in the sense the producers intended!  We walked out of the poorly acted production well before half time.

Last night was very different.  It was a last minute decision to go and see Brick up the Mersey Tunnels and boy, are we glad we did!

The only seats left were in the front balcony at Liverpool’s magnificent Royal Court Theatre (a real theatre as opposed to the characterless “boxes” they build today).  The high viewpoint didn’t impair our enjoyment one bit.  The wonderful scouse humour on stage was at times matched by the heckling as the story unfolded about the cultural divide between the Wirral and Liverpool.

Jaws were well and truly aching by the end of the night.  this was a wonderfully wicked comedy.  Catch it if you can.

Some people are easily pleased.

Me for instance. As a birthday treat I was quite content to sit listening to a chubby 60 year old bloke having a sing-song followed by tea in a motorway services.

Only a select few joined me for the tea, but altogether 9,999 other people joined in the community singing. The community was Glasgow, and the aging warbler was Elton John.

When I last saw Captain Fantastic, twenty years ago, he was just that. Back then he justified his standing as a world class rock star – with a live performance every bit as good as on his recordings.

He didn’t have to sing “I’m Still Standing” this weekend. But he did. And he is. In fact I’d go as far as to say that he sounded even better.

“Rocket Man” orbited the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre for a good ten minutes and was by far the best rendition of that 1972 rock classic I have ever heard. The extended instrumental segment they belted out at the end of the song was out of this world. Then, just as I’m thinking it’s going to be a long, long time before I hear anything to better it – along came Crocodile Rock.

Just a couple of the numbers were from his recent album and they blended seamlessly with his classics. I would have been disappointed if he’d not played either “Benny and the Jets” or “Saturday Night”. He gave us both.

His band (too small a name for the other five guys on Elton’s stage) produced solid, perfectly balanced wall of sound. Nigel Olson provided the solid drumming which is at the very heart of rock, and scot Davey Johnstone played rock guitar in a way that left you begging for more. The pair have been with Elton since the seventies, so I guess they’re getting the hang of it by now.

The youngsters of today’s music industry don’t even come close.

Fresh talent

However… On the subject of youngsters… Elton invited Glasgow lass Amy McDonald to open the show with five numbers from her soon to be released debut album. Reminiscent of Joan Armatrading and alone on stage with her guitar, she sang effortlessly and beautifully – as she has in the pubs and clubs of her home town for the past couple of years. I guarantee we are going to see and hear a lot more of this wee lassie.

Then at the end of her spot, diminutive on a stage built for one of the world’s greatest, richest and most loved performers, she thanked ten thousand people for listening to her songs and invited us to log on to her “My Space” page to hear more!

Anyone for tea?

We liked Glasgow and its friendly people, but could only linger ‘til mid afternoon on the day after the concert. Then it was the long drive home.

Did I mention Tea? Hunger struck halfway down the M6 so we pulled in to a Motorway Services. But what we discovered was in fact the Best Motorway Services – in the World!!

I absolutely mean it. If ever you are on the M6 you MUST call in at the Tebay Services. In fact, just go up (or down) the M6 especially to visit. Forget the over priced greasy mess usually found in these places. This was fast food at its best. - freshly cooked on the premises. Really, really good. And, under the same management, a fantastic farm shop/delicatessen and gift shop.

All in all it was a great weekend.

http://www.westmorland.com/static/Tebay_Services.htm

http://www.myspace.com/amymacdonald