Once In A Lifetime - Manchester MEN - June 2005

Hot, Hot, Hot!

Summer's here and the time is right for good old fashioned rock'n'roll.

The show is billed as "Once In A Lifetime" and one can't help but wonder what anarchy might have ensued had this tour happened 30 years ago. Teenage girls might have achieved the sort of overthrow of society punks dreamed of.

The Bay City Rollers - The Osmonds - David Essex - David Cassidy

Any one of these acts could have (actually, did) fill venues twice, three times this size back in the first half of the decade that taste forgot and here they are on one bill; a bit older, a bit greyer, a bit wrinklier (despite botox), not much wiser. Let's rock...

Les McKeown, for me, was the Rollers. See, I wasn't a wee lassie, my primary school self actually liked the music and Les was the singer - he was the band.

Today he's surrounded by a new band - they're all much younger than him and (unlike his previous cohorts) can actually play. We get a package of hits from Summerlove Sensation and Saturday Night to Bye Bye Baby by way of a somewhat unexpected medley of Shang-a-Lang with Deep Purple's Black Night (obviously included to give the guitarist a chance to show off his considerable skills).



Les' voice isn't what it used to be - years of abuse (he's up on drug charges after this tour) have robbed him of his range so he leaves the top notes to the backing singers and the audience. I suspect I'm the only person who notices this.

Great start.

A quick change-over and a familiar chant starts.

"We want The Osmonds!"

I was never really a fan. I liked Jimmy (he was the same age as me) and Crazy Horses, but all the lovey-dovey stuff made me want to pull the legs off spiders. Tonight, thankfully, there's no Donny or Marie, just the moshing part of the family.

OK, a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but compared to Puppy Love or Morning Side Of The Mountain, opener Having A Party is speed metal, baby!

Merrill takes stage front as current family patriarch - he looks remarkably like Kenny Rodgers these days - and is flanked by Jimmy and Wayne on flame-throwing guitars (not quite Ace Frehley, you understand, but credit for the showmanship) while Jay pounds away on drums.



The set includes all the hits (including ones I'd managed to expunge from memory like Goin' Home). Down By The Lazy River is every bit as cheesy as you remember and the boys look just like those evangelists on cable telly. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Having gone out of their way to annoy me (by making me sing along, goddamit!) they then excel themselves by giving us a drum solo. I haven't seen a drum solo in years! And now I've seen the Osmonds do one! Even weirder than shang-a-lang-a-black-night!

Of course, they finish with Love Me For A Reason and Crazy Horses. Better than I expected, enjoyable if not exactly likeable.

David Essex. The heartthrob it's OK for straight blokes to like. He was one of my first heroes and was the act I was most looking forward to tonight.

What a bloody set - Rock On, Lamplight, Gonna Make You A Star, Hold Me Close, Oh What A Circus, Silver Dream Machine, Imperial Wizard (complete with rather barbed comment on the War On Terror), Winter's Tale...



He even managed to fit in a new song, It's Gonna Be Alright, to prove he's still an awesome songwriter.

Stunning, simply stunning.

Manchester, please welcome onstage, from the United States of America -   David.   Cassidy.

Bedlam.

OK, I've taken MrsD to see her childhood hero a couple of times before, so I know what to expect.  It still takes me by surprise, though. You can taste the oestrogen as the years fall away from fifteen thousand 40-somethings and they are transported back to a time before pelvic floor exercises and HRT.

David Cassidy works the stage and the audience like an old pro - he's Frank Sinatra, he's Shirley Bassey, he's Louis Armstrong all rolled up into one (slightly nipped and tucked but still horribly well-preserved) package.



For all the stars who went before, this is his audience - they hang on his every word, eat from his hand, jump at his command.

The music is almost incidental - Cherish, Daydreamer, Could It Be Forever (with near-hysteria accompanying the "but..."), I Woke Up In Love This Morning...

He reads his audience well and plays the "normal" version of I Think I Love You rather than the down-tempo mix then launches into a long story about his friend John Lennon before covering Blackbird.

Now, I'd have dropped the chat and included Some Kind Of A Summer but then, I'm a greedy bugger.

He might've started out as a manufactured pop star, but Cassidy has become the consumate showman - one of the genuine greats of the age.

And after the show? Well, for all I said about the Osmonds, Love Me For A Reason is the song I'm singing in the car home!


David Cassidy with the Osmonds - Pic from Merrill Osmond's website