Memorable stage moments

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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby JimN » Tue Aug 03, 2021 10:40 am

UlrichS wrote:
jigsaw wrote:I booked to go and see Cliff and the Shads at Finsbury Park in 1969, I’m sure it was the Astoria. It was after Bruce “left” and Alan Hawkshaw took his place. The curtains opened and only Brian Bennett, John Rostill and Alan Hawkshaw were on stage. John took to the mic and announced that Hank was ill. Because of this, they only played 3 numbers, Nivram, Exodus and Little B. In the second half, if I remember correctly, Cliff was accompanied by the Brian Bennett Band which included Alan and John but I can’t recall the rest.

This was on Friday, 7th November 1969. Hank missed also the concert in Birmingham the next day. And due to Cliff's illness the last two concerts on 14th (Liverpool) and 15th November (Manchester) were cancelled. Ill-fated tour?
The only other solo act apart from Cliff and The Shadows were Marcie & The Cookies.


The Liverpool date, and, I expect, the Manchester date, were postponed rather than being totally cancelled. I saw the show at a rearranged date a few weeks later: Cliff Richard, The Welch-less "Shadows", the Brian Bennett Band (which included Hank, Brian, John and Alan), Marcie and The Cookies and a comedian compére named Alan Field. On the Shadows' page in the tour programme (which I still have), the group's name was printed in the Umbra font.

See: https://ibb.co/23PQKp5
Last edited by JimN on Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby Moderne » Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:35 pm

I can't recall any 'memorable stage moments' involving lighting, lasers, explosions etc. But, call me prurient, I am easily shocked by bad language on stage!

I remember being quite shocked when I saw The Blues Band at the Theakston Rock Festival at Nostell Priory in 1982. Paul Jones dedicated their version of Maggie's Farm to Norman Tebbit, "...who might be a minister but he can't f***ing count"! This, of course, was several years before he became the urbane, born-again Christian presenter of the blues programme on BBC Radio 2!

I was amazed that Nigel Kennedy - violin genius - played almost an entire concert in Malvern without once resorting to the vernacular which I had been warned by my wife he would probably use. And then he finished the concert with his arrangement of Spanish Flea, "...by that motherf***er" Herb Alpert"!!

Almost all Shadows concerts were memorable - as much for the lovely, relaxed, happy atmosphere which Hank and Bruce created via their amusing stage introductions as for the music itself. The only genuine 'encore' I've ever seen was at one of the 1984 Wembley Cliff + Shadows concerts...and it was Power to All Our Friends. The audience would not stop applauding at the end of it...so they had to do it again!
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby MikeAB » Wed Aug 04, 2021 1:20 pm

I saw Mike Rutherford swear on stage - trying to be cool, but it was a bit ridiculous - even the earthier Collins has tried that but you need Who style aggression to get away it I think.

Don't like it at all - or in the streets when young people of any sex walk by you.

Essentially - it ain't clever or cool - we can all do it!
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby iefje » Wed Aug 04, 2021 2:36 pm

Moderne wrote:But, call me prurient, I am easily shocked by bad language on stage!


Then you probably wouldn't like a concert by The Who, apart from the music perhaps. Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend frequently use expletives as part of their language. I personally am not shocked or offended by it. A famous moment of stage banter including expletives was during their appearance at Woodstock in 1969. As The Who finish playing "Pinball Wizard", activist Abbie Hoffman suddenly walks on stage and grabs Pete's microphone to express his negative opinion about the Woodstock event. Pete angrily shouts "F*** off! F*** off my f****** stage!", hits Hoffman on the head with his guitar, which gets out of tune and sending Hoffman off stage and they proceed with their show, Pete with an out-of-tune guitar. After the next song, he tunes his guitar and shouts to the audience "The next person who walks on this stage is gonna get f****** killed!" (laughs and cheers from the audience), "You can laugh, but I mean it!".
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby Moderne » Wed Aug 04, 2021 3:48 pm

I'm not shocked/offended if I know it's coming... I've never seen The Who live, but I love Roger Daltrey's magnificent "Who the f*** are you?" line in Who Are You?
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby iefje » Thu Aug 05, 2021 7:43 am

Moderne wrote:I'm not shocked/offended if I know it's coming... I've never seen The Who live, but I love Roger Daltrey's magnificent "Who the f*** are you?" line in Who Are You?


Yes that's right. Incidentally, Pete Townshend originally didn't write the lyrics as such, Roger Daltrey added that himself. However, they also recorded a censored version for the American market with the lyric "Who the hell are you?". Also, this track was the last hit single and one of the last studio recordings of the group to feature Keith Moon.
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby Iain Purdon » Thu Aug 05, 2021 8:11 am

There were more occasions when Bruce was not well enough to appear. The most memorable, in the sense that it was seen by millions on TV, featured Hank, John and Brian opening their spot on the Palladium show with Flingel Bunt. Hank threw in extra gap-filling flourishes and John created a much busier bass part. It worked really well.
Afterwards Hank stepped forward and said “You may have noticed there are only three of us on stage tonight. That’s because one of us is missing…”
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby iefje » Thu Aug 05, 2021 8:21 am

Iain Purdon wrote:There were more occasions when Bruce was not well enough to appear. The most memorable, in the sense that it was seen by millions on TV, featured Hank, John and Brian opening their spot on the Palladium show with Flingel Bunt. Hank threw in extra gap-filling flourishes and John created a much busier bass part. It worked really well.
Afterwards Hank stepped forward and said “You may have noticed there are only three of us on stage tonight. That’s because one of us is missing…”


This performance was issued on the Italian semi-bootleg CD "Atlantis - The Classic Collection" by Fremus in August, 1994. I have a feeling that maybe this will be part of a future project by Dusty Tapes, containing live TV appearances by The Shadows. Didn't John use Hank's Fender VI?
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby iefje » Thu Aug 05, 2021 8:29 am

Another memorable stage moment was when Bruce and Hank started to play "Don't Cry For Me Argentina", during the concert at De Doelen Theatre in Rotterdam on April 2nd, 1980. Hank found that his guitar was somewhat out of tune, so he stopped playing and said "This is such a beautiful piece of music, that I think this guitar should be in tune". Bruce: "I tell you what, would you like the tuner?", Hank: "No, I would just like a D-chord", Bruce: "Well I'm you know... could you talk amongst yourselves and give us half an hour? You know the crazy things about these guitars with tuning up, if any musicians in the audience, when we bought these guitars, they were perfectly in tune. Twenty years later, there's something wrong with them, I don't know what it is". I think Bruce was not really amused that this happened, but he solved it perfectly with this banter.
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Re: Memorable stage moments

Postby JimN » Thu Aug 05, 2021 11:45 am

Iain Purdon wrote:There were more occasions when Bruce was not well enough to appear. The most memorable, in the sense that it was seen by millions on TV, featured Hank, John and Brian opening their spot on the Palladium show with Flingel Bunt. Hank threw in extra gap-filling flourishes and John created a much busier bass part. It worked really well.
Afterwards Hank stepped forward and said “You may have noticed there are only three of us on stage tonight. That’s because one of us is missing…”


That was an appearance in a special "Royal Gala" show (from the London Palladium) on 4th December 1966, rather than an edition of "Sunday Night At The London Palladium".

The programme featured "stars" from programmes by all four ITV central companies, including Granada and Rediffusion. It ran for 2:30.00 and though its imdb.com page credits it to ATV, it was in fact a joint-effort by both ITV central weekend contractors, ABC and ATV. Yet another example of ABC's efforts being frequently credited to Lew Grade.

I saw the programme on broadcast (perhaps not every minute of it) and remember that John Rostill was playing Hank's Fender Bass VI. I've often wondered whether that instrument was being carried in the group's equipment van and so was available on the spot or whether someone was despatched to Hank's North London home to collect it. It hadn't been used in public since the previous autumn (1965) when the Shadows were playing Stingray on their UK tour. But by December 1966, it had been in studio use for the tracks on the "Thunderbirds Are Go" EP and the "Finders Keepers" medley. I recorded The Shadows' and Cliff's spot on audio tape and still have it somewhere or other.

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13070814/
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