Glenn Hughes @ the Waterfront
He has the purest falsetto I have ever heard
When Glenn Hughes last played Norwich in 2011 the Waterfront was seriously lacking in paying customers. Backed by a band of superb, but anonymous Scandinavians, he ended up making every single person get completely involved and put on a night of live music that I’ve always remembered. The obvious change four years later is how much his audience appears to have grown – the Waterfront was proper busy. It’s hard to know exactly why – this time he was performing as part of a trio with former Dio/Whitesnake guitarist Doug Aldrich in tow, so perhaps the addition of a ‘name’ to the band has helped. Personally I’m putting it down to sheer hard work and uniformly excellent shows.
Jared James Nichols was the opening act and he did a good job of warming up the crowd with his fairly meat and potatoes take on blues rock. Nothing original, but he can certainly play and did so with obvious enthusiasm. He threw in some covers and his take on Robert Johnson’s Come On In My Kitchen was very atmospheric.
When Deep Purple fired Ian Gillan and Roger Glover in 1973 they were one of the biggest bands in the world. The fact that they replaced them with the unknown David Coverdale and barely known Glenn Hughes made it seem like one colossal mistake, but amazingly it wasn’t. The three albums they recorded maintained their success, and history has judged them well. Glenn also did something remarkable – he brought the funk to Purple; he gave them a groove and fluidity that as unlikely as it seemed, completely worked. Sadly for Glenn, after Purple’s split in 1976 he embarked on one of rock’s most legendary binges; only emerging clean and sober in the early 90’s and he has been one grateful, positive, spiritual, joyous motherfucker ever since.
Opening his show with the Purple classic Stormbringer set the tone for the rest of the two hour set. I’d wondered about the lack of keyboards, but such was the skill of the players I immediately forgot my concerns. Doug Aldrich was a beast – sporting skin tight leather strides, a denim waistcoat and shark’s tooth necklace he looked every inch the LA rock star, and played like it too. Rarely will you see a better example of bass playing than Glenn Hughes, and his voice…his voice is incredible. Glenn likes to remind us that Stevie Wonder called him his favourite white singer and it’s easy to see why. He has the purest falsetto I have ever heard as well as a soulful singing voice which more than held its own over the powerful wall of noise the trio created, with Pontus Engborg on drums putting on a powerhouse display, never once allowing the set to sag. We got to hear more Purple songs (Mistreated being the lengthy centre piece of the set), tracks from Trapeze, Black Country Communion, his album with Pat Thrall and of course solo selections. I’ve seen plenty of older rockers in recent years and this show was a world away from gigs by contemporaries like U.F.O & Michael Schenker, the music was alive, the crowd were fully into it and there was a vigour and excitement there that sadly is all too often lacking at these events.
There was a part of me that went along to check if my memory of that 2011 show was correct. It was. Glenn Hughes rules and it would seem that even in his 60’s his audience is only going to keep on growing.
@StuPres
