It’s just not cricket! David Bowie at Old Trafford.
Picture taken during ‘Life On Mars?’ by Mark Plati.
Memory Of A Move Festival…
Not only is this a chance to use another of Mark Plati’s excellent pictures, (that’s his above, and that’s another of mine below) but it’s also a good opportunity to reprint most of The Daily Telegraph’s glowing review of David’s Manchester show from this morning’s newspaper here in the UK. Not much more I can say than that, so, here it is:
Born-again Bowie by Lynsey Hanley
“You may have noticed that David Bowie is in the country. Such is the man’s influence, his sheer iconic presence, that his current visit to the land of his fathers from New York, where he now lives, has had a far greater impact on the nation’s consciousness than that of Michael Jackson, not to mention Madonna’s continued residence. We’ll never tire of Bowie: we don’t see enough of him as it is. Having headlined his own festival, the South Bank’s Meltdown, and played a smattering of outdoor gigs in Europe, he didn’t so much roll as paddle into Manchester to perform at a waterlogged Old Trafford.
A good 15,000 overcame various stages of rain-induced hypothermia to witness Bowie’s incredible rebirth as a performer. He is clearly having the time of his life on this tour, aided by an astonishingly tight, virtuoso band that includes long-time bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and Seventies cohorts Mike Garson and Earl Slick, and an entirely fresh approach to his enormous back catalogue.”
Bowie at Manchester by Total Blam Blam
“Mindful of his status here as a festival headliner, rather than preacher to the long-converted, Bowie played a set creaking with crowd-pleasers, without once giving the impression that he’d rather be performing side two of Low. It took a thrilled but shivering audience a while to register their glee, but once he’d played Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes back-to-back and flashed his cheeky-Dave smile once or twice, they were his for the taking.
It’s hard to describe how awesome was the impact of seeing this still-slight figure on a stage 50 yards away, without admitting to having wept as he sang Heroes with the simple grace it deserves. Its almost trite words of empowerment were repeated back to him thousands of times over with utter sincerity. Such is Bowie’s aura, that undeniable sense of otherness that makes even those who gave up on him in the 1980s flock back to him like space cadets to the commander.
Having invested Let’s Dance with a European iciness worthy of Station To Station, he finished with his greatest tale of rock stardom gone wrong, Ziggy Stardust. But how right it turned out for him.”