Rock legend ROD STEWART launches Newbury LIVE!
The first ever event to be staged at Newbury LIVE saw Rod Stewart performing to 15,000 adoring fans on Bank Holiday Sunday 29th May 2011 and it didn't rain! We look forward to many more live music events in the coming years and look forward to welcoming back all those who came to Newbury LIVE.
Pictures are available on our
Facebook Page and a review of the event as featured in The Times can be read below.
TIMES REVIEW BY ED POTTON, STAR RATING: 4 out of 5
Rod Stewart had a thoroughbred spring in his step at Newbury. Perhaps it was the thought of his money-spinning two-year residency in Las Vegas, which begins later this year. Or perhaps it was the refreshing lack of rain. (“I have a notorious record that every time I do an outside gig it buckets down,” he said recently.)
Either way, the going was good as he took to a temporary stage erected yards away from the famous racecourse. The opener was a joyous rendition of the O’Jays’ soul classic Love Train, delivered with many an overhead handclap and slap of his rear. “It’s a Bank Holiday — there’s no work tomorrow,” Stewart said with a grin. “So enjoy yourselves.”
After more than 100 million records sold, three wives, eight children and, most shockingly, no cigarettes (or so the owner of rock’s most famous rasp has outrageously claimed), he looked in rude health. The metallic powder-blue jacket was pin sharp, the silver mane sparkled under the lights; even at 66, he asked his most famous question, Da Ya Think I’m Sexy? in the expectation of an affirmative answer. And yes: four bottom-wiggling minutes later, he got the requisite delirious response from the audience.
There was no Bob Dylan-style avoidance of crowd-pleasers: Stewart believes in giving the people what they want. That meant a jubilant You’re in My Heart, a stirring Baby Jane and a rollicking Downtown Train, in which he disappeared mid-song and reappeared in a resplendent violet suit. It must be tricky singing Some Guys Have All the Luck and meaning it, when you have a helicopter waiting to take you home. But Stewart imbued that song, too, with the sincerity of old.
“Here’s one me and Ronnie Wood wrote round his mum’s council house,” he said, hand on hip, before launching into Wear It Well alongside a female fiddler from his slick, scarlet-clad backing band. He then reminded us of his evergreen potency by performing Forever Young in front of a giant image of his three-month-old son Aiden. Sometimes the high tempo began to tell, however. While he is still vigorous of limb (and still a keen footballer), Stewart’s sandpaper voice is a less powerful instrument these days. You yearned at points for the kind of after-hours standards that dominated his recent series of Great American Songbook albums: they suit his diminished voice rather well, which is why they have done such brisk business for him on both sides of the Atlantic.
But, with a wind blowing off the racecourse and occasionally swallowing the sound, this wasn’t really a night for gentle lounge numbers. The only glimpses of low-key Rod were a bittersweet, fiddle-aided Handbags and Gladrags and a rendition of Have I Told You Lately That I Love You? that brimmed with crinkly eyed tenderness.
Other than that, it was a torrent of anthems. Stewart, now clad in his third suit, a tartan effort, gave us a Hot Legs that sizzled cheekily, a foot-stamping Maggie May and a climactic Sailing that triggered mass swaying in the crowd and a fountain of fireworks in the sky. That Las Vegas residency will be big business, no doubt, but this night had the air of a raucous family celebration.