Tag Archives: Wembley

The Stone Roses at Wembley Stadium 17/6/17

Live reviews, Rock music, , ,

This review is also published on the Get Ready To Rock website here

For a band that have still only managed to release two albums (and one of those pretty underwhelming), whose singer is hardly renowned for having the strongest vocals in the world, and whose members spent the majority of the past twenty-five years ignoring one another and doing other things the Stone Roses sure know how to fill Wembley Stadium and others like it. Why? The answer is simple: they made one of the greatest albums of the late 80s, some would say of all time. Track after track on Stone Roses, the bands paint-splattered, lemon-garnished, debut album, are absolute classics to be played, sung-along to and celebrated again and again and again.

Combining jangly sixties-esque guitars, rhythms of the emerging dance scene and some youthful rock ‘n’ roll swagger and applying it all to some really well-written memorable songs the Stone Roses were an absolute breath of fresh air for guitar rock in the late 80s. Indeed, the band’s first album makes up most of the band’s set-list tonight, with ten of the album’s eleven tracks making it into the set. A small handful of songs from their “difficult second album” make it to the set as well as a handful of early singles like the lovely ‘Sally Cinnamon’ and last year’s new single ‘All For One’ (their first in twenty years) which captures the mood in the stadium tonight and has clearly become a firm crowd sing-along.

However, from the moment they first walk on stage to play ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ to the last climatic strains of “I Am The Resurrection’ the whole show is pretty much a celebration of that unforgettable and seemingly unrepeatable debut album. Timeless classics like ‘Waterfall’, ‘Made Of Stone’ (up there with The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’ for memorable rolling bass lines in my view), ‘She Bangs The Drums’ and ‘This Is The One’ all become glorious communal sing-alongs.

Ian Bown, John Squire, Mani and Reni pulled off a brilliant show tonight and there is rightly a huge amount of love for the Stone Roses in Wembley stadium tonight.

I’ve been to quite a few big Wembley Arena/Wembley stadium gigs over the years and as the crowds make their way along the overcrowded walkway to the even more overcrowded tube station it’s common for fair bit of of communal singing to break out. Tonight, unusually, it isn’t a song from the headliners that rings out from the crowds but rather Oasis’s ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger’. London has certainly been battered and bruised these past few weeks and perhaps needed a bit of Manc-flavoured love and solidarity sending its way. It got it tonight.

Setlist:

I Wanna Be Adored
Elephant Stone
Sally Cinnamon
Mersey Paradise
(Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister
Where Angels Play
Shoot You Down
Waterfall
Don’t Stop
Begging You
Elizabeth My Dear
Fools Gold
All for One
Love Spreads
Made of Stone
She Bangs the Drums
Breaking into Heaven
This Is the One
I Am the Resurrection

http://www.thestoneroses.org/

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AC/DC at Wembley Stadium 4/7/15

Live reviews, Rock music, , , , , , , , , , ,

“Rock is dead” pronounced Kiss’s Gene Simmons, never a man to hold back on his opinions. But that would seem a highly difficult concept to explain to anyone seeing 80,000 people flooding into Wembley Stadium for AC/DC on this hot July evening.

Of course, Simmons was talking about the rock bands of the future, but more of that later.

Five years since their last world tour ended and five years since they last played in Britain, the band’s recent well-publicised problems (founder Malcolm Young tragically forced into retirement by dementia and drummer, Phil Rudd, removed from the band following court appearances on a range of charges including murder threats) have done nothing to dim the level of interest and excitement in this latest tour.

And what a memorable night this has turned out to be. For a gig this size the sound is utterly brilliant, helped I am sure by the huge wall of Marshall Amps neatly stacked up across the back of the otherwise Spartan stage. Stevie Young, replacing Malcolm, delivers the grinding trademark guitar sound made famous by his absent uncle; while Chris Slade, back with the band after an absence of two decades, is a hugely powerful drummer ensuring he and bassist, Cliff Williams, provide an unrelenting rhythm throughout the evening. Vocalist, Brian Johnson, is in excellent form for a man of his age and Angus Young’s lead guitar is as spellbinding as ever.

It’s the songs, though, that really make AC/DC the band that it is.  They begin the show with the title track of their 2014 album, Rock or Bust, and return to the album for two other songs later on. But apart from those,  together with Thunderstruck from their 1990 album, Razor’s Edge, and Rock ‘n’ Roll Train from 2008’s Black Ice (their first 100% bona-fide classic song since For Those About To Rock in my view) ; the setlist is not dramatically different from when I saw them for the first time, 34 years ago, aged 15. But that is precisely what I and everyone else present want. A gloriously good-natured capacity crowd at Wembley Stadium sing along to classic after classic: Back in Black, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap; High Voltage, You Shook Me all Night Long; TNT, Whole Lotta Rosie…

The two hours whizz by and a following a spectacular version of Let There Be Rock and a lengthy guitar solo that’s still as manic as anything I ever saw from Angus Young thirty-odd  years ago, the crowds are calling for an encore and the band return to the stage for an unmissable Highway to Hell and a spectacular For Those About to Rock, complete with canon gun fire and pyrotechnics.

While rock music has undergone many different permutations, adaptations and reinventions since rock ‘n’ roll first came on the scene, apart from the increase in power and volume, AC/DC’s songs and riffs have not really deviated from that basic musical template that was set for rock ‘n’ roll back in the mid-fifties.  This must have played a major part in the band’s success and longevity, playing songs that are accessible, instantly recognisable and that can be sung along to in a way that most heavy rock or metal bands could only dream of.

And when AC/DC finally stop playing, these 80,000 people here tonight (representing a very healthy mix of male and female fans and a hugely varied range of age groups from teens upwards) are they all going to give up on live rock music altogether? I very much doubt it. Rock is very much alive and AC/DC, themselves, are playing a big part in ensuring it will long outlive them.

Setlist:

Rock or Bust
Shoot to Thrill
Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be
Back in Black
Play Ball
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Thunderstruck
High Voltage
Rock ‘n’ Roll Train
Hells Bells
Baptism by Fire
You Shook Me All Night Long
Sin City
Shot Down in Flames
Have a Drink on Me
T.N.T.
Whole Lotta Rosie
Let There Be Rock
Highway to Hell
For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)

http://www.acdc.com/

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