Ringo pauses to check contents of incontinence pouch!
One wonders why Ringo Starr bothers. What with his Thomas the Tank royalties and the ensuing repeats fees that they must accrue, he obviously doesn’t need the money. You can understand his ol mucker Macca having to reluctantly work past normal retiral age, as after all, he has to share most of his early songwriting 50/50 with that other one, that one that got shot. However, once again I digress………
Shields and I meet up with Billy Bones in The Brass Monkey. The Difficult to Contact Accountant is living up to his name and gone awol. We eventually move to the bar of the Crowne Plaza for a drink, before the show begins and meet him and Mother Theresa there. The tickets state Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band plus Special Guests at 19:30 (All Starrs?, the Trades Descriptions folk are still refusing to return all my calls to date) .This is a pale imitation of the previous line-ups this band has had, check them out on Wikipedia, This is the first time in Glasgow and I reckon we were sold a pup as they say!
At 19:32, a helpful eavesdropping barman suggests that Ringo may already have begun beating the skins. We make, with haste, towards ‘the Armadillo’, through the usual maze of connecting corridors. On the way, we ask an usherette if there’s any way we could all sit together and to my astonishment and delight, she radios ahead, confides to us that sales have been poor for tonight, and gets us all in the one row sitting together.
We tiptoe into the hall while the band plod their way through Hang On Sloopy and plunk ourselves down. Within perhaps thirty seconds of realising “I’m under the same roof as a Beatle”, I twig something is seriously wrong too. The ratio of normal gig-goers to windowlickers is seriously skewed here. Everyone seems to want to demonstrate that they can clap and sing along to whatever tune the All Starrs throw up.However it would appear many audients are hearing different tunes!
The band are lined up across the stage in front of a lurid backdrop that Billy Butlin, in his prime, might well have considered as too kitsch. The ‘cheese-ometer’ is bouncing in the red, tonight!
Edgar Winter, brother of Johnny the albino bluesman, the one that Mike and Bernie never talk about, and who talks like Foghorn Leghorn, demonstrates his chops on keys and horns. Normally, I wouldn’t snigger at a partially blind man, knocking over several mike stands, as he ’gets into it, maan!’ but tonight’s not normal. Centuries ago I was in a band, It Conquered The World, that played ‘Frankenstein’ and if our version wasn’t actually better than tonight’s offering, then Honey, it’s time to salt and pepper my homburg and pass me the cutlery!
Rick Derringer has aged quite a bit since last I saw him and nowadays resembles one of the older Osmonds.His party piece is Rock ‘n’ Roll Hootchie Koo which just about sums up the evening. Gary Wright, introducing ‘Dreamweaver’, name checks George Harrison which nearly brings the house down. By the time Richard Page serenades us with (Take These) Broken Wings, I’m sliding down in my seat in case anybody I know sees me here. Then Ringo steps down from the riser to do his bit and while he sings Peace Dream
“So try to imagine if we give peace a chance
All the world could be living in harmony
One day our dream could be reality, reality”
I realise he must be wearing some sort of incontinence device. No one’s that shape immediately below the belt, apart from perhaps Bertie Basset. How very odd!
Then as suddenly as it began, following a rather limp Give Peace A Chance, we’re released from our purgatory and scuttle back to the bar to discover that it’s still daylight and only twenty past nine. Rock and Roll, indeed!
Former Beatle presents a shadow of his former band(s)
Lighthouse Beacon Straight Ahead 