This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Henley 80s Rewind Festival -
22nd August 2010
The line up for this weekend festival was pretty good, but not being a fan of camping we decided to just buy tickets for the Sunday show and as it is not far from Wendy's house we drove there just after lunch and arrived in the car park and could hear The Beat on stage.
The weather forecast for the day was for nice weather during the day, but from about 8 pm onwards it would deteriorate and come into rain. We decided not to try and get to the front when we arrived as we knew that we wouldn't be able to sit down and I didn't fancy standing for the whole day, so we watched the rest of the artists from our picnic chairs fairly near the front but quite far away. Around 6.30 pm we got some food and took the picnic chairs back to the car, ready for the evening part of the show.
We edged in nearer the stage and when the previous act was on, we noticed that a small gap had opened up in the crowd on the barrier, it was in front of the big screeen to the left of the stage, but still it was at the front and we could get an uninterupted view of the stage.
There were lights above our the screen and whilst the stage was being set up for Tony they put a karoke session on which you had to look up to read. I noticed spots of rain in the light, I thought 'Oh no' the weather forecast was right, we were in for a wet evening. We had come prepared with raincoats and emergency poncho's too, but many people hadn't.
Soon it was time for Tony to come on stage and do his first two songs, the rain wasn't too bad at this point, next up were Go West and the rain got harder but the crowd were still enthusiastic. At the end of these songs Pete said 'welcome back to our host Tony Hadley' and then the band struck up with 'All of my heart', this confused me as then Tony started singing the first verse (it did cross my mind that Martin was stuck in the loo or something, but for Pete must have known what was happening), Tony did a very good version of the song, but at the end of the first verse, Martin arrived on stage and joined in the last few words of the verse with Tony and then Tony introduced Martin and then Tony went off stage again, and Martin carried on with his part of the set.
After Martin had finished, it was still raining and Tony came back on stage for 'Somebody Told Me' and continued his set. After True he announced that Pete was coming back on stage to join him for the next song, but he joked that it was live and he had made a mistake as the next song was 'Through the Barricades', this song over, Pete and Rick did come back on for 'Addicted to Love'. The end of the set was 'Gold' and Tony thanked everyone for standing in the rain and said that there was no need for him to go off and come back on for the encore, everyone just had to shout hurrah (which they did) and the encore began. Another two songs and the show was over.
It was such a shame that the weather had turned out so wet and soggy, but the rain arrived exactly when the forecasters said it would, we had come prepared, but I would prefer it to be a warm sunny evening.