This unofficial site features his current and recent events and tours
Review of Tony Hadley vs Martin Fry ABC: -
Torquay -
26th March 2005
After
a week's enforced break with Tony's mid tour holiday it was back to my usual
weekend event of going to see Tony, but this time it was my local
gig, Torquay - a place I know really well and the place where Tony won the
talent competition on holiday as a teenager. This was the closest to my
home that I have seen Tony play, but it was still 25 miles away and the people
who decide when to change the clocks to BST played a nasty trick on me, so it
was still a late finish.
I bought the tickets for this one as soon as they went on sale and was rewarded with front row, middle seats, on Tony's side - excellent! As this was the only show in Torquay, the full house was rewarded with a show of 28 songs.
I am always surprised how fast the time goes when I am watching Tony, his excellent performances and great chat between the songs makes the time go by really quickly. Martin Fry was on good form too. The second half starts with the slow and beautiful 'Soul Love', 'Time in a Bottle' and 'The Reason' (by Hoobastank) and then Tony launches into 'Walking in Memphis' with the Horn section, Ritchie, Phil W, Phil T and Matt with their hilarious actions to this song and John Keeble's starring part, Tony has also made up a bit in the middle that is a all about 'Jack' - I think we know what Jack that is!
Tony went off and then Martin Fry came on. He had a heckler (man) in the audience who hadn't realised what the show would be like who started shouting out that he wanted more ABC songs and when Martin said not yet, he shouted that he wanted his money back, so Martin told him that he should go. Everyone applauded Martin for doing this and before he sang 'All of my Heart' he asked if he had gone.
The rest of the show continued without incident and being front row it was my responsibility to get everyone up dancing, which I did in the first half and in the second half. Ritchie is not hiding his 'Tony' solo so much during 'Let's Stick Together' but if you have only seen the show once, you wouldn't notice that he is doing it.
Yet again the time flies by and it is time to sample the seafront air, it was lucky that this one was at the end of March and not in February. Martin Fry comes out first and greets the over 50 people who were waiting and Tony came out afterwards, still quite a few people waiting, but got my chance to speak to him and have him sign the article that was in my local paper - he asked me if it was a nice article and I said it was.