Do you remember the first time? Some reunion shows might just be better …
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Version 0 of 1. Related: Ride review – this reunion lived up to expectations On 23 May, Ride played a fabulous comeback show at Manchester’s church-like Albert Hall. As the evening sun streamed through the former chapel’s stained glass windows, their early 1990s whoppers – Chelsea Girl, Leave Them All Behind, Like a Daydream and the rest – were performed with care and passion. Some of the most special moments involved the audience, who sang all the “ohhh ohhhh”s in Taste and even guitar parts in Vapour Trail. In one particularly memorable moment, the band charged into a five- (or maybe 10-) minute ferocious wall of noise and then, without a visible nod or cue, blasted right back into Drive Blind. Having seen the Oxford quartet once the first time around – when they were poster boys for the short-lived but much-loved “shoegazing” movement – I recall them being good, but not great, as they sounded on Saturday. We’re all vulnerable to the pull of nostalgia, but I’ve never felt that particularly towards Ride. Which got me thinking: can a re-formed band actually sound better than they did the first time around? For many, the Stone Roses’ 2012 reunion gigs at Manchester’s Heaton Park would fall into the same category. The three-night salvo of live appearances – the fastest-selling UK gigs of all time, all 220,000 tickets selling out in 68 minutes – were ridiculously celebratory affairs, which were greeted like the return of Lazarus by fans who never expected the Second Coming album, never mind the third coming as a resurrected live act. The three Heaton Park gigs may not have had the blistering, world-changing impact of their about-to-go-supernova gigs in May and June 1989, but they were certainly far, far better than we’d last seen them, minus John Squire, at Reading festival in 1996. My favourite Blur performance, too, isn’t the one I remember from the Duchess of York in Leeds in 1990 – when a baggy-era Damon Albarn sported a medallion and a bowl cut – or even the fantastic Parklife tour of 1994. It’s their epic comeback gig at Manchester Arena in 2009, when they trotted out all their best-loved songs under the kind of light show they’d never have imagined in their heyday. Perhaps the benchmark for these affairs is set by another 90s pop phenomenon, Take That: they titled their 2006 reunion outing The Ultimate Tour, but then seemed to top it with The Circus tour – which saw them atop a giant elephant – and the jaw-dropping visual spectacular of their 20th anniversary Progress Live, which treated fans to the sight and sound of Relight My Fire et al, alongside a 100ft hydraulic robot. Thinking back to my own live favourites, I’m not sure Echo and the Bunnymen’s reunion gigs (sans late drummer Pete de Freitas) were quite as magical as the ones I trotted around the country to see in my teens, but the setlist did contain Nothing Lasts Forever, a mighty comeback single. It’s probably quite rare that new songs are among the reasons why a re-formed band can sound better than they did originally. Usually, it’s the exact opposite: re-formed bands don’t bother with obscure B-sides and (usually) a comeback album. Mostly, they play the hits, back to back: every song an audience would most wish to hear. There are other reasons why a band can sound better the second time around. The band members may not have the same crippling drug problems – which might apply to Iggy Pop’s five-star reviewed reunion with the Stooges – and no longer be riddled with childish egos (and, one hopes, not have thrown their toys out of the pram moments before the gig because the guitarist got nicer sandwiches). Other reasons are purely technological. Whether it’s Take That or Blur, the kind of eye-dazzling visual spectaculars bands put on now were simply not possible in the 1990s. Then there is the sound: I started counting Ride’s effects pedals on Saturday and lost count somewhere around 50, which seem to produce a more powerful, and more psychedelic, sound than in 1990. I had an even weirder experience the week before, in another beautiful, religious setting: Christ Church in Macclesfield. This time, it wasn’t the band that had been resurrected, but the songs. I’d never claim that Peter Hook and the Light’s renditions of Joy Division songs were better than the band’s, with a hyperactively dancing Ian Curtis. Joy Division’s feedback-ridden show at Leeds Futurama remains my favourite gig of all time, not least because it was my first. However, modern technology means Hooky can recreate the studio sound of Unknown Pleasures and Closer live – something that was just impossible in 1979 and 1980. The venue for the Light, too, was special: certainly more so than the pubs and small halls Hook’s first band played during their fatefully short-lived tenure as a live act. There was another aspect too: people hugged each other. Some were moved to tears. For most of us, seeing our favourite bands (or even some semblance of them) from our youth has an undeniable emotional element: and perhaps this makes us listen, at least occasionally, to these bands through rose-coloured ears. Conversely, a re-formed band can never recreate the time they chimed with – or even defined – the zeitgeist, as the Roses did in 1989 or Blur did in 1994. Many – perhaps most – comeback tours find the band somehow less than they were. I’m glad I didn’t see the Velvet Underground in 1993, their middle-age riven with loathing and acrimony, and while the Who can still offer a transformative live experience, surely they were at their finest in their equipment-trashing youth, with Keith Moon? Equally, weren’t the Sex Pistols best seen on the Anarchy tour, not reunited for Filthy Lucre? Still, every now and again, a reunited band pulls off something very special. “Do you remember the first time?” asked Pulp during a stellar set at Leeds/Reading festival in 2011. I do. It was in a windswept, cold, half-empty courtyard in Halifax, with a setlist still to be graced with all their best tunes, with the possible exception of My Legendary Girlfriend. And it definitely wasn’t as good. |