Concert date: 13.05.2007
Attendance: 1205
Ticket price: 8000
The visit of the esteemed Mr. John Lawton to our neck of the woods, and in Umag no less, with its proper seaside vibe, began and ended in a seriously adventurous way. The whole thing went by in the spirit of hunting for a ride for four people whose car had croaked in the middle of Koper.
A merry gathering of steel-horse lovers, the smell of pine essential oils mingling with burnt gasoline wafting everywhere, engines revving, the fashion quirks of this special moto culture,… appealing fetishes. Always.
A little after seven in the evening we finally reached our destination. Of course, we first looked for a place to take care of the most urgent needs that keep every organism functioning normally. We also dropped by the stage early on, just as Žak, the singer of Mary Rose, poked his head out of the “backstage”. He came to give us a polite welcome, we exchanged a few words, and then he cheerfully marched onto the stage, where the young guns of the first band of the evening were in the middle of their sound check. They were warming up on Heading Out To The Highway (Judas Priest) and Žak volunteered a few excellent “Halfordesque screams” and had a ton of fun doing it. Then came the long trek to a cold beer. Back to the reception at Stellamaris to change money (first find the reception), then buy special vouchers (first find where they sell them) and finally the beer, which we of course found right away, though that didn’t help us one bit.
It was well past eight. On stage, Judas Pirest, quite capable masters of retrospection, were happily raising hell. Tracks like Nightcrawler, Metal Gods, Heading Out To The Highway,… What more could you want. This music belongs right at a Biker’s festival, and it’s soaked in nostalgia too. The show kicked off with Hellion/Electric Eye, and they didn’t forget You’ve Got Another Thing Coming,… The front of the stage was almost completely empty, just a few lonely, fired-up heads bobbing around and kicking up dust by the stage barrier. The guys spiced up the gig with some Iron Maiden too, with Wicker Man and a surprising Waysted Years, which proved that it’s easier to pull off the highest possible “Halford scream” (hats off to the singer there) than to sing Dickinson in the chorus of that Iron Maiden classic, where the singer badly ran out of steam when he should have gone up into the “heights”. The guys also threw in a very melodic version of Creeping Death (Metallica) and surprised us with Out In The Fileds (Gary Moore), which in their hands sounded very close to the Primal Fear (power metal, Germany) cover of the song. On top of that came a rather unfortunate version of the Purple classic Highway Star, followed by a more convincing Burn. Both songs showed that metalheads just can’t play seventies hard rock. Not that they don’t know how technically, they just can’t do it. They’re “too wound up”, if you catch my drift. In short, in one hour they crammed in an excellent little bundle of songs of moderate to medium difficulty for the eighties heavy metal/hard rock crowd. If I’d only managed to catch the name of this very promising band, the victory would have been complete!
Next up was “a truibute to” Jimi Hendrix band. An hour of repertoire for them too. The singer reminded me of Hendrix, looks-wise. Yes, you read that right. Thick, coal-black curly hair, even the facial features at a quick glance,… but skinny like some Phil Lynott. Okay, now I’m exaggerating. Of course this time it was all about Hendrix (Purple Haze, Fire, All Along The Wachtower,…). Interestingly, they stayed away from Hey Joe, Voodoo Chile and the like…, and they didn’t skip Led Zeppelin either. Ten at night. People appearing out of nowhere in front of the stage. But the tents were increasingly full of consumers of various liquors and food, with the ladies especially leading the way, who always take first place south of Slovenia, if you throw in a comparison with this kind of female ambush north of Slovenia (e.g. the Harley Davidson festival at Faak Am See, Austria). No question. Wherever you turned your head, there was something interesting to look at. The beer flowed, the minutes ticked by, and at 23.00 we got what we’d come to Umag for.
A chance to soak up some good old Uriah Heep. The legendary uncle John Lawton took care of that, a member of the band in the era of the albums “Firefly” (1977), “Innocent Victim” (1977) and “Fallen Angel” (1978), and you can also hear the man sing on the live album “Live In Europe ’79” (1986). In short, a gentleman who had a major influence on the band’s style and sound in the second half of the seventies and reshaped it significantly. Even today John Lawton successfully delights old enthusiasts with Heep classics, which we could sum up in the word puzzle “Uriah John Lawton Heep” repertoire, or something that only John Lawton can bring to life on stage. Worthy. Even now, in 2007.
At 23.00 it all started with The Hanging Tree (“Firefly”, 1977). Sharing the stage with John Lawton were none other than our excellent hard rockers Mary Rose, with the commander Eki on guitar all the way over on our left, singer Žak in the background handling Hensley’s highest vocal parts, behind him the excellent, promising young drummer Jure Doles, the fired-up Mitja Kobal on bass, to his right the indispensable organist Davor Kastelec, armed with a standard B3 Hammond, in which Kobal put his beer the moment he walked on stage (carefully, as if laying a baby in a cradle)… and in the middle and up front, of course, John Lawton.
This time he didn’t bring rain with him, as he did twice in a row in Hruševje (Postojna), which sadly sits empty this year, so we’ll be without a Biker’s festival there. The guys as a whole were in great spirits. Žak, a seasoned performer, added to the concert’s dynamics. Mary Rose are completely at home in the Uriah Heep repertoire. No doubt about that. There is one thing, though. This time Lawton put three solo-career songs on the set list. Right after The Hanging Tree came Take You High (“Sting In The Tail”, 2003). An excellent punchy “hard rocker” that gives you goosebumps, and it leaned heavily toward something the good old Uriah Heep could have put together too. Then back to Heep with the flirty Stealin’ (“Sweet Freedom”, 1973), and again to “Sting In The Tail” with another excellent number from the album, Reach Out. With the sixth song the guys cooled the fire and tackled The Wizard (“Demons And Wizards”, 1972). Lawton is a born leader! He kept control of what was happening on stage the whole time, as well as in front of it. The crowd didn’t turn out to be some terribly knowledgeable bunch when it came to the Uriah Heep repertoire,… they had all come first and foremost to party. But John fired them up brilliantly with the dose of routine and experience he’s picked up over his music career. Like it was nothing. A surprise with Payin My Dues To The Blues (“Still Payin My Dues To The Blues”, 2000), and then it was Uriah Heep all the way to the end. Uriah “John Lawton” Heep’s song Come Back To Me (Firefly, 1978) was the moment I talked about in the upper part of this report. Something that only John Lawton can pull off. Mary Rose were on top of it the whole time, with Lawton and of course the audience. The guys were on fire. After that the stage boiled over with I’m Alive (“Fallen Angel”, 1978), which replaced She’s Gone (“Still Payin My Dues To The Blues”, 2000) on the set list, Sympathy (“Firefly”, 1977) and a finale with a stretched-out version of Free Me (“Innocent Victim”, 1977), which included a band “jam”. It was five minutes past midnight when, to everyone’s astonishment, the guys said “Thanks a lot and good night”. Hello?
Hello, helloooo,… can you hear us? Are you coming back by any chance? Aha, they did come back on stage. What followed was a half-hour encore! You won’t believe it. For all of three songs. Unheard of. Lady in Black and Easy Livin’ together reached a supersonic 15 minutes of truly galactic, drawn-out otherworldliness. People were busy, though, since Lawton successfully shunted them onto a side track and got them singing along together, so there was no time to analyze other things. And the next 15 minutes were reserved for Gypsy. In it, they each played their own solo in turn (except for Eki). Here Kobal fired up the crowd by putting his bass behind his back and playing the chorus riff of Motori (Divlje Jagode), and the crowd, as if someone had pressed a special hypnosis button, instantly started singing at the top of their lungs: “Mo-tori, mo-tori, mo-to-ri,…” The wake-up call worked later on too, when we gourmets got a few unexpected minutes of our own. Davor Kastelec delivered a hefty dose of wit on his Hammond (the only thing missing was a screwdriver jammed into the keys). There was Dvorak, there was The Nice,…
On stage everyone jammed again, and finally Lawton came back for the Gypsy finish. Routine. And that half-hour encore, unbelievable. I was honestly annoyed. They could have crammed at least three Uriah Heep tracks into the regular set and shortened the encore. No need to even look for which songs. There are heaps of them, like leaves and grass, since we’re talking about Uriah Heep, and the seventies are spotless for them as far as their catalog goes.
After the show Lawton kindly met the fans who wanted to say hello, and of course he didn’t forget about us either, giving us ten minutes for an interview. Few can match him for kindness, and he’s a real gentleman at every turn, a true Englishman! And of course none of it would have happened without Mary Rose. They showed on stage that they had energy for at least another full hour. They were bursting at the seams and tossing each other around. But the boss had set a limit, so you could still feel a lot of reserve in the performance. So, hand on heart, if Lawton staged similar gigs around Europe more often and raised his personal live form, don’t get me wrong, vocally the man is still perfectly well preserved, and spent more time polishing the shows, we’d surely get between 17 and 20 songs in total. And surely with a policy of including more shorter, compact and clearly separate numbers, he’d create more order throughout the show, instead of musicians having to fall back on jams and solos that don’t mean much, just so people wouldn’t complain that the concert was too short. Nobody remembers them after the show. The songs remain, and those are eternal. Of course the mood was relaxed and the guys were visibly having fun, but if there’s more order, if you know exactly what’s going to happen on stage every minute, there can be even more of that looseness, and the concerts would fill the listeners in front of the stage even more.
John Lawton set list (Umag, 2007):
1. The Hanging Tree
2. Take You High
3. Stealin’
4. Reach Out
5. The Wizard
6. Payin My Dues To The Blues
7. Come Back To Me
8. I’m Alive
9. Sympathy
10. Free Me
—encore—
11. Lady In Black
12. Easy Livin’
13. Gypsy
Since we were “handicapped” when it came to getting back, we were of course looking into every option for a ride home. A shame, because the festival was just really heating up. So sadly we couldn’t wait for Razvaline (members of the former Requiem)! During the interview with Lawton, excused from interviewing duty, we got to watch the striptease of two undressing girls while Razvaline set up the stage behind them for their show. I hope the view of the surroundings didn’t make their hands shake too much. Me, I preferred to use the time to say goodbye to all the members of Mary Rose and thank them especially for the invitation, as well as the festival organizer. An incredible atmosphere that you can only experience at a Biker’s festival, at an excellent seaside venue that’s worth visiting every year. Maybe next year a big “headliner” could bring even more bikers to Umag. And our hero Lawton we’ll see this year at Rock Otočec, when he plays with Mary Rose on 07.07.2007. So stay tuned!
Lineup
Friday 11.05 Under Down (Slovenia) No Problem Band (Croatia) Zabranjeno Pušenje (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Saturday 12.05 Voodoo Experience (Croatia) Razvaline (Slovenia) John Lawton & Mary Rose
Photo gallery
