Location: Vienna / Simm City / Austria
Date: February 16, 2017
The legendary Glenn Hughes is the man who picked up the flattering nickname “The Voice Of Rock” a long, long time ago. After a good while away, and especially after his stint in Black Country Communion and a brief detour with California Breed, he’s back on his second solo tour of the old continent in under two years. We last marveled at Glenn a year and a half ago, when he played the Rockhouse club in the heart of Salzburg, Austria. This time the celebrated songwriter, singer and bassist came back to Europe for yet another run, and with a new album on top of it, the excellent “Resonate”, which takes him all the way back to his rock roots.
Hughes returned to European stages with three backing musicians. Last tour he also played as a trio, with Doug Aldrich, a guitarist anyone would want in their band today, and Swedish drummer Pontus Engborg. This time he wanted to take the experienced and highly regarded Danish guitarist Soren Andersen on the road. We got to see Soren at The Dead Daisies show on November 21, 2015, at the KC Dražen Petrovič hall in Zagreb, where they opened for Whitesnake. Back then Soren was filling in with The Dead Daisies for the band’s boss, David Lowy. Soren also played guitars on and produced Resonate, but couldn’t join the tour. His countryman, the excellent Anders Bo, stepped in for him. The quartet still has the superb drummer Pontus Engborg, plus Hammond organist Lachey Doley. Yes, Hughes has brought the organ back into the lineup, which is a hugely welcome move, since it opens up room for an even better recapturing, or rather recultivating, of those sonic atmospheres from rock history that he wrote long ago as a member of Deep Purple and Trapeze.
Anyway, for the overture to the new evening with Glenn Hughes, we got not one but two opening acts. The first was a “surprise”, and such a surprise that we didn’t even manage to catch its name. Nobody had announced it beforehand. So the schedule shifted, and the band started playing a full fifteen minutes before eight in the evening. Stone Broken, who are along as special guests for Hughes’s entire new tour, were supposed to go on at eight, so their set got pushed back too. That confused absolutely everybody, from the fans arriving late to the venue to the media people. All I managed to pick up is that the quintet on stage comes from France, that they play really likable melodic hard rock, and that they play it with great confidence and no brakes on, vocals included. Surprise or not, the set counted as a nice rocking welcome and a charming warm-up.
At half past eight in the evening the young British hard rock rascals and cheeky whippersnappers Stone Broken finally hit the stage. The quartet may be young in years, active since 2013, but Hughes and his management knew exactly who deserved a shot on his new tour. Stone Broken effortlessly showed that rock’n’roll is far from dead. They served up a combo of dynamic playing, a fat, foaming wall of guitars, confident and active riffage, the piercing, ignition-lighting vocals of Rich Moss, and nonstop running around the stage and firing up the crowd. And I can’t forget the contribution of drummer Robyn Haycock, whose heart and soul brought the pull of a steam locomotive to the band’s sound. It was a truly convincing meeting with an up-and-coming crew of youngsters who will surely show plenty of good things in the future and deliver a top-notch crop of original music. Even though Stone Broken play riffs we’ve already heard, they approach them with a whole lot of heart, theatrical fighting spirit and incredible youthful drive and commitment. Professional.
Today Glenn Hughes remains one of the best-preserved musicians of that crew of rough diamonds from rock’s pioneering days, the ones who set rock’n’roll firmly on its feet in the seventies and, with their musical insight, vision and genius, opened up countless stylistic horizons for rock and metal. I can say that even with mid-sixties about to land on his shoulders any minute now, Glenn remains an eternal youngster. Both in looks and in stage performance.
His voice still shakes you out of your pants when it vibrates with that incredible resonance. He remains a passionate, feeling soul-awakener and a vocal acrobat without equal. In expression and vocal power, in his incredible chameleon-like versatility, in his feel for improvisational softness, the old description holds, and I’ll say it right here: Hughes is a black musician trapped in a white man’s body. From the first second to the last, the show was an experience that left you instantly speechless and stunned. Hughes remains brilliant in performance, and just as convincing as a born entertainer for whom the stage is his second home, if not his first. Nobody could have expected so many fun, relived stories in the breaks between songs that evening. I can’t remember Glenn ever being this talkative.
The spacious stage of Simm City, which looks like it holds about a thousand people, turned into a one-man show. That one man was of course the extraordinary Hughes, who drifted soulfully to the left, then to the right, keeping eye contact with the crowd the whole time, especially the women in the front rows. Many times he asked the lighting guy to aim the white lights at the audience so he could communicate with them more easily, saying his love always flows from the stage into the hall. His backing trio played the role of absolute extras, but as strict professionals the guys gave Glenn an outstanding foundation. Bo alternated between a cream-colored Fender Stratocaster and a gold Gibson Les Paul (a similar model to the one Doug Aldrich used on the previous tour). Clearly the Stratocaster was for the Deep Purple classics, while the Gibson always roared fat when we got into Hughes’s solo career and/or the moves of Joe Bonamassa (the Black Country Communion songs). Bo was placed in the back line and wasn’t allowed to approach Hughes at the edge of the stage during the show. That was a bit distracting, since we’re used to the guitar riff, as the core of rock’s elementality, being front and center.
As expected, the undisputed rock guru and shaman, on his new visit to the Austrian capital, leaned on songs from the new album, “Heavy”. The pointed Flow rang out right at the start, followed in the first part by Stumble And Go, and in the encore one of the best songs on “Resonate”, Heavy, rounded things off. Hughes didn’t skip the part of his career marked by his work with Pat Thrall either. So Muscle And Blood rang out through the venue as a very interesting treat for the evening. Master Hughes touched on the Trapeze days again with the expected Medusa, while the Deep Purple classic Mistreated, which the whole hall quietly but eagerly awaited all night, was almost shockingly missing from the set. Instead, Glenn stretched out his excellent original You Keep On Movin’, which he contributed to the Deep Purple album “Come Taste The Band”, to a solid fourteen minutes. He introduced the song as one that he and David Coverdale wrote back before the album “Burn”, but then someone showed up who wouldn’t allow it to end up on that album. That same “someone” also insisted the very same song stay off the album “Stormbringer”. Well, it finally managed to make it onto “Come Taste The Band”. With his thanks to Tommy Bolin, it became clear that the “someone” was none other than Richie Blackmore, of course. We also heard two more excellent originals and Hughes’s live staples, Can’t Stop The Flood (from the album “Building the Machine”) and the phenomenal funk and hard rock mix Soul Mover (from the album “Soul Mover”, 2005). Glenn didn’t forget his Black Country Communion days either. So the quartet played a superb One Last Soul and, to close, a venomously sharpened Black Country. One question remained for the big finale. Stormbringer or Burn? We got the latter, and the crowd at Simm City went completely wild one last time!
This was one of those shows that ended unbelievably fast, almost in an instant. Only the extraordinary Glenn Hughes could be “to blame” for an hour and three quarters flying by that quickly. A one-of-a-kind rock preacher who, at a good sixty-plus years old, radiates the vigor of a twenty-year-old stallion, without a speck of let-up in energy or vibe. Flawless execution and vocal acrobatics you can’t get anywhere near. On top of that he delivered fantastic bass playing, packed with demanding figures. Few reach his level. A few others do exist, and a few used to, but they’re cut from a different cloth. The late John Wetton, Sting and Geddy Lee (Rush), for example. Glenn Hughes remains a venomous rock’n’roll shaman who sends fans and lovers of his music home from the shows fully satisfied and charged with energy. And as he said, he came among us to share love. The positive vibes seemed endless, and they kept filling us for a long time after our time with the famous rock legend. Let’s hope we meet Glenn again very soon! We lived through yet another unforgettable and unique experience with a rock legend!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
GLENN HUGHES:
1. Intro
2. Flow
3. Muscle And Blood
4. Gettin’ Tighter
5. Stumble & Go
6. Medusa
7. Can’t Stop the Flood
8. One Last Soul
9. You Keep On Movin’
10. Might Just Take Your Life
11. Soul Mover
12. Black Country
—encore—
13. Heavy
14. Burn
STONE BROKEN:
1. Intro
2. Stay All Night
3. Better
4. Be There
5. Wait For You
6. Just A Memory
7. This Life
8. Not Your Eney
