David Essex
Happy Ever After Tour
Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Monday May 12th, 2008
David Essex has had a phenomenal career. Now aged 61, the singer / actor / writer is back on the road delighting his fans with some of the biggest hits of the seventies and eighties, as well as – judging by the split in ages in the audience – impressing their sons and daughters as well.
Supported by Birkenhead’s own Dean Johnson, who warmed up an already sweltering evening nicely with a great version of Dobie Grey’s Drift Away and, also, his own songs such as Invisible Ink and The Year Of Letting Go, Essex took the stage dressed in a black waistcoat, white shirt and blue jeans.
The newly goatee’d star looks strikingly similar to Peter Gabriel from afar, but is much more leisurely on stage. This matters not one jot, however, as he launches into two new songs from his latest album – Happy Ever After and Before I Met You – before belting out Me & My Girl (Night-clubbing), a song which eased into the top twenty in 1982.
Yes, it’s scary where those years have disappeared to isn’t it. What’s even more scary is the fact that despite not having heard the song for ages, the words are still there, locked in the mind waiting to be unleashed with unabashed relish.
David Essex is currently writing a musical – All The Fun Of The Fair – which will consist of some of his best-known songs as well as those specially written for the theatre. Judging by the reaction of this, admittedly, partisan crowd, the musical is set to be a huge hit, as Essex hit them with the title track, brilliantly displaying his vast skill as not only a vocalist, but also as an entertainer and writer par excellence.
Highlights of the night? The mercurial Rock On, which has to date reached # 1 in the USA on three different occasions, and the rocking, raunchy anthem that is Imperial Wizard, which had everybody on their feet in an instant.
Cajoling the crowd, inter-acting with them at every opportunity and promising to take them home with him afterwards, everybody present was eating out of his hand and, boy, didn’t he love it. The Seventies and Eighties may be long gone but, on this evidence, let’s just hope that David Essex sticks around a good while longer.
break the rules as I see fit.” - Chris High 2003.