Long Cool Woman / Here I Go Again / Jennifer Eccles / Yes I Will / Look Through Any Window / Sandy / Listen to Me / Butterfly / I’m Alive / Fire Brigade / We’re Through / On a Carousel / Blowin’ In the Wind

How Will I Survive / Sorry Suzanne / Just One Look / The Baby / Soldiers Song / Gasoline Alley Bred / Too Young to be Married / Bus Stop / Blackberry Way / Carrie Ann /  The Air That I Breathe / I Can Hear The Grass Grow / Stop! Stop! Stop! / Tiger Feet / He Ain’t Heavy / It’s In Every One of Us

Chart toppers put on a rip-roaring show

How many years can a band carry on before they start feeling their age? In the case of the Hollies, obviously a good few yet.

  With this 40^th anniversary performance they were as vibrant as when they first started – and probably just as loud. They could turn it on alright, it was just a pity at times that they couldn’t turn it down too.

That said, the full house audience didn’t seem to let it spoil their evening, by the show’s end practically everyone was up and calling out for more after a parade of classic chart-toppers that middle-aged memories are made of.

Replacing original vocalist Alan Clark these days is former member of fellow sixties band The Move, Carl Wayne. Now fully recovered from recent surgery, he proved to have a fine voice along with perfect stage presence and can throw the mike about with real style.

The ever youthful Tony Hicks, still sporting a moptop, as always was superb on guitar, and just as good on banjo.

The hits from Just One Look came tumbling – or roaring back, among them Bus Stop, Carousel, Jennifer Eccles, the Big Two with everyone joining in, The Air That I Breathe and He Ain’t Heavy plus the number that said it all, I’m Alive, you can’t argue with that.

Ray O’Luby

  Review by Ray O'Luby