Review: The Dead Daisies/The Quireboys, O2 Academy

2020 was the first year in, ooh, decades in which this reviewer didn’t see a show by the Quireboys. Guess what? Absolutely nothing has changed.

This is an observation rather than a criticism. If anyone can get a party started shortly after 7pm on a cold Wednesday evening while punters are still negotiating the covid status inspections, bag searches and ticket checks that are part and parcel of gig-going in 2021, it’s the Quireboys.

Actually, there are a couple of subtle differences. Guitarist Guy Griffin has opted to go hatless for once. And the setlist springs a couple of welcome surprises in addition to all the familiar stuff from A Bit of What You Fancy. Keith Richards’ affable geezer buddy Alan Clayton does the big introduction as usual and Spike arrives on stage doing a very impressive impersonation of someone who’s been pre-loading since dawn.

He pretends it’s Saturday night and that we’re all in the Colston Hall, jokes about falling offstage (a regular occurrence) and tells a funny story about the time his microphone swinging antics went awry and he hit a couple of Americans down the front at Wembley Arena. (They threatened to sue for millions, but accepted a meal with the singer instead: “You can imagine what that was like.”)

While raspy Spike cajoles the initially sparse audience into raising hands and pints aloft, the rest of the Quireboys get on with the serious business of serving up good time rock’n’roll. Presumably figuring that the Dead Daisies audience will only know the early hits, they whisk us back to 1990 for much of the set.

Still, Man on the Loose hasn’t been played in Bristol for quite some time, and when they do venture into the 21st century it’s to remind us that they can still knock out great songs like Original Black Eyed Son from 2019’s Amazing Disgrace.

Amusingly, Spike’s veteran sidekick Griffin often wears the long-suffering expression of a harassed parent struggling to control a hyperactive child in public, but that’s probably worth it when he gets to play the showcase guitar solo at the end of I Don’t Love You Anymore. The set ends, as usual, with Seven O’Clock, during which the Spike’s son sneaks on to take over the bass guitar, much to his dad’s apparent surprise.

The Dead Daisies are a multinational self-styled collective masterminded by Australian gazillionaire guitarist David Lowy, who surrounds himself with some of the world’s best rock musicians. This has its strengths and weaknesses. The obvious strength is that Lowy has a huge pool of talent to draw upon. The weakness is an audience-confusing lack of consistency and identity. So it was that this Dead Daisies show proved to be completely different from the one they played here back in 2018, despite featuring half-a-dozen of the same songs.

How come? Two words: Glenn Hughes. The Daisies’ third – and by a country mile best – lead vocalist, the Voice of Rock has such a huge personality and distinctive voice that he cannot help but stamp it on everything from the four albums recorded before he joined at the end of 2019. Robert Plant doesn’t reach for the high notes these days and David Coverdale is reduced to a shriek. But now that he’s grown his hair out, nattily purple-clad Hughes both looks and sounds exactly as he did in 1974. One can only assume that in some kind of creepy Dorian Gray-type deal he has a little bald croaky bloke stashed in his attic.

Being part of a hard rock band again after the dissolution of ‘supergroup’ Black Country Communion also seems to suit Hughes and prevents him from slipping back into the soul music that dilutes his solo albums and alienates his fan base when he’s left to his own devices.

You might be forgiven for assuming that a newcomer taking centre stage as both singer and bass player might lead to bruised egos, but Lowy is clearly delighted to have him on board, while excellent journeyman guitarist Doug Aldrich is very much a team player. Powerful Black Sabbath/Ozzy drummer Tommy Clufetos is a fellow newcomer to the Daisies but has already formed a strong rhythmic bond with Hughes.

The new songs from Holy Ground – notably the title track, Bustle and Flow and Chosen and Justified – sound a lot heavier than previous Daisies material, but such is Hughes’s dominance that anthemic old faves Rise Up from Burn It Down and Mexico from Revolución don’t feel out of place.

As usual, they also play a bunch of covers, which serve to liven things up after the occasional filler. Purists might balk at John Fogerty’s righteously angry blue-collar indictment of wealthy draft dodgers, Fortunate Son, being stripped of its CCR choolgin’ and repurposed as a hard rock anthem, but the Sensational Alex Harvey Band’s Midnight Moses is an inspired choice that slots into the set perfectly.

Delving back into Hughes’s Deep Purple years for songs he first performed in Bristol at the Hall Formerly Known as Colston on May 20 1974 (Facts? I shit ’em!) is a potentially dangerous gambit and certainly produces the biggest cheers of the evening. But his octave-shattering performance of Mistreated is quite extraordinary for a fella who’s just turned 70, while encore Burn permits Aldrich to live out all his Ritchie Blackmore fantasies.

Should the line-up turn out to be more stable than previous ones and they come up with those promised new songs, this incarnation of the Dead Daisies could prove to be the definitive one. It certainly feels like the best bet for the musical careers of all involved.

All photos by Mike Evans

Read more: Metal & Prog Picks: November 2021