Review: Robbie Williams at the Metro Radio Arena

Jun 22, 2014 22:51 By Gordon Barr

*****

 

Robbie Williams was back at the Arena after a 14-year gap for the first of two shows. Gordon Barr was there

Robbie Williams at Newcastle Arena

 

IT had been nearly 14 years since we last saw Robbie Williams step out on a Newcastle stage.

 

Back then, also at the Arena, it was as part of his Sing When You’re Winning tour, when the performer was at the height of his fame.

 

Fast forward to 2014 and he is still entertaining us big style, only this time with more style, finesse, maturity and a little less of that trademark cockiness, replaced by a stronger self-awareness and warmer humour.

 

The Swings Both Ways show was all the better for it too.

 

It says something about the stature of Robbie Williams that at not one point did he feel the need to deliver us a Take That song.

 

There’s more than enough material in his own solo back catalogue to entertain us with, and boy did he do just that. Yet he did not rely on the old hits, rather, except for Angels, he condensed them into a swing-esque medley.

 

Songs from the Swings Both Ways CD formed the backbone of this two-part extravaganza, which kicked off in fine style with Shine My Shoes, quickly followed by Puttin’ On The Ritz and Ain’t That A Kick In The Head.

 

Any worries his back would play up again were soon set aside as RW, who looked like he had come straight from a 2014 Rat Pack reunion, treated us to some canny dance moves.

 

It was big band all the way, with a theatrical staging, an energetic dance troupe and a few guest appearances, not least from Robbie’s dad for a duet on Do Nothin’ ‘Til You Hear From Me, while Guy Chambers made several appearances too.

 

Members of the Stagecoach theatre school joined him on stage for High Hopes, and several women had him sign their bodies, while Vicky from Newcastle enjoyed a mock on-stage wedding to the superstar.

 

There were localisms too, as he declared the land of kebabs and curries to be Longbenton, before taking to a high wire in fat suit to sing No-one Likes a Fat Pop Star.

 

The tails (minus the top hat) were swapped in Act 2 for a sailor’s outfit as we were told we were being taken on the cruise of a lifetime.

 

Indeed, Robbie does seem to be sailing the crest of a swing wave at the moment and the crowd lapped it up.

 

He’s back at the Arena tonight. Tickets are still available.

 

 

Set List

 

Act One

 

Shine My Shoes

 

Puttin’ On the Ritz

 

Ain’t That a Kick in the Head

 

Minnie The Moocher

 

Swing Supreme

 

No One Likes a Fat Pop Star

 

That’s Amore

 

Mr. Bojangles

 

Ignition

 

I Wanna Be Like You

 

High Hopes

 

Swings Both Ways

 

Act 2

 

Soda Pop

 

Trouble / Hit the Road Jack / Reet Petite / Shout

 

I Will Talk and Hollywood Will Listen

 

Go Gentle

 

Do Nothin’ ‘Til You Hear From Me

 

Empire State of Mind

 

New York, New York

 

Let Me Entertain You/Millennium / Come Undone / Old Before I Die / Candy

 

My Way

 

Angels

 

Sensational

 

 

Chroniclelive.co.uk

Pop party as North East Live and Robbie WIlliams rock the region

 

9:41pm Sunday 22nd June 2014 in News

 

 

 

 

A few miles further north Newcastle was swinging as global superstar Robbie Williams swaggered on stage to entertain a sell-out crowd.

 

The ex-Take That heartthrob returned to the Metro Radio Arena for the first time in 14 years for his new tour, paying homage to some of his musical heroes, with a diverse set-list that sees covers of ratpack classics by Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin nestle alongside hits by R Kelly and Alicia Keys and some of his own greatest hits over the past two decades.

 

An arena spokesman said: “It’s brilliant to see Robbie back on the Stage of the Metro Radio Arena, he is a true showman”.

 

 

Northernecho.co.uk

I think it's Glasgow later this week. At the Hydro. :unsure:

The first Robbie Glasgow concert I've missed :(

.m

Edited June 26, 201410 yr by Sydney

mmmmm

Edited June 26, 201410 yr by Sydney

Hmmmm. I guess you had to be there... -_-

<_<

https://soundcloud.com/heartnorthwest/robbi...heart-exclusive

 

 

 

Source..Robbiewilliams.mbe

Edited June 30, 201410 yr by Sydney

Robbie Williams: Manchester – live review

 

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Sarah Lay

Robbie Williams by Melanie Smith, Mudkiss Photography

 

Robbie Williams

Phones 4U Arena, Manchester

29 June 2014

 

Love him or loathe him Robbie Williams is a solid part of our pop culture and as he took his Swings Both Ways live tour to Manchester he proved that he is back on form as not only a pop star but a top flight showman too. Features Editor Sarah Lay let him entertain her (Groan – Ed.).

 

The Phones 4U Arena is, like all arenas, a vast featureless cavern of mass entertainment. The tours stop by, the audience changes but it’s all to the same end – to charge all that dead air hanging between crowd and performer with magic and make the outside world cease to exist for a couple of hours.

 

Of course, Robbie is not new to this trick. He’s been entertaining most of his life, much of that career in venues this size. But as this pop superstar has had his share of super-sized pop problems across those years sometimes that force from the stage has been blindingly brilliant and sometimes it’s been more bitter than sweet.

 

Tonight he’s bringing us last year’s Swings Both Ways album, back on stage with once-estranged songwriting partner Guy Chambers, a show band and small troupe of dancers.

 

This isn’t Robbie’s first venture into swing – his 2001 Swing When You’re Winning moved him from boyband drop-out to all-round performer. Similarly. tonight sees Williams growing up and moving yet further from that pop persona to superstar showman.

 

We get songs from both Swing albums tonight, as well as swing-style reworkings of his pop hits. They’re delivered and interspersed with cheeky humour and interactions with the crowd which make it all very relaxing and more like those all-round entertainers of old – a song, a dance, a little self-deprecating joke, a suggestive wink and handshakes (and even faux marriage) with the awed crowd.

 

As with the Swing albums there are lots of covers. There’s a Charleston-accompanied Puttin’ On the Ritz, a safari-themed I Wan’na Be Like You and the twin behemoths of New York, New York and My Way.

 

But there were also some less obvious inclusions – a barbershop quintet take on R Kelly’s Ignition and one of the backing singers taking centre stage for Empire State of Mind.

 

Robbie Williams, by Melanie Smith of Mudkiss Photography

 

It could easily have been a theme pushed too hard but if anything there were a couple of moments, true of the recent album too, where the concept could have gone further. Swing Supreme being amongst these. Tonight it is about the sing-a-long and the sex appeal for the perfectly passable reworking of Love Supreme but slow it down, and play up the growing grit in Williams vocal for a smokey feel and you could have a spine-tingling after-hours-basement-bar opus on your hands.

 

Robbie’s voice is changing alongside his softening demeanor; still effortless even when reaching for the edges of his range, that Stoke twang present, but now rough around the edges when he wants it to be. This is a playful performance, just enough of the clowning and cockiness that makes it Robbie and not a facsimilie but all in balance tonight, not pulling too far to either end of the Williams’ scale.

 

It’s this new steadiness matched with the heart-swell of fatherhood that gives way to high points like Go Gentle, which Robbie dedicates to Teddy and the baby on the way. This grounding in family is supported when he brings on his father, Peter Williams, for a duet and presumambly led to the children’s choir supporting him on High Hopes – the one moment that left me a bit lost and looking for a break from the Swing trope.

 

We get a medley of his pop hits including a tantelising few lines of the wonderful hymn of the broken, Come Undone.

 

After prostrating himself before the audience we get the ubiquitous Angels, a song which has gone so far round the over-played cliche meter it’s pretty much back at classic. Or maybe, that’s just me as my own appreciation of this song has done a similar journey, probably partly down to deliberately distancing myself from it for a couple of years combined with, you know, life experience means that where once those key changes had me rolling my eyes they now lead to uncontrollable welling up.

 

Between Robbie now letting this song fly on its own wings and then offering a final song written for the fans and it feels like its been a long, ultimately rewarding, journey to get here tonight, to this performance. It is the years that weigh heavy, rather than the miles. Those years are always acknowledged in a Robbie show, sometimes with arrogance, sometimes pride, sometimes sadness, sometimes with self-deprecation. And here he stands now; tails, tattoos and that twinkle in his eye. Here he stands as a giant; a husband, a father, a man with the bad-boy-of-boy-band a piece of him rather than the whole.

 

When he demands ‘Manchester, am I still your son?’, it is not with the longing desire for approval he’s asked for and we’ve tried to fulfill in the past. No, with Swings Both Ways he sheds the insecurities of pop stardom and holds us all with the practiced, confident hand of a fully-fledged showman. And as we affirm our acceptance, those years fall away and we are all, audience and performer, at last grown.

 

Love him or loathe him Williams is no longer a pop-star with pop-star issues but is transitioning into being a confident, compelling showman. For those of us who have grown up alongside him, our own lives parallel but removed from his, finally seeing him accepting and accepted by his audience is a beautiful thing.

 

Photo gallery, all © Melanie Smith:

- See more at: http://louderthanwar.com/robbie-williams-m...h.4MwTHt8L.dpuf

 

 

Thanks too TRWS

 

I was at the hairdressers yesterday, a girl there was supposed to of been going on holiday yesterday but she put it back to go see Robbie's Birmingham gig.

Me think she has a very understanding other half :lol:

 

 

When do you go Tess? must be next week some time? :unsure:

I was at the hairdressers yesterday, a girl there was supposed to of been going on holiday yesterday but she put it back to go see Robbie's Birmingham gig.

Me think she has a very understanding other half :lol:

When do you go Tess? must be next week some time? :unsure:

 

 

I fly to London tomorrow morning :w00t:

Have you been to the concert yet Sydney? :unsure: