Every time a pop act says goodbye, I sigh a little... knowing that ‘farewell tour’ really means ‘see you later’

JUST after 8am yesterday, the internet exploded with delight when RTÉ 2fm and a few radio stations in the UK played Westlife’s new single, Hello My Love, for the first time. Unlike most of their biggest hits, the melancholy ballads and powerful torch songs on which the boyband made their name, this is an uptempo number that might even see them leave the stools behind and actually shake a leg when they perform it.

Written by Ed Sheeran, it has a strong bang of Castle On The Hill off it, but why mess with a winning formula? By midafternoon, it rather predictably was No. 1 on the iTunes charts in Ireland and Britain.

The group are touring again this summer too, playing 32 dates across these islands, including two nights in Croke Park in July. All wonderful, I’m sure, except for one rather salient fact. They also played two nights in Croke Park in 2012 – as their farewell gigs.

Impact

At the time, their svengali Simon Cowell said they might reunite sometime in the future, but the four members – Nicky Byrne, Shane Filan, Markus Feehily and Kian Egan – ruled it out. That, they said, was that. Except, of course, it wasn’t. In this, they have fellow travellers. I caught some of the 1996 episode of Reeling In The Years the other night, and it included footage of the press conference in which Take That said they were splitting up. Much to her embarrassment now, I imagine, the clip also featured a bawling schoolgirl being consoled by her friends as the impact of this epochal event hit home. In fact, Take That took a hint from one of their biggest songs and, after reforming in 2006, they really have been back for good. They’re everywhere, for heaven’s sake, with Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams both having served terms as judges on The X Factor as well as releasing their musical projects and touring pretty much endlessly.

The ladies are at it too. The Spice Girls went on hiatus in 2000, reformed in 2007, split again in 2008, came together briefly for the London 2012 Olympics, and now are back for the all-stadium 13-date Spice World 2019 tour, which kicks off in Croke Park in May and concludes with three nights in Wembley in June. You can hear the ker-ching from here.

Then we come to an old favourite of mine, the peerless Italian movie composer Ennio Morricone. I first saw him live in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 2013, and I was captivated. There are many who love his work for the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s, and more still who hold The Mission in the highest regard, but the score that stands head and shoulders above all others, for me anyway, is Cinema Paradiso. When it was played by the 100-piece orchestra, I started blubbing like a child, and swore it would not be the last time I saw the maestro. And so it proved, because I was at the 3Arena in February 2015 when he returned.

Sentimental as ever, I went through another packet of Kleenex and, when his September 2017 gig was announced as ‘the last time the man will bring his music to Ireland’, I paid the guts of €300 so that not only I, but one of my nephews too, could pay one final homage to the great man.

After all, he already was 88 at that stage, and while his style of conducting is more lyrical than aggressive, even that must take its toll.

Tears

In truth, I was less worried he would make it through the concert than I would without disgracing myself in front of the young fella, but it turned out the gene runs in the family, because at one point I risked a look sideways at the nephew and there were tears in his eyes too. And he hadn’t even seen my credit card bill.

Anyway, it was a lovely night of bonding and worth every cent to say we were there, so you can imagine my surprise – honestly, I nearly crashed the car – when I heard a radio ad late last year announcing that old Ennio, clearly believing the craic will be 90, is set to return to the 3Arena next month.

There are only so many times I can be mugged, though, and while I already know I’ll be disappointed on the night when I hear friends raving about how good the gig was, I’m just not spending the cash again.

I imagine there are many Elton John fans who feel the same way. I saw him play a two-hour show in Pennsylvania three years ago, so when he announced Dublin as the one of stopovers on his farewell tour, I wasn’t pushed about scrambling for tickets. Many thousands did so, though, and surely they were delighted they would be present on such a special occasion.

Ha! The ‘farewell’ gig on June 20 this year will be followed by another on December 4 next year (2020 vision is a wonderful thing), and I can only imagine how furious those who ponied up for the first one must be feeling.

Jukebox

Of course, the template for all this was laid down by Frank Sinatra, who retired every other Friday. He first called it quits in 1970 but announced three years later that Ol’ Blue Eyes was back.

That at least appealed to me. Sinatra is my favourite singer of all time, and One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) my favourite song. Johnny Mercer wrote the lyric at the bar in PJ Clarke’s on Third and 55th in Manhattan and, on every visit to New York, I would go there at least once in the wee small hours, and stuff the jukebox with quarters and play it on repeat, hoping the first line, ‘It’s quarter to three…’ arrived bang on time. Perhaps because I’m not the only one known to have done this, I note the bar now closes at 1am. Spoilsports.

Anyway, because he never retired at all, I got to see Frank singing live twice, in Lansdowne Road in 1989 with Sammy Davis Jr and Liza Minnelli in tow, and once by himself in the old Point Depot in 1991.

He was 75 by that stage, and had to do a little more work than Ennio, and the voice wasn’t what it used to be, but I was ten rows from the stage and it was a night of magic. When the first bars of Strangers In The Night sounded, a woman in front of me, with her daughter I would guess, threw both her arms forward, then brought her hands together and held them on her heart for the entire song.

In that moment, I effectively saw her entire life – how she danced to that song with the man she later married, how they went through thick and thin together with it as ‘their’ song and, sadly, how all she now had of him was those memories. She might have held her own heart, but she broke mine in two.

And you know, maybe there are people heading towards middle age now who have those same feelings about Westlife, or Boyzone, or Backstreet Boys, or Rick Astley, or any of the others whose last farewell seems to have been more of a see-you-later, and good luck to them all.

Sometimes, though, I just wish that when much-loved groups say goodbye, they actually mean it. Especially One Direction, just in case they have notions.