It’s the year of the oldies
Nostalgia rules the concert venues this year as some very familiar faces head our way, finds Karl Quinn.
They say rock’n’roll is a young person’s game, but clearly the major acts coming our way next year didn’t get the memo. There are so many golden oldies touring this year that in years to come, we’ll probably look back at this as the golden age of nostalgia.
Phil Collins will get the ball rolling early next month in Christchurch and Napier with a tour in which he professes to be Not Dead Yet.
In April, those old smoothies Air Supply will be mellowing out audiences with the help of an orchestra. BYO air supply.
Just to prove nostalgia isn’t solely the preserve of the over-65s, in late February the Happy Mondays will be performing their 1990 album Pills ’n’ Thrills and Bellyaches in its entirety (or at least the bits Shaun Ryder can still remember the words to). Grab your baggy pants and bucket hat and step on, ravers – one Kiwi show has already sold out.
Here are a few more of what we suspect will be the most interesting tours of the first half of the year ahead.
Eagles
There’ll be no Glenn Frey on this February/March tour (he died in January 2016), but his son Deacon joins the lineup, alongside Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B Schmit from the the band that checked out long ago, but never really left.
Vince Gill completes the main ensemble and there’s also a horn and string section to flesh out that mellow West Coast sound. A perch in the Eagles’ nest will set you back anything from a low of $299 to a high of $400. Tickets are going fast at Ticketmaster.
The Monkees
It’s not the full Prefab Four – Peter Tork is not in great health, and Davy Jones is long dead – but this is the Monkees lineup fans thought they’d never see, with Micky Dolenz joined onstage by Mike Nesmith for the first time in New Zealand and Australia since 1968.
In fact, it’s the first time Nez has played down under since 1977, when he toured at the height of his Rio fame. If you’re really a Believer, you’ll have to fork out $599 for the full VIP package in June. Tickets are available from the promoter.
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Five years after they were last here as part of The Big Day Out, and 12 years since they last headlined a tour of Australia, Australia-born bass legend Flea and his bandmates – including co-founder and singer Anthony Kiedis, long-time drummer Chad Smith, and relative new boy Josh Klinghoffer on guitar (he’s been with the band since 2007) – play a series of stadium and winery gigs, including a first visit to Tasmania.
Promising plenty of funk for young and old, The Chilis play two shows in Auckland on March 8 and 9.
Lily Allen
Given her tabloid life and confessional lyrics, it was probably inevitable that Lily Allen would turn to the memoir, even if, at 33, she’s a touch on the young side for such things. Then again, she’s been on the public radar since becoming one of the first artists to emerge via social media in late 2005 (on My Space – remember that?) so why not.
She’s unlikely to be reading excerpts from My Thoughts Exactly on her No Shame tour in February, but it promises to be an intimate affair all the same – just the diminutive singer (and her stack heels) and two synth players, and a catalogue that trawls the wreckage of a failed marriage while all the while keeping ‘‘one foot in the rave’’ (her words, but we like them).
Ozzy Osbourne
The former Black Sabbath frontman has been touring for 50 years but this jaunt around the world – which started in 2017 and isn’t slated to end until
2020 – will be his last. Or so he says.
‘‘The thing about music is it’s got no age limit,’’ he said in October. ‘‘If you’re good, you’re good and if you’re having fun, have fun.’’
Osbourne is one of the biggest names at Australia’s Download Festival in March. Also on the lineup are Judas Priest, Alice in Chains, Slayer and Rise Against. Rock on, headbangers. He plays one show in Christchurch on March 13.
Lauryn Hill
It’s billed as the 20th anniversary tour of her solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and fans of the ex-Fugees singer can probably expect her to play the album in full when she tours in February.
But given it’s her only studio album to date, when could they not expect the same?
Hill regularly divides audiences by remixing her songs (hey, just because she’s playing the album, don’t go expecting it to sound like the album, OK?) and turning up late, but she still delivers a hell of a show. Just make sure the babysitter doesn’t have to be home by 10. She plays an Auckland show next month.
Nick Cave
Typically, a Cave visit to his home hemisphere each summer comes complete with a Bad Seeds tour. This year, it’s the singer-songwriter-screenwriter-sometime-actor solo at a piano, armed with that extensive catalogue of songs and a willingness to take questions from the audience and a promise to answer them with as much good humour, grace and honesty as he can muster.
It started in May in New York, when Cave took to the stage for the first of four such dates with the confession that ‘‘I have absolutely no idea what I’m really doing here’’.
By the time he opens the Australasian leg in his childhood hometown of Wangaratta this month, he’ll presumably have it figured out. Nick Cave’s intimate tour hits Wellington on January 15 and Auckland two days later.
John Mayer
The blues-folk-rock singer-guitarist is perhaps as well known for his string of celebrity ex-girlfriends – Taylor Swift, Jennifer Aniston, Kim Kardashian and Renee Zellweger among them – as he is for his music.
He launches his world tour in Auckland on March 23, before heading to Australia. Tickets start at $159, with a VIP pass setting you back about $500. No word on whether that includes him asking for your number, though.