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