TIM DE LISLE It’s that Seventies show(in age, that is...)
Diana Ross The Cambridge Club Festival
Touring until July 1
Elton John
Norwich City FC
Touring until July 4
Grace Jones
Royal Festival Hall, London Touring until tonight
The busiest month in the history of live music may well be this one. Even in normal times, June is the rush hour because of stadium gigs and Glastonbury, which is now so huge that global schedules are built around it. Thanks to the end of lockdown, we now have an extra glut.
Everywhere you look, there’s a septuagenarian superstar. Spoilt for choice, I decided to make it a week of divas. Top of the bill: Diana Ross, fresh from headlining Platinum Party at the Palace.
The Queen of Soul was not great at performing for the Queen of England. She seemed to be miming, played only three songs and spurned all the Supremes classics that made her name.
At The Cambridge Club Festival, an elegant celebration of soul and funk, Ross is far more at home. She sets the tone with a majestic outfit, a black floral-print ballgown swathed in what appears to be a brightorange parachute.
Supremes fans are not short-changed. After opening with I’m Coming Out from her disco period, Ross dishes up Where Did Our Love
Go, Baby Love, Stop! In The Name Of Love and You Can’t Hurry Love. It’s 15 minutes of heaven. An unusually mixed crowd – old and young, black and white, families and students – are united by the magic of Motown. At 78, Ross’s voice has lost half its lusciousness, but at least she’s actually singing.
The rest of the show, alas, is lukewarm, with the costumes rather upstaging the music, apart from a spirited I’m Still
Waiting. Ross leaves you wishing that she would go back indoors, to small venues, for one last tour.
Talking of which, here comes Elton John. His Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour, which began in 2018, is now booking into 2023. It’s almost as if he is reluctant to leave the limelight.
In Norwich he’s on top form. His voice is elastic, his band are dynamic, his fans are ecstatic and his grand piano is on wheels, like a stately dodgem.
At 75, after going to No 1 with Cold
Heart, Elton has become even more famous. If his set list is patchy, the ballads are unbeatable. Beaming and bowing, he even forgets to have a tantrum.
The week’s biggest diva ends up being Grace Jones, who, at 74, still lives by one mantra: the show must run late. Opening her own Meltdown festival at the Southbank, she turns ‘7.30 sharp’ into an 8.50 start.
All is instantly forgiven because her entrance, as a silhouette in a top hat, is imperious. If Instagram had come along 40 years earlier, Grace might have been bigger than Madonna.
Her voice is formidable, her music as polished as her poses. Her masterpiece, Nightclubbing, has aged not a jot since
1981, and neither has her skill with a hula hoop.