Not a dry eye in the house as star says it’s all over bar the shouting
Champagne For Lulu
“The core of who I am was indelibly written when I lived here,” said Lulu at the last ever gig she’s likely to play in Glasgow, the city she left aged 15 to begin a career in pop music. The tears she was crying as she spoke the words – after a cover of Womack & Womack’s Teardrops, appropriately – seemed entirely unforced, adding to the sense an era is ending.
Life goes on, of course, and at the age of 75 Lulu’s only done with touring’s physical rigours. Yet her set brought home just how fixed to the last fifty years of British pop music’s firmament she’s been,referencingthebeatles’ patronage of her after Shout was released in 1964, David Bowie’s brief musical adoption of her, her marriage to Bee Gee Maurice Gibb, and her 1990s disco-pop hits Independence and Relight My Fire.
The poignancy of her getting to leave the stage in her own
way was clarified by tributes to late friends and colleagues, in the form of convincinglyenacted video ‘duets’ with old footage of Gibb on First of May, Bowie on The Man Who Sold the World and Tina Turner on I Don’t Wanna Fight (Lulu and her brother co-wrote it).
There were also live appearances from friends and family, including her younger sister Edwina on backingvocals,airdrietiktok star Nathan Evans, duetting on his intended Scottish Euros anthem Home, and the prestige appearance of Mike and the Mechanics singer Paul Carrack. Clearly fangirling as
she enthused about his voice like“manukahoney”.
The sense was of a fulfilled career, yet a patchwork one thanks to the unfocused management of record label “suits”. To Sir With Love (respectfully dedicated to another late colleague, Sidney Poitier), the Eurovisionwinning hit Boom-bang-abang and Oh Me Oh My from her Atlantic Records foray New Routes, for example, could be the work of three different artists. Yet all in their own way are classics, which is the main currency Lulu’s career has dealt in.