Robbie the angel of Mission Concert
Anyone who expected Robbie Williams to give anything new to the Napier crowd would be overthinking.
But it doesn’t detract from the fact that Williams is a phenomenon to rival the Mission Concert itself.
Thirty-three years after embarking on a music career, almost 26 as a solo act, and after almost 31 years since the first Mission Concert in 1993 — including two giant acts this year — close to 25,000 flooded the estate paddock on Saturday to see Williams.
This is Hawke’s Bay’s biggest event. It’s yet another gift after all the region has been through since the floods of Cyclone Gabrielle nine months ago.
Napier Girls’ High School boarder and Dannevirke teenager Molly Pawson got the show on the road soon after the gates opened. She’s followed by previous Mission support acts Danica Bryant with her band, Stretch, and Ladyhawke, with her band — the volume turned up a notch with each new arrival on stage until the appearance of Williams soon after 8pm.
In an evening dominated by the sound, screen and light show, Williams gets it going with the now standard opener of Hey Wow Yeah Yeah, from his ninth solo album in 2012, merging with Let Me Entertain You, from the first, in 1997. “The No 1 rule is you must love your audience,” he says.
It’s all part of reaffirming to the crowd — that having said he’d never get married and have kids, he’s been married 18 years, has four “kids”, and that this is all the reason he’s “still on this planet”. There’s a harkening to it through the evening as he reels through the hits — Strong, Love My Life, Supreme, Feel, and Kids —anda Don’t Look Back In Anger cover. No Regrets, She’s The One, and Angels were truly some way to end, the crowd obediently raising their cellphones in salute for a display of moving lights of their own making.
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa never had such an opportunity when she did the first Mission Concert in 1993, and these nights in 2023 end with a reflection on how far technology has taken the concert industry.