Great songs stand the test of time

DEAR New Plymouth, I wonder if you have considered moving to Wellington?

We can give you as warm a welcome as you did us. You can bring your Bowl of Brooklands with you and we can re-establish it on the old Hutt racecourse.

Please bring all your Len Lye sculptures with you and, yes, you can bring your precious Mt Taranaki, which we will reinstall at the harbour entrance.

But we must have your Womad festival and the organisers behind Saturday’s concert.

Over the years a lot has been thrown at Sting, his tantric sex ideas, saving the Amazon forests and his barmy wedding day – so much so that he’s almost as disliked as Bono.

Yet on stage he comes across as the most charming and likeable person you could meet.

And, you really would like to take him home and have a good chin-wag.

Stunningly handsome and in good fettle, he rips through a wellthought-out set of Police and solo material songs, then bows as Paul Simon makes his entrance. It was an entrance worthy of rock royalty. Simon, like Sting, doesn’t disappoint with his repertoire of old and new.

Wisely neither bothered with tracks from their colossal Broadway failures, The Last Ship (Sting) or Capeman (Simon); this is about the massive contribution of songs that have truly stood the test of time.

Neither of these artists needs to work ever again, but here they are giving a three-hour concert and genuinely loving it. There is a wonderful working rapport between the two different bands, as in Day by Day (a song I’m not familiar with), and by using two drummers and four percussionists, which was sonically brilliant.

No-one can replace Art Garfunkel’s voice in many of Simon’s songs, but Sting carried many of them with aplomb and Simon was equally magnanimous in returning the favour.

Did I mention the sing-a-longs? Roxanne, You Can Call Me Al, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, Message in a Bottle.

Yes, 11,000 people left the venue hoarse.