Black Country Communion
After seven years, it’s a homecoming for the Glenn Hughes-led supergroup. Wolverhampton Civic Hall
Cock an ear to the night air here tonight and you can hear the roars from nearby Molineux Stadium, announcing that a resurgent Wolverhampton Wanderers are stuffing Brentford three-nil.
Inside the Civic Hall, meanwhile, another local hero is enjoying an equally rousing reception from his own long-suffering fans. As Glenn Hughes reminds us, it’s seven years since Black Country Communion last graced a stage in the heartland that birthed them: “We named our band after the people of the Black Country. It all started for me fifty years ago in this town…”
Understandably, Hughes skims over the fact that it’s five years, almost to the day, since the Anglo-American supergroup were due to play a one-off gig at this very venue; a date cancelled when the bassist and guitarist Joe Bonamassa’s relationship unravelled in an unseemly tit-for-tat. For Hughes – born 10 miles away in Cannock – it is evidently good to be back, not just on home turf, but at the controls of a top-flight band whose 2013 split left the one-time Deep Purple man flailing for purpose, and fans maddened by a sense of wasted potential. Tonight, the fiery phoenix sleeve art from last year’s comeback album, BCCIV, appears on Jason Bonham’s kick drum, and it’s a fitting metaphor for a reunion that Bonamassa once sniffed was about as likely as Buddy Holly And The Crickets.
But we didn’t come here tonight to rake over the past. As BCC tear into a two-hour set, we are reminded that these four musicians – the line-up completed by Derek Sherinian, manning a phalanx of keyboards – were born to play thunderous hard-rock together, a duty that should be enforced at gunpoint, if necessary. For a band whose first run lasted barely four years, they command a broad back catalogue of rare quality, and it’s a measure of the unit’s confidence that they’re not afraid to deploy some of the classics early. Rip-roaring debut single One Last Soul, the haunted Save Me and muscular The Outsider are all spat out in short order, during a first half that hits most of the peaks from their four studio albums (but bafflingly leaves out the rabble-rousing fan favourite, Beggarman).
The material is frequently stellar, but it’s the delivery that thrills. In his regulation black suit and Terminator shades, Bonamassa can be an inscrutable stage presence, but as the set unfolds, he’s clearly revelling in the sideman role, whether firing off snakecharmer licks that make even this roomful of hardened gigsters gape, or going nose-to-nose with Hughes in a series of
bristling call-and-response sections. No mere plankspanker, we’re reminded of the scope of the 40-yearold’s talent as he steps up on lead vocals for The Battle For Hadrian’s Wall,a Zep III-esque folk-cruncher performed with bright-eyed soul.
As for Hughes himself, the 66-year-old’s performance is simply a tour de force. Pipe-cleaner-thin and clad in a faintly ridiculous tuxedo jacket with Union Jack sleeves, his patter can sail close to spirituality-lite at times (“I’m a love machine,” he tells us, earnestly. “I don’t know what hate means. I’ve had enough of that…”). But there’s nothing airy-fairy about the veteran’s powerful, propulsive bass playing, nor his somersaulting vocals that pin us to the back wall, the instrumentation often dropping out to give his operatics free reign.
Following the slow-burn set fulcrum of Cold – a reflection on Hughes’ troubled past with a glowering Bonamassa guitar hook – the show’s home-straight breaks into a swagger. The Last Song For My Resting Place is all Celtic mysticism with muscle, Gerry O’Connor of The Dubliners providing a change of flavour on fiddle and mandolin, while Bonamassa takes another accomplished tilt at the mic. Man In The Middle is a crackling return to a more familiar blues-rock crunch – and achieves lift-off with its jackhammer double-time outro – but the night’s undoubted highlight is Black Country, kicked off with a breakneck rat-a-tat lick whose Motörhead velocity raises the venue’s pulse, and sprinkled with octavebusting a-cappella shrieks that confirm Hughes as one of the few old-school belters who can still blow the house down. As he delivers the howled pay-off – ‘I am a messenger/This is my prophecy/I’m going back to the Black Country’ – the audience’s response suggests they’re ready to carry this prodigal son shoulder-high and anoint him in the Queen Square fountain.
With that, the four sidle off stage. But nobody’s fooled, and moments later they fire the machinery back up with the only track that could hope to compete with Black Country. Collide, you’ll remember, was the song whose classical sweep and seismic riffing opened BCCIV, confirming there was still gas in the tank of this fractious behemoth. In this setting, with Sherinian’s atmospheric keys work butting against Bonamassa’s route-one riff, it’s truly immense, like Heartbreaker on steroids, shitting out a symphony orchestra.
Faithless can’t hope to match those heights, but Hughes has one last ace up his garish sleeve. Introduced as the first song that the bassist and guitarist played together upon their 2009 formation, Mistreated – from Deep Purple’s 1974 classic Burn
– opens with a dynamic slow-blues preamble, Bonamassa tickling his volume dials to create whalesong wails worthy of Jeff Beck, before revving up the dynamics to create a fire-breathing solo spot, encouraged by Hughes: “Talk to me, Joe!”
It’s an epic finale, and the perfect full stop, but even as the house lights go up on a sated audience, the bassist seems reluctant to leave the stage, taking a deep bow with his comrades before embarking on more Midlands pillow-talk. “There was no mistake that we had to play here,” he gushes. “This is the home of Black Country Communion. We want to see you again. We’ll be back, you’ve got to believe me.”
We don’t doubt his sincerity, but if past form is any indication then we shouldn’t hold our breath. From here the band roll on to a second date at Hammersmith, then home to the States, where Bonamassa’s prolific solo career will be calling. But wherever Black Country Communion’s road leads them, Hughes has patently left his heart in Wolverhampton.
Henry Yates