The moment he started playing the audience was transfixed. He started with Man in the Station and went from strength to strength. He played like a demon and sang like an angel that has eaten gravel and honey simultaneously. He did Baby Please Come Home and I swear there was a tear in my eye. A beautiful acoustic solo of You Don’t Know What Love Is and another solo of May You Never followed. He was in good form joking and laughing with the band and the audience all evening. He very clearly had all his wits about him and quite frankly needed them due to some utter p**** in the audience who as soon as big JM stepped on stage started shouting advice on how to play guitar ‘ keep it clean John, no effects’ etc. etc. ALL bloody evening. John handled it like a gentleman the whole evening joking about purists and inviting him down to do any better. He carried on shouting advice and eventually John sang, “In every bunch of roses you’ll always find a prick!” Which obviously wound pain in the arse guy right up. JM referred to him as ‘young man’ at one point and the heckler in his haste to respond shouted back, “I’m not young and I’m not a man!” JM and the audience fell around laughing at the blokes very obvious slip up. As JM said, “Oh well its a hobby I suppose!” It culminated in the heckler basically having a tantrum and shouting at John “Oh sober up you pisshead.” Remember folks I am talking about a 40 to 50 year old male heckler!! Anyway, by this point the audience, who have been solidly behind big JM all evening and who were wishing as much as him that this guy would just fall off the planet quietly, finally start shouting up to him to. I am sure I was the first to tell him to shut up (or words to that effect) The pisshead remark was the final straw for John who said, “We are just here to perform tonight and don’t need this bollocks – come and see me in the carpark later!.” The icing on the cake was the encore John Wayne, while assaulting our eardrums with a superb version of this song , on the line I am John Wayne he smiled from ear to ear and gave a perfectly timed finger to heckler!!! Ha Ha the audience went wild. I only go on about this at some length because this guy very nearly ruined a long awaited and eagerly anticipated evening for me. I hope he reads this list as I would love to know what all that s*** was about. Why would someone his age behave like that and even more importantly why did he bother going at all?? Well whoever you are you should be ashamed of yourself. You were an immature, rude irritating PRICK!! I personally would have loved to meet you in the carpark and given JM a hand along with 300 other people! Right now I’ve got that out of my system… I’ll continue. The saxophonist was absolutely brilliant and the crowd loved him. I cant remember his name but I’m sure someone will [Martin Winning – Ed] remind me! His playing brought me out in goosebumps and he was great to watch as he was so obviously enjoying it you couldn’t help but smile with him! However, somebody should have warned us about the support on this tour! God he was boring!!! Every song sounded like a funeral dirge and all sounded exactly the same!! Most of the audience were struggling to keep their eyes open discreetly – including my husband who I had to pinch at one point as I thought he had dropped off!! Musically the lad could sing and play I think but his choice of music was WRONG!! A couple of slightly faster tunes would have kept his audience awake! Still you’ve got to feel sorry for anyone performing before big JM! A performance overall well worth waiting for, I haven’t come down from the ceiling even now!! May he never stop doing what he does!!!
Claire McKeown
The Lowry, Salford
4 February 2001
