RADIO BIRDMAN
Sunday, June 2 2002
@ The Metro Theatre, Sydney
Words and Pictures: JOHN McPHARLINFourth night in a row for me and for them but, as Mr Mojo Risin' once said, "This is the end, my friends". Following on from the previous night's monumental consolidation of the story so far in Adelaide, it would have been time for a bit of development and experimentation anyway, but the fact that this was the last show of the tour clearly also exerted a strong influence on everyone this evening.
Compared with that show in Adelaide, the band sounded tonight like they'd taken a half step back; not gone off the boil (or dropped their guard or come anywhere near to taking the foot off the pedal), but taken stock and regrouped (shit, how many metaphors have I just mashed together?). Perhaps, like the audience, they just wanted to savour each moment of what they must have known before they started was going to be a great show. This isn't to say that they'd slowed down, but the playing was a little less frenzied and more considered, as if they were determined to extract out of each song anything they thought they hadn't fully explored yet.
In particular the longer more meditative songs, which readily lend themselves to a bit of improvisation (e.g. "Man With Golden Helmet", "Dark Surprise" and "Descent Into The Maelstrom"), all had something extra tonight (extra as in comparison to what got onto the records a quarter of a century ago, but also in comparison to the rest of the tour). Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about some Pink Floyd forty minute space walk or any endless Grateful Dead noodling, but there were lots of added nuances, especially in the guitar playing and the interplay between the two guitars, but also via the keyboards (which also helped to expose and underline every conceivable trace of wounded melancholy behind "Love Kills"). It sounded like they'd reached the point where they were all very comfortable playing together (again).
Ron Keeley was at top of his game as well, so fired up that when he left the stage for the last time (after the second encore) he stopped at one of the microphones to assure everyone in no uncertain terms that, "We'll be back!". From the determined look on his face, he meant it. From the looks on the faces of the other band members throughout the show, it had been a pretty gratifying experience for one and all, so maybe there is cause for some restrained hope for the future.
If the band was happy with the evening's outcome, then so was the audience. I suppose that some in the crowd may have been seeing them for the first time this tour, or maybe for the first time ever, having failed to get into either of the two previous shows here at the Metro, but there were also plenty of familiar faces from those shows last week, unwilling to pass up the opportunity to get close to the magic one more time and presumably firm starters for any future tours, now that the band has proved so indisputably that it can live up to its legend and is still capable of turning out a quintessential rock'n'roll moment or two, hundreds of 'em in fact (like few other bands have ever been able to, before or since).
Sitting here typing this now, it's very simple to say that this band is "the business" and that they never should have broken up in the first place, but I think we all have some idea of the internal conflicts which have caused the wheels to fall off in the past. If they kept future reunions to short, sharp blitzkriegs like this and avoid spending endless days cloistered together in some new "van of hate", no matter how well upholstered, then maybe they could keep it going on an intermittent basis, saving their apparently boundless energy for use on further audiences, rather than turning it on each other.
While I am relieved, financially at least, that I didn't have to fork out for trips to Perth or New Zealand as well, I guess I'll always be left wondering where they might have taken things if the tour had gone on for a few shows longer. Of course, if the rumoured on again/off again (and now purportedly back on again) US tour ever happens...
9/10
