It was sold – and sold out – as a standing-only show. Of course it was: the Fulford Arms is a nice real ale pub a little way out of the city centre with a capacity of maybe 90. But Wayne had other ideas. After about three songs and unaccustomed to playing, seated, on a stage less than a foot high, he decided having the front row towering over him and blocking everyone else’s view was a bit much, and asked we be seated. And so everyone sat down. And, for the most part, shut up. Such is the respect and love The Mission’s front man commands from his fans, even at this point in his career. That people mouth and sing along to the new songs as ardently as the old favourites despite the album’s official physical release date still being a few days away only further illustrates the point.
And, aside from a 15-minute interlude before the encore, the audience remained seated for the duration of his three-hour set. Yes, three hours.
During this time, Wayne played a large chunk of his new solo album, starting with its opening track, ‘Madam G’, along with Mission tracks from across the band’s 28-year career and a selection of far from obvious covers. The vast array of instrumentation – not to mention his characteristically affable and disarming between-song chat – meant that the set was widely varied on sound – from simple acoustic songs, through keyboard-led arrangements to full-band sounds courtesy of a sequencer. Consequently, the time flew.
While throwing in some obvious crowd-pleasers and hit singles (the simple piano-based rendition of ‘Butterfly on a Wheel’, ‘Hands Across the Ocean’ and a sprightly-sounding ‘Like A Child Again’, for example), it was pleasing to hear some less obvious album tracks and B-sides (‘Naked and Savage’ was truly mesmerising, ‘Bird of Passage’ and ‘Belief’ worked well, ‘Island in a Stream’ was powerful in its simplicity and a stripped-back ‘Crystal Ocean’ proved surprisingly effective), and different slants put on well-known tracks (‘Wasteland’ was subject to a serious overhaul and performed as a medley with Neil Young’s ‘Like a Hurricane’).
Hussey looked dapper, fit, healthy and really quite sober. Granted, he appeared on stage with a bottle of wine, two-thirds drunk, but he consumed remarkably little during the performance – which he performed without a set-list. The last time I saw him solo at Glasgow Barfly around 2003, he had to be helped down from the bar stool on stage and more or less carried through the crowd to the dressing room. No such trouble here: he’s mobile and agile, both physically and mentally, and what’s more, he had no shortage of surprises up his jacket sleeve: ‘House of the Rising Sun’ played on ukelele for instance. And then there was a particularly delicate rendition of All About Eve’s ‘Martha’s Harbour’, which was truly magnificent. Despite still shaking off a cold, and pulling away from the mic to cough on a fair few occasions, he’s also in fine voice, and certainly doesn’t hold back.
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Two and a half hours or so after Wayne took to the stage, he called an intermission, allowing for fag smoking, leg stretching and glass replenishing (admittedly, I moved to a standing position by the bar early on for fear my hips would fuse to my pelvis and my bladder would rupture... besides, it’s bloody boiling and the Timothy Taylor’s Landlord is going down nicely).
On reconvening (he doesn’t go anywhere, but is content to potter about on stage, sip some wine, etc.) the encore elongates as requests flood in and the ‘little bit’ of ‘Severina’ becomes the full song and we’re treated to a rendition of George Michael’s ‘Careless Whisper’ that does justice to the original. The show ultimately concludes with a strong rendition of ‘Wither on the Vine’ and we depart sated. No-one could possibly complain of being short-changed, but equally, no-one’s grousing that it was too much. Intimate shows such as this are rare, and yet there’s a lot to be said for them. Informal and fun as this one was, it was also rather special.
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