Greg Lake Newcastle Mayfair 1981
The Mayfair was packed for this concert, and quite right too, as Greg had assembled a band of rock heavyweights for his first solo tour. The Greg Lake Band line-up for this 1981 outing was Greg on bass and vocals, special guest guitar ace Gary Moore, Tristram Margetts (from the very under-rated and too often forgotten Spontaneous Combustion) on bass, Tommy Eyre (ex-Joe Cocker and the Grease Band, and Alex Harvey band) on keyboards, and Ted McKenna (ex-SAHB, and Rory Gallagher) on drums. The set consisted of a mix of new songs, drawn from Greg’s first solo album which had just been released, and older ELP and King Crimson classics. Gary Moore played the excellent Parisienne Walkways, with its tremendous soaring guitar, and almost blew his band leader off the stage. But Gregg has a set of classic rock songs to draw from. Lucky Man is one of my favourite ELP tracks, and I was pleased to hear Greg sing it that night. It was also great to see them play tracks from the first, excellent King Crimson album. Epitaph is a particular favourite of mine, and 21st Century Schizoid Man was dark and loud, vibrating through the ballroom. The two Hammersmith Odeon gigs were recorded for a live album. The setlist for the Mayfair gig will have been something like: Fanfare for the Common Man / Karn Evil 9; Nuclear Attack; The Lie; Retribution Drive; Lucky Man; Parisienne Walkways; You Really Got a Hold on Me (a cover of the Smokey Robinson song); Love You Too Much; 21st Century Schizoid Man; Epitaph; The Court of the Crimson King; C’est la vie. I would have sworn that they also played I Believe in Father Christmas, but I’ve searched the internet and everything I have found suggests that my memory is playing tricks again, and that it didn’t feature in the set during the tour. Support came from pop-rock band Voyager who had a minor hit with their debut single, “Halfway Hotel”, which reached No. 33 in the UK Singles Chart in 1979.
15 Sep
Vintagerock's Weblog. 
Posted by dawn on September 15, 2013 at 3:30 pm
I remember this gig being on at the Mayfair but did not go cannot remember why, one third of the fab ELP each musical geniuses in they own right.
Posted by babayaga321 on October 24, 2013 at 7:25 am
Reblogged this on DIFFERENT WORLDS and commented:
I saw Greg and Gary at the Royal Court in Liverpool during the same tour… got some photos of the gig, not very good, but a couple of them are viewable! 🙂
Posted by Zoltán Csillag on August 1, 2015 at 12:31 pm
Hello,
Thank you for this concert review!
It is really surprised me that you’ve mentioned the song “Epitaph”, as I’ve never heard about that the band played it in their set. It would be great to get confirmations from others, who also attended some of the UK dates in 1981.
I’ve thought the “C’est La Vie” was played only in the USA/Canada instead of “Parisienne Walkways”….
Other interesting additinioanl info, that one of the audience recordings (27th November) including the song “Nut Rocker” as a final encore. 🙂
That was also something I’ve never heard about, since I’m doing our worldwide Gary Moore website at http://www.garymoorefc.com
Cheers,
Zoli
The Lord Of The Strings – Worldwide Gary Moore Fan Community
http://www.garymoorefc.com/lots
Posted by vintagerock on August 2, 2015 at 8:38 am
To be honest I can’t be sure that they played “Epitaph”. In my mind they did, but my memory plays tricks after all this time. I’ve checked published setlists and can’t find any other record of them playing the song on the tour, so you could well be right
Best wishes Peter