The Fire Station website announced this show: ”Step back in time to 1984 as Nik and the band hit the road celebrating 40 years since the release of Human Racing and The Riddle with both epic albums being played in their entirety! Nik Kershaw exploded onto the UK pop scene in 1984 as a solo artist. A string of global hit singles – including ‘Wouldn’t it Be Good’, ‘The Riddle’ and his biggest hit, ‘I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me’ – helped to propel him to 62 weeks on the UK Singles Chart through 1984 and 1985 – beating every other solo artist, together with performing at Live Aid.”
“After stepping out of the limelight to concentrate on writing and producing, Nik wrote Chesney Hawkes’s ‘The One And Only’ and has collaborated with Elton John (including writing and producing one of the songs on the Duets album), Sia, Gary Barlow and Bonnie Tyler , whilst continuing to release his own well-reviewed studio albums, featuring his distinctive voice and highly personal lyrics.”
Now it was actually in 1984 that I last saw Nik Kershaw at Newcastle City Hall. Nik was very busy during that year. I saw him at a massive Elton John concert at Wembley Stadium that summer, and on his winter tour, when he called at Newcastle City Hall. His backing band (who even had their own billing on the ticket!) were known as The Krew, and consisted of local Sunderland lad, and old friend, Keith Airey on guitar, along with Tim Moore, Mark Price, and Dennis Smith.
The 1984 tour was to promote the album The Riddle. The song “The Riddle” is quite a strangely structured, but also very catchy song, a great favourite of mine at the time, and remains so to this day. I remember the City Hall concert being packed and big singalongs. I also saw him, for the last time until recently at the massive Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium in 1985. Happy memories.
And so to the present day and The Fire Station concert. Nik Kershaw looked very smart and very much the same as I remember him, perhaps the hair is a little greyer, but the guy is still full of energy and delivered a magnificent performance which was in two parts. The first set focused on the album The Riddle. The second set focused on the album Human Racing.
Although many of the songs were lost in the depths of my memories somewhere, several were familiar with me. My favourite “The Riddle” still has its lovely melody complete with fascinating twists and turns. “Wouldn’t it Be Good” was well as good (pun intended) as ever, as was “I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me”. The guy still sounds great, and his backing band was excellent.
The encore finished with “The One and Only” which I had forgotten that Nik had written for Chesney Hawkes (I always thought that it was written by his father Chip Hawkes of the Tremelos). A great end to an impressive performance. The memories rolled back 40 years. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, particularly at my age.
Many thanks to Jackie for taking the photographs, to The Fire Station for another excellent night out and to Joanne for manipulating the site.
Setlist:
The Riddle Set: Roses; Know How; Wide Boy; City of Angels; Easy; Don Quixote; Wild Horses; You Might; Save the Whale; The Riddle.
Human Racing Set: Cloak and Dagger; Human Racing; Bogart; Dancing Girls; Shame on You; Gone to Pieces; Wouldn’t It Be Good; Faces; Drum Talk; I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
Encore: When a Heart Beats; The Sky’s the Limit; The One and Only.
“Near a tree by a river, There’s a hole in the ground, Where an old man of Aran, Goes around and around, And his mind is a beacon, In the veil of the night, For a strange kind of fashion, There’s a wrong and a right, But he’ll never, never fight over you” (The Riddle, Nik Kershaw, 1984).
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