Doing it by rote, Cliff Richard returns

LONDON (Hollywood Reporter) – It seemed like a good idea to catch Britain's evergreen pop star Cliff Richard as he kicked off his big 50th anniversary reunion tour with his original band the Shadows, who went separate ways 20 years ago. But as Simone Signoret famously said, nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
I was a kid in England when Richard was among the crop of embarrassing British singers trying their best to emulate Elvis, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and the rest. With names like Billy Fury, Marty Wilde and Vince Eager, they gyrated onto the BBC with lame cover versions of U.S. hits and rinky-dink originals from London's fiercely anti rock Tin Pan Alley.
Richard and the Shadows at least wrote their own material, but hearing it all repeated with soulless efficiency in their O2 Arena concert Monday brought back those dog days when Elvis looked so far away and the Beatles, Kinks and Stones hadn't arrived yet.
Extremely well preserved physically, Richard and the two leading Shadows, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch, looked immaculate in their polished attire and did their unctuous best to please, but resembled the resident Stepford Band in the way they performed.
Richard sings in tune but with no character in his voice, and the songs are trite and repetitive, lacking wit, emotion or passion. The guitar players delivered their narcoleptic chords while taking two somnolent steps forward, two steps back.
They played all the hits that have long pleased their fans in the U.K., Australia and Europe but almost never in the United States, and the sold out auditorium was filled with glad smiling people.
It's odd that the crowd at the Led Zeppelin reunion looked pretty much the same, all white hair and wrinkly, but were so very, very change.

The Shadows at the 02 arena and Cliff Richard

No one goes to a Cliff Richard show expecting to be confronted by hint of mortality. And yet there was no mistaking the subtext of the posters dotted around the 02 arena that announced the 68 year old singer’s reunion tour with The Shadows. “Reunited for the very last time!” they trumpeted.
Speaking in a current interview, Sir Cliff ventured that “all we have to do now is try and stay alive”. He was referring to the possibility of future reunions with his old backing band although at times during this three hour gig, you felt it would be no mean feat if they made it to the intermission.
But the audience gave more cause for concern. “Please sit down you’ll only get tired,” implored Sir Cliff, as the opening chords of We Say Yeah prompted several hundred fans to their feet.
Exciting? Well, this being a concert by Cliff Richard and not, say, Metallica, you adjusted your definitions of such words accordingly.
The “violent hip swinging exhibitionism” against which the New Musical Express once rail has been replaced by a gaudy fuschia jacket and, on Do You Want To Dance?, outbreaks of random leg-wobbling. For all of that, however, there were brief moments Dynamite, the nocturnal tomcat rattle of Move It – where the God-fearing, abstemious star momentarily took leave of himself and succumbed to the earthier impulses that, presumably, made him want to be a pop idol in the first place.
On High Class Baby he was almost believable rejecting the advances of the song’s posh protagonist in favour of rock’n’roll. Almost, but not quite.
However much he enjoyed the opporitunity to prove that he could cut it as a rock’n’roll singer, Sir Cliff’s soft vanilla tones seemed more suited to bucolic postwar pop postcards such as Summer Holiday and Living Doll.
Judging from the gusto with which the throng sang along, it was this Cliff Richard that most of his fans had come to see, blithely synching with Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch on their trademark triangular dance.
While singer and band were on stage together, the bonhomie was unmistakable. However, for the brief period which saw The Shadows fire off a mixture of their own hits and a brace of lesser-known album tracks, they sounded like a band with a point to prove.
FBI and Greatful Land, in particular, evinced a space-age modernity that defied the passing of the years. At a stroke, you understood why they inspired guitarists such as Jimmy Page and Brian May to learn their instruments in the first place.
For most of those present, scholarly admiration of The Shadows’ collective chops couldn’t have been further from the point. This was an altogether more celebratory occasion. Indeed, the ease with which these old chums occupied the same stage made you wonder why they had allowed 24 years to pass since their last tour together.
Without a hint of irony, an encore of The Young Ones saw Sir Cliff trilling, “the best time is to sing while we’re young”. Should they leave it this long again, he’ll be 92. This may indeed be the last time, then but in a month that has just seen 92 year old Dame Vera Lynn scale the charts, who would bet against us reconvening here in 2022?

Sir Cliff Richard, Piers Morgan loses tennis match to veteran

Spare a thought for TV's Piers Morgan. He was thrashed on the tennis court by 69 year old Sir Cliff Richard as they filmed for Saturday's ITV1 interview in Barbados.
Sir Cliff whispers: "I beat him. He turned to the camera and said he couldn't believe he'd just been beaten by someone 25 years older than him." Ouch.

RICHARD SHOCKED BY YOUNG FOLLOWING

Veteran singer SIR CLIFF RICHARD is stunned when young people buy tickets for his live gigs he can't understand why they would need to look him perform.The Devil Woman singer has currently reunited with his pair The Shadows for a set of gigs, more than 40 years after they split. The 68 year old has enjoyed six decades of pop success, but he's shocked he's still attracting new audiences, because he doesn't think he's "hip" enough. Richard says, "Every now and then on a tour you'll see in amongst the crowd... and you'll see people, (aged) maybe 25 or 30. You can see that they're a younger element and how they would even know about us, I don't know, because, you know, radio is not too rock and roll frankly anymore... There seems to be a kind of ageism thing and we're not considered 'hip' or 'in' and so I don't know how those young folks could ever possibly want to even come."

Cliff Richard feted in ‘tír na n-óg’ at start of 50th anniversary tour

LEGENDARY entertainer Cliff Richard, looking relaxed and willing to give an impromptu bar of a song, was feted in Killarney last night.
The 68-year-old, who has been rehearsing at the INEC, Killarney, for his 50th anniversary tour with his band The Shadows was accorded a civic reception by the local town council. Pencil slim, fit and relaxed, he said he was enjoying his first visit to the tourist haven. "I’ve been to Dublin many times and have visited Daniel O’Donnell up in Donegal and am surprised that I’ve never visited such a beautiful place as Killarney before," said a smiling Richard, dressed in denim jeans and casual striped jacket. Deputy mayor Michael Courtney struck an apt note when told the remarkably youthful 50s icon Killarney was sometimes known as "tir na n-óg", or land of eternal youth. Richard, who posed for photographs and signed autographs for councillors and anyone that approached him, also endeared himself to the local tidy towns committee and hard-pressed tourism industry. "We’ve been working hard at rehearsals, but I’ve been into the town a couple of times. It looked brilliant, like it had been swept every day," he remarked. Now living in Portugal, he and the band members – Brian Bennett, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch – are savouring one of their now infrequent reunions. The opening concert of the world tour will be in the INEC, on Saturday night. This will be followed by performances in Dublin, Belfast and several cities in Britain. They will then move to New Zealand, Australia and South Africa before finishing at the end of March. At the civic reception, Richard signed the Killarney distinguished visitors’ book. He was also presented with a tie emblazoned with the Killarney crest and a pen made of arbutus wood from the Killarney lakeshore.

Cliff Richard and The Shadows, Reunited

In the recent hubbub over the Beatles, the reunion of Cliff and the Shadows may have been overlooked, contempt representing an even more venerable anniversary of 50 years since their first chart appearance.
It's a valedictory affair, the impending arena tour representing their last appearances together so these revisitings of their finest moments are the final studio recordings of an notable alliance, best captured in an exuberant "Do You Wanna Dance" and a rustic "Bachelor Boy". As you'd expect from rockers pushing 70, it's a sedate affair: there's no curled lip delinquency about "Move It", which has lost its youthful snarl but gained a verse in the intervening years. Hank Marvin's orderly picking, however, has lost none of its sparkle, recalling the work of James Burton which divine this most influential of guitarists. Coincidentally, Burton's old boss Ricky Nelson is the closest equivalence to Cliff's clean-cut charm on "Travelling Light" and "Living Doll", while less well-known songs such as "On the Beach" and "I Could Easily Fall" are (with hindsight) reminiscent of early Beatles album tracks, suggesting the Fab Four's subverter impact was built on similar foundations to their most imposing predecessors. Finally, though, it's a soft-centred souvenir.
Download this: 'Bachelor Boy', 'Do You Wanna Dance'

Cliff Richard: The Shadows sell out Perth gig

There are plenty of passionate Cliff Richard fans in this town, with the musical legend's Burswood Dome concert alongside The Shadows sold out.
Fans have been starved of the chance to see the band live since 1961, resulting in unprecedented demand.
Today, a second concert was announced. The band will be playing again on Sunday February 7.
Legendary guitarist Hank Marvin, who plays in The Shadows, lives a mostly quiet beingness in East Perth, but will certainly bust out some hot tunes during the tour.
It is 50 years since Cliff Richard and The Shadows got together. This Australian tour, billed as their Final Reunion, will bring them back to Oz for the first time since 1961.
Promoter Paul Dainty said there had been "unprecedented need for tickets for this tour. Cliff Richard and the Shadows have not been to Australia since 1961 so it's been a long wait to look this legendary band".
Tickets for the Sunday February 7 show go on sale on September 17, from midday.