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Previews: Rod Stewart, David Knopfler and Elvis Presley

metromagazine
5/ 5/2005

Elvis-The concert

Arena, Sunday

WHEN I heard about Elvis - The Concert, my first thought was not another man going through the mid-life crisis unable to come to terms with the death of the King. What I didn't realise was that this concert has travelled the world.

This tour is not your average karaoke singer called Dave, who travels round the local pubs wearing a white lycra suit and a black wig. The production reunites former Elvis bandmates live on stage with a state of the art video-projected Elvis. Producers of the show have edited together a collection of Elvis' finest concert performances that exist on tape and removed nearly all sound from the footage except Elvis' vocals. Comments on past performances say the video projection of Elvis enables the audience to feel the real authenticity and electricity of the concert while feeling Elvis' presence.

Not a fan of Elvis myself, I can only imagine what the concert will be like. I envisage row upon row of middle-aged woman who have forever been in love with Elvis. Alongside these women they have their impersonating husbands in tow, the ones that really shouldn't be wearing white suits. White looks harsh on the fittest of people. But, each to their own.

Tracey Scott

David Knopfler

Life Cafe, Tuesday

DAVID Knopfler talks of fame and celebrity as "a Faustian deal". The music business is "the devil's courtyard" and when asked whether he could be lured back into that demonic place, Knopfler says he would recognise the "smell of sulphur" and back off.

Knopfler is a man who had a real choice as to whether to take the Satanic shilling. He said no to the millions, the platinum albums and the packed arenas, parting company with elder brother Mark and Dire Straits in 1980, before the band became a commercial leviathan.

Since that day, he has continued to make music, but has played only three gigs in his home country, all of them in London. So when he plays at the Life Café, Manchester, it will be the start of the 52-year-old songwriter's first UK tour since the days of Dire Straits.

Now living in rural Hampshire, Knopfler is about to release his ninth, and, he says, best solo album, Ship Of Dreams.

"Musically, I have not moved a billion miles away from where I started," he says.

"I founded the Straits in 1977 and have just carried on songwriting. I was a songwriter before that, and, in the Straits, really I became a strummer rather than a writer, because Mark was doing much of the writing. It became a rather frustrating process for me to not be composing. That was the main motivation for me to get out and get back to my own work.

"To do the rock 'n' roll thing in all its horrendous, Satanic glory is three wives, divorces, broken families, children you don't speak to, drugs, drink, early death. None of that stuff appealed to me. So, I'm on my first marriage and I was around until my son left home."

Asked about brother Mark, he says: "I have had no contact from him in a long, long time now."

David's music bears close comparison with Mark's rootsy, intelligent rock, and the similarity between their singing voices is positively spooky. Though David parted company with Straits while they were still a fairly lean rock band, they went on to become mega-selling fixtures on the arena circuit, 1985's epic Brothers In Arms album being used to convince the world of the joys of the new CD technology. Knopfler bridles at the suggestion that his involvement in the first three Dire Straits albums at least guarantees him some financial security.

"It helps a little bit. A lot less than people might suppose," he says.

"Two thirds of my income since I left has been generated by my own work. I was driving around in a 20-year-old Volvo for years.

"Don't make assumptions because you see the word Dire Straits that I am living some rich man's lifestyle. I don't."

Paul Taylor

Rod Stewart

Arena Saturday

BEAUTIFUL young women seem to be the first thing people think of when you mention Rod Stewart.

Rather than being a reference to the fact that he looks a bit girly sometimes, it's because in the last few years the 60-year-old's name has been seen almost weekly in tabloids and celebrity magazines chronicling the demise of his marriage to leggy blonde model thirtysomething Rachel Hunter and his relationship and engagement to Penny Lancaster - you've guessed it, a leggy blonde model thirtysomething.

But gravel-voiced Rod, whose own website features a picture of him adjusting his tie with the lower half of a sexy young thing in a rapturous posture behind him, is coming to Manchester to show us the other story of his life - with a performance of musical classics.

His first UK tour for three years will contain something for everyone, including classics from his 30-year back catalogue from Maggie May onwards.

It will also feature selections from his more recent covers of classic songs, which have included Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World, Blue Moon and, in a slightly quaint tribute to his British roots, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square. These will be part of the third album in his Great American Songbook series which has taken America by storm - the first two albums won Grammy nominations and sold more than 10million copies.

And Rod will surely be hoping his music will attract huge crowds to the arena - especially beautiful young women.

Sarah Warden