IT'S always a good sign when you look at your watch thinking 10 minutes have elapsed and discover that an hour has whizzed by.
So it was in the second half here as the Hollies concluded the deal that kept their word. They'd promised at the start of the night that they'd play all their hits. If they omitted any, I didn't notice.
Having long ago lost two of their defining voices, Allan Clarke and Graham Nash, they've really no right to sound this good. As well as grafting in singers and players over the years to cover Clarke and Nash's parts with professional aplomb, however, they still have two crucial Hollies onboard, the ridiculously youthful singer-guitarist Tony Hicks and Bobby Elliott, whose magnificently stylish, precise, lightly propellant drumming is as much a Hollies "voice" as the voices themselves.
Lead singer Peter Howarth handled the big ballads – Springsteen's Sandy, He Ain't Heavy, Can't Tell the Bottom from the Top – with terrific assurance and Hicks, guitarist Steve Lauri and former Mud bassist Ray Stiles presented a voices and guitars medley including Here I Go Again that, free of Ian Parker's occasionally overbearing keyboards, was pure, classic Hollies. Hicks even brought out his banjo for a re-energised Stop Stop Stop and delivered the instantly recognisable guitar line that saw The Air That I Breathe swell to one more glorious piece of pop majesty.
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