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Rod Stewart in Tenerife – review
By Joe | May 18, 2009
What’s going on in Tenerife! We might be woefully short of tourists at the moment, but it seems that all the celebs are taking advantage of the quietness to visit our shores at the same time. Or maybe there’s a celeb party going on that only those with a spread in Hello magazine know about. Stuff ‘em. I didn’t want to go anyway.
Jenny Bond has just been. Daniel Craig is currently here. Sam Worthington, Gemma Atherton and some of the cast of Clash of the Titans are all drinking our beer (but not Liam Neeson or Ralph Fiennes – they won’t be coming to film any of their scenes here). And then there’s Rod.
Last year’s fiasco with the organising of the Elton John concert left many people worrying if Saturday night’s Rod Stewart concert in Tenerife would turn out to be the same shambolic jamboree. The organisers promised not. They assured the island that they’d employ more vigilance in actually staffing the entry points with real people instead of monkeys this time. They’d made the decision that it would be wise to let 15,000 punters in gradually rather than all at one time. And check their tickets so they don’t all stand in the same spot. And they agreed that pretty little signs pointing people where to go would be quite a neat idea. So did they deliver? And did Rod for that matter?
Firstly, the organisation. We got our first sniff of how “things were going to be different this time” at Checkpoint Charlie One. Despite packing enough bocadillos to kill a crowd of gluttons and enough beer to drown a rugby team, it had all been in vain. ‘No drinks or food allowed’ we were told. “Bring back the disorganised chaos of last year,” rang the disgruntled chants. But we did what every law-abiding Brit would do. Along with hundreds of other dismayed attendees, downed half of it in a makeshift kerbside bar and smuggled the rest in. It would have been good to have let people know on the back of the tickets or via media ads that food and drink wasn’t going to be allowed. Denying people even a bottle of water in a hot climate such as Tenerife is a little draconian to say the least.
The rest of the organisation was outstanding though, from the Wally Trolley chugging people up and down from the car park to the first barriers, to the size of the entry points. Last year you almost had to slip in one-by-one sideways, this year you could have driven a flotilla of beer lorries through the space. (Note to self – bring beer lorry for Beyonce concert).
There were very few queues, except for the usual portaloo posse. Even the bars weren’t mobbed, which was a good thing seeing as our secret stash soon ran dry. There were even guys wandering around distributing Heineken from a mobile pump, albeit at a price of €4 per beer. All-in-all the organisation this time was outstanding, so big thumbs up to the Canaries Live for listening to all the moans last time. And an even bigger thumbs up for getting acts such as Rodders to our shores in the first place. Perhaps you could also work on a few acts that don’t fall into the Rock ‘n’ Wrinkly category as well?
Back to the mullet-man himself.
Scheduled to appear at 9, the venue was looking mighty empty a few minutes before kick-off. Crowd size was estimated at anywhere between 6,000 to 10,000. The organisers claim 15,000 but I suspect they were seeing double.
Having perched ourselves high on ‘The Hill’, as soon as Rodders croaked out the first notes of Some Guys Have all the Luck, along with most of the other cheap seatsters we realised that we weren’t those lucky guys. We’d made a fundamental schoolboy error. We were too damn far away to hear much. It was like being sat in a traffic jam listening to the car in front’s music system, with the windows up. So, along with most of the other high hill dwellers, we shuffled our blankets and contraband picnic closer to the action. It was only after this mass migration south did the venue look anywhere near busy.
Rod continued to crack out hit after hit, pausing to rest after seven songs with a sit-down on a stool to sing Downtown Train. Well, he is 64 after all. Compared to Elton who stayed on stage for the whole 2 hours, Rod was on and off like strobe light, changing outfits and I suspect having a bit of a lie down.
He’s not a talker, Rod, much like Elton. The only real interaction he had with the crowd was when he told us he was having a 10-minute break and when he booted a dozen or so footballs into the crowd. Mainly to the high-spenders at the front though. No balls for the cheapsters, but I guess Rod ain’t no Ronaldo, and even he would have been stretched to fire a free-kick 50 or 60 yards.
After a quick encore of Sailing, he was off without a beg your leave, police lights twinkling off towards La Caleta leaving more than a few people dissatisfied with the ending. Was it something we said?
It was a great concert though, around two hours of Rodderick hits and some good showmanship from his three dancers and musicians. How sexy is a female saxophone player? I want one.
As I stood on The Hill, the lights of La Caleta and Costa Adeje flickering in the distance, watching a world legend singing and strutting on a purple-lit stage, I felt a strange sense of reassurance, a feeling that we weren’t completely cut off from the real world, that we were now somehow included and connected to the bright lights and glamour of the fame and pop-dom that we read about so much in the UK press. For one night at least, living in Tenerife felt almost like living in the real world.
Well done Sun Live Canarias.
Topics: General musings, Inane rants, Tenerife, Writing Clips | 11 Comments »
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