Last Friday on the 19th of May I saw Paul Carrack play live in my old hometown Nijmegen. Mr. Carrack seemed a bit out of spirits, very little enthousiastic and his voice wasn’t as strong as I had hoped for. His timing wasn’t perfect and he carefully avoided the high notes. Paul Carrack’s always been a great singer and he deserves a lot of respect, for his work with the Mechanics as for his solo stuff.
Nevertheless, he treated the audience to some recent songs like ‘Bet Your Life’ and ‘Shame on You’, and to some classics like ‘How Long’, ‘Love Will Keep Us Alive’ and ‘Eyes Of Blue’. He even played the Mike & the Mechanics classics ‘The Living Years’ and ‘Over My Shoulder’. Last tune was a good sing along to end the show with. Considering Carrack only played for about 1 hour and 15 minutes, and ticket prices are not what they used to be, it wasn’t my best experience seeing the man in concert. But hey, what can one do? I suppose touring Europe at the age of 72 take it’s toll on almost every artist, even to the man with the golden voice.