Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

If Paradise is supposed to be nice, then for the audience who packed themselves into the Philharmonic Hall Music Room, the sound of Andy Fairweather Low performing the first of his two night run in the venue, whilst taking on the ensemble in the main hall who had filed in for a rendition of Tubular Bells, Paradise does not come close to describing the former leader of Amen Corner’s appeal, it is a dream of glory and delight wrapped in gentle expression and forthright commitment to the beauty of the song, praising to heaven humanity and the love of the artistic pursuit.

Emerging on stage, the sense of future and the weight of history he himself has written with style and an embrace of permanence, Mr. Fairweather Low initially sang the incredible hit that first projected his band into the wider conscious, If Paradise Is Half As Nice, on his own, the voice, the measure of the man, still holding the ideal of that late 60s classic with a firm grip of truth, subtly, and warmth.

As the Low Riders, Peter Cook, Ian Jennings, Nick Pentelow, and Henry Spinetti strode on stage, magic, a kind of majestic inevitability, enveloped the evening, a set of two halves, a set that was charged, not with exuberance and flash, but with a soul, with a gracious understanding; and as tracks such as Route 66, Spider Jiving, Hymn For My Soul, a medley of insanely cool guitar rhythms that included Tequila, Peter Gunn, the superb theme from Peter Gunn by Henry Mancini, and the Jerry Lordan written and made forever immortal by The Shadows, Apache, the elegance of It Hurts Me Too, Lay My Burden Down and Wide Eyed And Legless all came to pass, so the audience took their own version of paradise and found that it always contained the guitar, the sound, of Andy Fairweather Low as its herald.

For a man who has worked with Roger Waters, Eric Clapton, and Edie Brickell, who has walked more miles upon the Earth than many, the sense of comfortable ease he portrays when on stage with his own band is not only heartwarming, it is emotionally gratifying, and much must be paid in deference to the group of men on stage with him, who bought the most genuine of smiles to the Music Room in Liverpool.

If Paradise is half as nice, then forget paradise, living, existing, and being able to listen to the sound of as Andy Fairweather Low is a privilege that heaven cannot provide.

Ian D. Hall