Lionel Richie's music spans the decades, and the audience that packed into Franklin's Gardens in Northampton for the first night of his All The Hits tour last night (Friday) reflected as much, writes Sammy Jones.
There are pre-teen youngsters, and then there are those older than the man they have come to adore. And he'll be 70 next year.
Spirits are high when Lionel greets his audience with The Commodores classic Easy, sliding into a set littered with winning moments.
It's not like easy like Sunday morning, actually, but a lively Friday night, and Lionel, decked out in white from head to foot, ups the pace with Running With the Night.
He moves around the stage like a new artist with a newfound lust for performing, never mind the near half-century he has spent entertaining us.
“Tonight, before the sun goes down, we are going to have the best time ever,” he promises.
Penny Lover and You Are connect with his audience so well that this 17,000 strong stadium feels more like an audience of 1700 with a distinctly intimate feel.
He is generous too – his band of brilliant players don't just deliver the expected, they are allowed to share the stage with their boss, each finding moments to shine.
“This next song did one of three things,” he tells us, “It got you engaged, got you married, or it got your arse in a whole load of trouble!”
With that, Three Times A Lady is cut loose, with Lionel returning to the piano.
Later, after a swift-jacket change, the multi Grammy-award winner introduces Endless Love by inviting the ladies to sing with him: “Every lady in the house should be Diana Ross,” he says, “You be Diana, and I'll be me.'
Between-song banter only adds to the warmth of this special night, and although Lionel acknowledged a vocal croak (“It's the first night of the tour and it took me a minute to show up – my voice was on vacation,” he says), stage-front we are too busy soaking in the classic tracks, and the sterling digital backdrop to nit-pick.
And besides, from where we were he sounded as smooth as ever.
Hello receives one of the biggest cheers of the evening, as the set takes us from smoochy numbers through soulful hits and into funked-up fabulousness.
'I'm having the best time of my life up here,' he beams, and while that might prove a little bit hard to believe, he is clearly having plenty of fun.
He pays tribute to some of those voices that once entertained from the same stages: “I cannot believe that all these wonderful voices are silent forever – I want to acknowledge them, because I miss them,” he says, before soberly name-checking Earth Wind & Fire's Maurice White, B.B. King, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, Natalie Williams, George Michael and Prince.
We Are The World, the charity-single USA for Africa, written by Lionel with Michael Jackson, follows.
It's a sterling show which did exactly as it said on the event t-shirt, and delivered all the hits.
Lionel wows one last time with All Night Long and departs the stage, leaving behind him an audience who would have happily continued the party into the early hours.
The stuff of legend.
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