Well, that was good! Another day, another gig and tonight’s gig was Nils Lofgren. I know an awful lot of you will be saying, “Nils who?”, unless you are a fan of Neil Young (Lofgren played on After The Goldrush and came up with the Polka bit for Southern Man) and has been in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band for a trifling 30 years. The boy can play.
Of course, he’s not a boy, even though he does sing a tune called The sun hasn’t set on this boy yet, and he’s a long, long way from the sunset. It’s just him and a genius multi-instrumentalist called Greg Valotta who not only plays an absurd number of instruments, he also tap dances, notably to I Came To Dance near the end of the show. Lofgren introduced him as the band.
This was my third Lofgren gig and he just gets better. 63 now, his voice is still strong and clear, he hasn’t dropped an octave and his guitar playing? Well, you can see why The Boss signed him up. Two hours has never gone quicker in the beautiful St Georges Hall where, I am ashamed to admit, I have never been before. The acoustics are good, the atmosphere to die for. I suppose most of the tunes will be only known by the connoisseur but I am sure you are familiar with Springsteen’s Because the night and a surely Shine Silently, Lofgren’s world class anthem which he left, quite rightly, to the very end.
He also stays behind to sign stuff for his fans, for as long as they have something to sign. He’s been touring the UK for 40 years now and is grateful we keep showing up, and why wouldn’t we? This is a great front man and a great side man and all in all a great musician and singer.
He also sang his classic Keith Don’t Go during the set to which I can only add, Nils don’t go.
