Simon Rushworth
Self Made Man returns to action this week after illness and we’re delighted to say he’s fit and well enough to check out his all-time faves UFO in Newcastle tonight.
In the meantime catch up with his latest musings here and remember to read our exclusive classic rock blog every week.
March 12,2012. A horrible day. Just like that that miserable day back in May 1974 in fact.
Monday was meant to be so good, a date that had been in my diary for months and an event I’d beenlooking forward to ever since it was announced.
And even the fact that it clashed with a football match I wanted to watch could not dampen by sense of anticipation at attending The Answer’s gig at the Carling Academy, an occasion enhanced by news that The Union were co-headlining.
I’d seen The Union supporting Whitesnake last year and was very impressed despite having little knowledge of their material. No mistakes this time, however, as I downloaded both their albums and was sufficiently impressed to feel only marginally less excited at the prospect of seeing them live as The Answer.
In the end, I missed them both through illness, only the second concert I’d ever been forced to miss a concert due to ill-health.
My first-ever concert was supposed to be Nazareth at Newcastle City Hall 37 years ago. Their hit singles Broken Down Angel and Bad, Bad Boy had got me into the Scottish rockers and my parents had bought me tickets to see them on their Razamanazz tour.
But I spent that night in bed with a temperature and instead two girls who lived close by were given the tickets.
Monday night, however, was worse, much worse because while I was definitely under the weather and on sick leave, I felt I was on the road to recovery.
I’d been in hospital the previous week running a worryingly high fever and basically feeling like death warmed up. And though I’d been allowed home before the weekend, I had to attend hospital on a daily basis to be fed anti-biotics through an intravenous drip _ and that’s not even mentioning the 30 odd tablets I was taking.
So even though I was improving by the day, I was a long way short of being fully fit. It wasn’t exactly a hard decision to allow the head to rule the heart. The mind was willing but sadly the flesh, oh so weak.
That’s the second time I have missed The Answer in my home city, having been on holiday the last time they were in town but at least I won’t have to wait another three decades for the chance to see them live.
Incredibly, that’s how long it took before I eventually saw Nazareth live when they were in Newcastle in early 2011 and I was glad to report that the years had not blunted Dan McCafferty’s incredible vocal delivery.
There was an amusing footnote to my absence from that 1974 gig. A couple of days later, the two girls who had taken my tickets came round to our house with a poster of the board and…….tickets to see bloody Kenny at the same venue a few weeks later.
Nazareth………Kenny? It’s a bit like comparing Picasso with Rolf Harris!
I told my Mum there was no way I wanted to see Kenny in concert but was told in no uncertain terms that it would be rude of me to decline the kind offer of tickets.
So reluctantly, very, very reluctantly, I had to go along with the two girls _ and about 1,000 other screaming girls _ to see a band sing about Fancy Pants and a dance called The Bump. A quite traumatic experience for an 11-year-old lad.
And the moral of the story? Illness really is bad for your health!
Ian Murtagh