Blondie

at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena with support from Johnny Marr

02/05/2022

I haven’t seen a show at the M&S Bank Arena for a good few years now due to Covid, so I’m buzzing to be covering tonight’s proceedings, ‘Blondie‘, supported by Johnny Marr, two of my all time favourite acts. The arena looks great and I have a floor seat, not too far away from the stage, boss!

I reviewed Johnny Marr whos supporting Blondie tonight, a few months back at his show at St George’s Hall in Blackburn, so I’ll try my best not to repeat myself, but what can be said about Mr Cool is that hasn’t already been said?

Johnny Marr_Credit: Billy Vitch

It can’t be too often that Johnny has played to someone else’s crowd as the opening act, but I spot a few people wearing JM t-shirts, and he soon captures the audience, people are up dancing, especially to his old Smiths songs, ‘Panic’, ‘This Charming Man‘, and ‘How Soon Is Now’, they all get a great response here, as do some of Johnny’s more recent tunes like, ‘Spirit Power Soul’  that is already a Marr classic, and he poses for the cameraman down at the front of the stage. He closes his set with ‘There Is A Light That Never Goes Out‘, everybody is singing to this one and Johnny leaves the stage thanking Blondie for inviting him on the tour.

So, onto our headliners then…

It might be said that Blondie are a band that everybody loves, or at least they’re a band that “nobody dislikes”, which Johnny recently said, it’s an amazing achievement when you think of it. Throughout their long career, the band mixed punk with pop and with rock and produced something beautiful, something edgy and something a bit gritty from New York’s Bowery district. 

Blondie_Credit: Billy Vitch

Tonight Debbie Harry rolled back the years with one hell of a show, she’s 76, but she looks as glamorous as ever with her now white hair and cool black shades. The band has a bit of a lineup change for this tour with guitarist and main songwriter Chris Stein unavailable due to poor health, for this tour, we get former Sex Pistol, Glen Matlock, on Bass duties and new guitarist Andee Blacksuger joins fellow guitarist Tommy Kessler and drummer Clem Burke, who like Harry, is a founding member of the band.

This is Blondie’s first U.K. tour in five years and tonight they play a set full of greatest hits that starts with their debut single, ‘X Offender‘, the band walk onto a piano intro and Debbie looks great with the wind machine blowing her hair, as do all the band who are wearing different coloured suits, DB wears a pink jacket. The band are taking us on a trip down memory lane, the graphics on the giant screen show 1960’s comic book, “wham bam” Pop Art images that later turn into 1980’s VHS style graphics and at the end of the show we get some contemporary exploding 3D glass heart animations.

This set really does contain some of the greatest pop singles of all time, so many, (the band play a long set tonight, 22 songs in all), that I can’t comment on all of them, so here I go with some of the highlights.

Blondie_Credit: Billy Vitch

For song 2 we get ‘Hanging on The Telephone‘ and everybody is standing up for the band now, nobody is sitting for this one. ‘Fade Away And Radiate‘ features a great guitar solo from Kessler and the song segues into ‘The Tide is High‘ with an amazing solo from Clem, he’s like three drummers in one, the crowd are all dancing and singing in the aisles now, the security guys trying to keep some kind of order, which is kind of funny I suppose.

For me, maybe the best song tonight is ‘Atomic‘, again we get some great guitar work from Blacksugar and Kessler, Debbie takes off her jacket to reveal a little black dress. ‘Shayla’ is a cool song but the room goes a little quiet now, but these VHS graphics behind the band really do create a cool vibe. Next up is ‘Union City Blue‘, who remembers that great video?, Blondie at the peak of their powers, and the band do the song justice here. ‘Rapture‘ is next, the backdrop is now some sexy red smoke, and Joanne, the “Uber-Blondie” fan next to me tells me that this is her favourite, indeed, she almost falls over dancing, everyone is enjoying this show tonight.

Then we get the big comeback single ‘Maria‘ and the audience joins in the choruses on this one “…you gotta see her” indeed, DH really needs to be seen, she’s still bopping and bouncing even on song number 15, at her age. The dancing moves up another level now with ‘Dreaming‘ and then we get the iconic, super disco hit ‘Heart Of Glass‘, Debbie thanks Clem for “drumming his ass off all night” at the end of this one.

That’s it, well, that’s it for a few minutes, the guys go off for a mini break but return for an encore and they close with ‘Call Me‘ and then ‘One Way Or Another‘, they get a standing ovation from everybody and all the players come to the front and join together in taking a bow.

 Blondie_Credit: Billy Vitch

The band and audience have been amazing tonight, as was Johnny earlier, the arena is a great place to watch these kind of shows and I want to thank them on behalf of the magazine for looking after us tonight, but also for the lights and the amazing sound.

If you can catch Blondie on this tour I’d urge you to do so, it might be one of the best shows that you’ll ever witness.

Review by Dave Clare

Photography by Billy Vitch

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