Terry Reid

I went to see Terry Reid at Manchester Academy 3 last night, taking the opportunity to see the legendary singer/songwriter on one of his rare trips to the UK (he lives in the US).

Although seemingly without regrets, Reid has a reputation an unlucky figure having turned down vocalists jobs with Led Zeppelin and latterly Deep Purple, CSNY recorded a version of Reid’s “Without Expression” for their multi platinum Déjà vu album but it’s inclusion on the album was vetoed by Stephen Stills.

The Manchester performance was idiosyncratic to say the least, he was so noticeably drunk that he was unable to play his guitar to any real effect and barely able to string a coherent sentence together causing a member of the audience to shout out “Oi, Terry are you taking the piss, I’m really dischuffed you can hardly stand you’re staggering all over the place”. The shouter was then promptly booed by the hard core Reid fans who had followed him up and down the country on his current tour. Reid came over as a good natured piss-head somewhere between the Fast Show’s rambling old barrister, Rowley Birkin and George Best circa his 1990 Wogan TV appearance.

His singing voice however sitting somewhere between Joe Coker, Rod Stewart in his prime and Paul Rodgers remained in great shape despite suffering from a sore throat that night although his choice of material was rather MOR as he crooned through covers of Waterloo Sunset, David Mann's In the wee small hours of the morning and Cole Porter’s Every time we say goodbye. I would have like to hear selections from his classic River and Seed of Memory albums.