Serving as a warm up for their appearance at the Steelhouse Festival, the Graham Bonnet Band kicked off a short run of dates at the mighty KK’s Steel Mill in Wolverhampton. We haven’t seen much of Graham over the last few years and tonight was mostly devoted to celebrating the landmark Down to Earth album, with a few other songs including a couple from latest album Day Out In Nowhere, released back in May on the Frontiers label.
Opening the show were Welsh melodic rockers Beth Blade & The Beautiful Disasters who delivered a high energy set of old school up-tempo rockers, big on fist pumping hooks and powerful choruses. From the audience reaction they have clearly built up a decent following and Beth worked hard to get the crowd warmed up and into the mood. Latest album Mythos, Confession, Tragedies & Love has been getting some strong reviews and songs such as ‘Tonight I’m With You’ and ‘Sin Eater’ saw Beth’s voice soaring over the backdrop of pounding beats and driving riffs.
The dramatic opening to ‘Eyes of the World’ provided the stirring introduction to welcome Graham Bonnet to the stage, sporting his trademark white shirt and dark shades. Flanked by Brazilian guitar maestro Conrado Pesinato and bassist Beth Ami-Heavenstone, Graham soon had the audience singing along. With Down to Earth making up the first part of the show, both ‘All Night Long’ and ‘Since You’ve Been Gone’ were played early in the set and they are songs that simply never get tired no matter how many times you hear them. Graham also said a few kind words about Mr. Blackmore for giving him his big break before he left the stage and Conrado led the rest of the band into a cover of Deep Purple’s ‘Lazy’.
After the opening Rainbow fest it was time to dig deeper into Graham’s back catalogue with his huge solo hit ‘Night Games’ and a couple of new songs along with ‘Desert Song’ and ‘Assault Attack’ from his short tenure with MSG. Graham briefly touched on his infamous time as front man for MSG and how it all went wrong; before telling the crowd how he was glad to have had the chance to perform with Michael in recent times. Assault Attack is something of a favourite here at Midlands Rocks and hearing anything from that album live is always welcome. It was back to Rainbow for the encore, ‘Lost In Hollywood’ closing out the evening with Graham’s trademark screams ringing loud and clear.
Setlist:
Eyes of the World
All Night Long
Love’s No Friend
Makin’ Love
Since You Been Gone
Lazy
Imposter
S.O.S.
Desert Song
Night Games
Drum Solo
Uncle John
Assault Attack
Encore:
Lost in Hollywood
