The ‘Back to the Night’ tour
Joan Armatrading (guitar, vocals) / Jon Cole (guitar, vocals) / Julian Diggle (percussion, harmonica, vocals) / Greg Knowles (lead guitar, backing vocals) / Jamie Lane (drums, vocals) /Durban Laverde (bass) / Dag Small (keyboards)
The only female act on the entire weekend bill; good luck getting that one going nowadays. And she was another occupying a graveyard slot on the billing – around 12:00 noon on the last day.
Karl Dallas writing in the Melody Maker said of her performance: “Joan Armatrading opened and announced that she was going to sing some blues, and the response from the crowd was immediate. Blues and boogie go hand in hand, and you could feel the crowd visibly rising. Unfortunately, blues is about the least effective thing she does, but she didn’t lose them entirely, and by the time that she finished with ‘Back To The Night’ she had raised them from their somnolence.” Talk about being damned with faint praise!
Writing for New Musical Express, one of either Tony Tyler or Chris Salewicz, I really don’t know which, said “Joan Armatrading, who I miss completely, is reported to open Sunday stupendously. “ It’s not much, but clearly it supports the feeling that, actually, she was rather good.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we all know that she would go on to become quite a star but everybody has to start somewhere. I recall that she was a pleasant way to start the day’s proceedings. Her record company, A&M, had drafted in the 6-piece backing band The Movies to beef up her live performances, and they actually got their own record deal through this, so it was a symbiotic relationship.
No setlists are available for this gig but one presumes that she would have drawn material from her first two albums, ‘Whatever’s For Us’ and ‘Back To The Night’.
Setlist: unknown
Here’s what the official programme had to say about her…
Gigs'n'Stuff 