What: Prince’s Trust Rock Gala
Where: Royal Albert Hall
When: 17th November 2010

This was a gig I was looking forward to and with very good reason. Prince Charles’ charity for the young has traditionally drawn the best rock artists to perform and as the charity has grown up so have the artists. Therefore tonight’s artist list reads like a who’s who of rock aristocracy.

All the signs were therefore good for a great evening. Tonight’s house band included bass player Mark King of Level 42, Jamie Cullen on keyboards and musical director Midge Ure of Ultravox on guitar. They backed a large selection of artists including Phil Collins, Alison Moyet, Mike and the Mechanics, Paloma Faith, Eric Clapton and Queen. Sometimes the sum of the parts never adds up to the expectations, tonight was one of those nights.

The first issue that put a downer on the evening was the sound. The Royal Albert Hall is a wonderful venue but can occasionally be a problem in this respect. The bass in particular was an issue, instead of Mark King’s normally punchy clear sound, we had booming and muddy.

The second issue with the gig was the song selection. A night like tonight with a variety of artists will not normally draw people just for the song or two by their particular artist. They are normally coming for the overall entertainment. Whilst that entertainment may contain hearing an artist for the first time most people won’t be happy with an evening of unknown songs. That’s not to say the songs are unknown, just unknown to most attending. An example of this effect was Eric Clapton’s set. Eric performed Rockin’ Chair, JJ Cale’s Same Old Blues, Little Queen of Spades, and Crossroads. Most of the audience wouldn’t have known any of these songs and could well have felt like my girlfriend as she decided it was time for a comfort break muttering “I can’t cope with this pretentious, self indulgent crap” as she left!

It wasn’t all like that; Status Quo opened the evening and got the crowd going with some of their hits. Phil Collins did a selection of 60s songs including “Can’t hurry love”.

Paloma Faith had been helped by the Prince’s Trust when she was younger and it was good to see her tonight and her performance was excellent.

The highlight of the evening though was when Queen took the stage. It started slowly with Roger Taylor singing “These are the days of our lives” followed by a guitar virtuoso by Brian May on “Last Horizon”. What followed was tonight’s best track when Keane’s Tom Chaplin joined Queen and performed “Hard Times”. Tom’s voice suited the song very well and he performed it perfectly. Freddie would have been proud.

Most of the artists returned to the stage to assist Queen in “We will rock you”. The crowd may have been subdued by some of tonight’s track choices but this one left them cheering and calling for more. We even had Prince Charles and Camilla valiantly trying to join the audience as they all clapped along. I think they’ve been practising the royal wave far more but it was good to see them trying.

The Prince’s Trust Rock Gala will be broadcast on Sunday 19th December 2010 on Sky 3D.

Some of my photos from this evening’s gig can be found on the photographs page and you can see Keane’s Tom do “Hard Times” on my youtube page