At 14, Rewind’s as good as ever

2023 Rewind South
Temple Island Meadows
Saturday and Sunday, August 19 and 20

ORGANISERS of Rewind claim that their Eighties and Nineties summer festival circuit is now the world’s biggest.

Looking across the vast fields of Temple Island Meadows with hardly a patch of grass visible, it was hard to quibble.

Rewind South is the Henley event in the festival’s three-venue UK annual season. (There’s even a Rewind Festival in Dubai, which debuted this year.)

The public appetite for pop acts from 30-plus years ago to revive their catalogues live on stage is hardly in decline.

The festival is a well-oiled machine. On both the Saturday and Sunday of this year’s jamboree, eight hours of back-to-back entertainment on the main stage was handled with precision.

You never felt like the schedule was dragging. The Rewind All Star Band provided note-perfect musical arrangements for most of the acts. They are undisputed troupers.

All this makes the Saturday headline appearance of Erasure frontman Andy Bell even more disappointing.

While the band of session musicians held their composure, Bell’s stumbling and out-of-tune renditions of Erasure’s magnificent songbook was more like a bad karaoke night. The booing spoke for itself.

Let’s hope this was just a blip. Festival organisers don’t need reminding how far punters travel for the event nor the amount of moolah they hand over to expect to see and hear a professional performance.

Contrast this with Sunday’s rousing party from headliners Squeeze. Glenn Tilbrook’s brilliant guitar work and Stephen Large’s keyboards were a joy to behold. This is a band for listeners and the audience was captivated.

Who can ignore those incisive lyrics and expert musicianship? There’s Cool for Cats, Up the Junction and Slap and Tickle and all that energy and insistence of Annie Get Your Gun. Wonderful.

On Saturday, Nik Kershaw cranked out the era-defining I Won’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me and The Riddle. He is a reliable pair of hands who always takes the festival to the next level.

ABC made a welcome return, Martin Fry sporting his signature gold jacket. The heartfelt teenage romance anthem All of My Heart was juxtaposed with the pounding disco hit The Look of Love, all delivered with the sincerity of a 1982 Top of the Pops appearance.

Nick Heyward was on lightning form, loving every minute of being on stage. Haircut 100’s Fantastic Day is a showstopper and performed live is as vivid today as it was all those years ago.

Ali Campbell left in 2008 but that doesn’t stop pop-reggae troupe UB40 putting on a stunning spectacle. Red Red Wine and Can’t Help Falling in Love were played to perfection.

Alison Wheeler was on top form with her reconstructed version of The Beautiful South, now simply branded The South. A Perfect 10, you might say.

While Tony Hadley’s leg was in brace, his voice was in fine fettle on Sunday. Good luck to anyone who thought they might get to muscle their way to the front barrier once he started belting out Spandau Ballet’s hits. This was a tour-de-force.

Marc Almond’s stage act just gets better every year. Tainted Love was truly iconic (the word not used lightly). Soft Cell’s plaintive Say Hello, Wave Goodbye was almost as enduring and the field was alive with a crowd singalong.

Big Country proved their legacy with an extraordinary high-energy set with Fields of Fire and In a Big Country.

China Crisis delivered a sublime afternoon set with the yearning chords of Wishful Thinking resonating around the grounds.

Rewind would not be complete without Heaven 17’s Temptation, one of the greatest tracks of the early Eighties. Those unrelenting scaling chords never tire. And what a delight to have Toyah return with her post-punk anthems I Want To Be Free and It’s a Mystery. She is never out of the limelight and understandably so.

If early Nineties rock quickly got subsumed by the Britpop movement, one track clearly stands out. The Farm’s Altogether Now is a barnstormer and it brought the house down.

Peter Cox and Richard Drummie proved that they still have what it takes. Their mid-Atlantic rock style is imbued in the classic Go West tracks Call Me and King of Wishful Thinking.

Despite Saturday’s snafu, Rewind South goes from strength to strength.

Don’t be fooled by the cries of “It’s not as good as it used to be” after 14 years. It is — and let’s hope it’s around for many more years to come.

Martin Dew