RUFUS WAINWRIGHT REVIEW AT HAMPTON COURT PALACE

Last night I found myself in the unusual position of not having the children for the night. They had gone to their father’s house to be with him for his birthday. So, I accepted a very last minute invitation to go and see Rufus Wainwright perform a solo “Up Close And Personal” show at Hampton Court Palace. One of the most beautiful settings for a concert imaginable:

For those of you that don’t know who he is, he’s a 34 year old singer-songwriter who was brought up in Montreal (where Arcade Fire come from) by his mother. He got into opera from an early age and so has a very unusual singing style and a very rich and diverse range of sound. I like his music and his voice, I own his acclaimed 2004 release “Want Two”, so it was amazing to see him in such an intimate, open air venue.

He is very, very funny. “Never being in the right place at the right time is one of the secrets of my success” he said in a recent interview. He is a massive gay icon and extremely talented. Because he had nobody with him, he kept humming when his band should have been performing an instrumental. He’s great to watch because he was very relaxed and kept messing up songs, apologising and starting again – it didn’t seem remotely unprofessional, infact, quite the reverse.

His suit!! OMG, I’ve never seen anything like it – he looked like something out of a Dr Seuss book:

No doubt there will be a few of you who simply want to know what he talked about during his performance – here are some of his more memorable quotes from the evening:-

He walked on. We all clapped. He played the piano and sang and when he stood to play the guitar he commented that he had a sense when he walked on stage of being about to be “beheaded” (like some of Henry’s wives were). “But I’m a good queen” he noted, setting the camp tone for the evening. He had been given a tour of the palace earlier in the day and talked about some of the things he had learnt. He said he was a “palace hopper” having just come from one in Germany and that he loved the Elizabethans, or “Henrietans”, whatever they’re called. He commented on how ugly Henry VIII and his daughter were and that it was a very good thing that “that house had finally ended”.

At the end of another song he told us how difficult the song had been to play because there had been a bug on one of the keys and because he was a “bugatarian” he didn’t want to hurt it.

He was very funny when he talked about Martha, his sister. He said she hadn’t shown him her album cover for ages and when he finally saw her photo with her gorgeous legs in the air he said they were now having a “leg off – that it had become “all about the fucking legs”.

He had to stop in the middle of several songs because he needed a burp. Can you believe it? I have never seen anyone get away with that sort of performance before. He apologised but explained that he’d had a huge bit of poached salmon before coming on stage…he said just before my favourite song and one of his encore songs “I’d better not fuck this one up” and then sang “Hallelujah” hauntingly beautifully (otherwise known as the Shrek song).

He took the piss out of the audience – quite rightly I think. The tickets are phenomenally expensive (£75.00 each) and therefore a certain type of person might choose to see him there. It’s quite corporate. At one point he said “everybody sing along with me except the people in the blankets” – there was literally a line of people with maroon blankets on their lap, looking like geriatrics.

A very, very good evening. I wonder what he thought of it. Anyway, I’m very excited to hear that he’s been working with Neil Tennant of The Pet Shop Boys. I used to work with him, back in the day.