December ,10th 2022.
Most of the country was focused on the World Cup quarter-final between England and France (the only football action that counted that day, in my opinion, was my sorry lot drawing at home to Cardiff, but I digress), but in one corner of Wolverhampton, history was being made.
On a backstreet a mile or so from the city centre sits KK’s Steel Mill. I’ll declare an interest here: I spend a lot of time there and consider the guys there as mates, but it is a special venue.
I was one of the packed crowd that night as Magnum finished their “The Monster Roars” tour in the only place they really could.
I’ll declare an interest here, too. It was the second time I’d seen them that year, and Magnum are—and still are—one of my favourite bands.
How you’d used to look forward to January because there would always be a new Magnum record, either a live one or a studio album. 2022 had seen “The Monster Roars” arrive, and the previous year had seen “Here Comes the Rain”.
This album arrives a year to the day since Tony Clarkin, the genius (word deliberate) behind these songs, passed away.
The show featured turned out to be the last one they ever played.
We didn’t know it then, but it makes the last couple of lines of my review that night especially poignant in retrospect: “‘We’ll keep this going as long as we can,’ says [singer Bob] Catley, ‘as long as we can do it well.’ Given what had been seen tonight, then that might mean another 50 years.”
Listening to it now, just over two years later, it oddly sounds even better.
There was always something about the band that sounded epic and yet accessible. No one ever quite sounded like them.
Beginning with “Days of No Trust”—written in the 1980s but still prescient—the 90 minutes here is a study in excellence.
They had been celebrating their half-century, and there were songs from 11 of their 22 (as it was then) albums. Barely a misstep throughout “Lost On The Road to Eternity,” and if the title track of “…Roars” was a beautiful slow burn, then it speaks to the skill that was always on display.
Keyboardist Rick Benton was at the centre of everything that night. He was particularly good on “Archway of Tears,” and they could be heavier than you ever thought, too—”Dance of the Black Tattoo” underlines that.
Make no mistake about it, either; the band knew how to enjoy themselves on stage. “The Day After the Night Before” is as ebullient as any hard rocker, and “Rockin’ Chair” is as wonderful now as it was then, when it was the song that made the 15-year-old me a lifelong fan in 1990.
They followed that with proof that they could pace a show as well as anyone. “All England’s Eyes” and the ever-raucous “Vigilante” end the main set.
They returned—of course—for the 50th-anniversary performance of “Kingdom of Madness,” which ended up being a real highlight—and a singalong “On a Storyteller’s Night” before a quite magnificent rendition of “Sacred Hour”.
To think that this was the last note Magnum ever played onstage is quite something, because they sounded so good.
And what of the man himself? Tony Clarkin was always content away from the limelight, it seemed, yet he was second to none as a songwriter and likewise a guitar player.
Magnum have released many live albums over the years, because of everything it represents “Live At KK’s Steel Mill” is the best—for everything it represents and for what it means to me personally it’s not getting a mark out of ten.
Instead, let the lasting sound of Bob Catley, one of the best and most individual frontmen there is, singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” drift into the ether, then think of the spontaneous chant of “Tony, Tony” that happens seconds before.
He deserved it. This is a fitting epitaph to one of the greatest ever.
