I SAID when I last reviewed bluesman John Mayall for this newspaper in 1995 that the then 61-year-old looked good for a few more years of on-stage productivity, and so it has proved. Even at 73, he both looked and sounded pretty well, and if not quit
e as vocally agile as in his prime, his keyboard and harmonica playing were as strong as ever.
Mayall was a key figure in the so-called British blues boom of the mid-1960s, and if many of the musicians who passed through his Bluesbreakers – Eric Clapton, Mick Taylor, Jack Bruce, Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie included – went on to greater fame than their leader, he has maintained both his allegiance to the blues and the high standards of his band.
And undiluted blues it was. Apart from California, a song from The Turning Point album in his looser and more jazzy period of the late 1960s, this was a resolutely hardcore selection of mainly up-tempo blues, based predominantly in the classic repertoire.
He included only one new song from his forthcoming album, a slightly nondescript affair entitled Number's Up. Otherwise, it was a set rich in classic songs from his back catalogue, including three dips into the Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton of 1966 – his own Have You Heard, Freddie King's Hideaway and Mose Allison's Parchman Farm. Songs by Albert King and Sonny Boy Williamson also featured, as did Peter Green's All Your Loving, although we had to wait until the encore for the customary JB Lenoir song. His new band was tight and accomplished, and guitarist Rocky Athas caught the ear as a real blues player, expressive and fluent but never flashy for the sake of it.
