Music review: Barry Manilow, Hydro, Glasgow

Barry Manilow PIC: Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

Barry Manilow and Curtis Stigers, Hydro, Glasgow ****

Barry Manilow likes to shake his stuff with the best of them. For some years now, his intro music has been a curveball megamix of Underworld and Fatboy Slim rave faves. But essentially a Manilow extravaganza is a trip back to the Seventies, a time when melody was king. Presumably this is what he hears in the music of his special guest Curtis Stigers, though Stigers’ wide-ranging set encompassed works by Gershwin, Nick Lowe, gospel blues standard John the Revelator and his own Nineties power ballads given a jazz quartet treatment.

Stigers might have the blues but Manilow in his late 70s has now acquired a gruffer vocal tone of his own which agrees with his old school material, from the Vegas pzazz of the opening It’s A Miracle to the lovely weathered nostalgia of Stay.

There was not an ounce of excess fat on Manilow or his utterly pro show, a slick non-stop cavalcade of hits which featured the fastest costume changes in showbiz yet felt unhurried, which allowed for regional variations (telling a delighted audience that "you put a tilt in my kilt”) and some nostalgic indulgence with a lovely story about his grandfather's glowing support, which squeezed in some deeper cuts, including the Ian Hunter song Ships, and some time-honoured impish audience banter during Weekend in New England.

Along with his impeccable band, Manilow was as committed to the ultimate cheese of Bermuda Triangle and a suitably feathered Copacabana as to the overwrought dramatic balladry of I Made It Through the Rain and I Write the Songs, the peerless Mandy and the Chopin-inspired classic Could It Be Magic. Mindful of his Russian Jewish heritage, he gave Let Freedom Ring a Ukrainian spin and, at the last gasp, was joined by a gospel choir for a reprise of It's a Miracle.