Gig Reviews: The Incompatible John Otway And Wild Willy Barrett Tour @ West End Centre (30th September 2009)

by Gary Smith

John Otway, a punk poet with 2 hits in the past 33 years, first started out with Wild Willy Barrett, a folk musician, back in 1976. They have had many ups and downs and disagreements which have caused them to split their partnerships and reform on several occasions.

This has been the first time in many years now that they have played alongside each other, and is a rare treat for dedicated fans of either musician.

John's unique style of punk poetry combined with Willy's fantastic musical talents works very well. They opened their show with a couple of acoustic numbers and then riskily played the only hit they had together as the 3rd song.

'Cor Baby, That's Really Free', the hit they had in 1977 went down a treat, especially when the solos came up which Willy played with the distortion through the wheelie bin!

They found that this would be difficult to follow, so then played one of the slowest numbers they had so they can pick up the crowd again, which also went down surprisingly well.

Willy is a fantastic guitarist, violinist, bagpipe player and stick musician also, whereas John is known for his poor vocal and guitar talents - yet one of the best theramin players known to man! He also braved the circuit by bringing out a violin himself, which is also a rare trick for his performances.

The overall mood of the show was loved by all, and was a laugh-a-minute concert.

Both John and Willy have different concepts of performing, with Willys style of playing for the love of it, and Johns idea of being a popstar (or rockstar depending on the current mood). This accounted for John finishing the set by calling the last song, and a split second before playing, Willy announced two more, just so John can run off stage and get his encore he dreams for and Willy did not have to succumb to that treatment he despises!

They went out with a bang by playing 'Geneva', the song that caused them to split the first time around, thanks to John creating it into the showmanship that he dreamed of without the consultancy between the duo, yet Willy desires this song to be a nice number that play together with beautiful melodies and lyrics. Willy stunned the crowd during a solo by pulling out a saw and running it straight through the guitar (which the sound of that stayed in tune and in the right key) and then creating a couple of beats with a hammer going through the middle whilst still playing the song in its entirety!

After the show, we were able to have a small chat to John, while Willy was busy clearing up, and he spoke to us about his upcoming book next year, which has not been publically announced as yet. This will have the follow up subtitle "Rock And Rolls Greatest Failure Part 2", after the initial subtitle on his first book, "Cor Baby, That's Really Me", published in 1988 (before hit number 2!)

John planned for his book to be called "Rock And Rolls Greatest Success" after completing his World Tour, but unfortunately that had to be cancelled due to lack of interest, which disappointed many fans who were lined up to fly 'Ot-Air' and go around the world on a 3 month tour.

John also spoke to us on his time on 'Never Mind The Buzzcocks', an what it was like being in the line-up, and then being a contestant, to which Mark Lamarr, the host of the show, said off-stage "Was it genius, or was it genius?" that John had been the only person ever to be a contestant after being in the line-up!

He also told of us his most cherished moment, standing in a pub in his hometown, knowing that he was at number 9 in the charts before they announced, and the pub was filled with people he knew that were itching for him to be in the top 10, and the feeling he got when they announced his chart position, and he was standing on a barrel with the whole pub cheering for him.

We thank John for his time, and will hope that we can catch up again in the future. We would also like to see much more of Wild Willy!