Bryan Adams – Waking Up The World Tour – 1992

July 14th 1992 – Ipswich Town Football Club

Supported by: Squeeze, Little Angels, Extreme

This was a really exciting gig….no, not because “that song” had been number 1 for 16 weeks for Bryan Adams the year before, but because I was actually there as much to see Little Angels and Extreme as I was to see Bryan Adams.

Can you count it as a new ground if you haven’t yet seen a football game at it? It was a lovely day in Ipswich and I remember as we drove up to the ground thinking what a great place Ipswich seemed and what a nice location for a football ground!

What’s more, you din’t get many tour T-Shirts that had “Ipswich” on the back of them, next to Wembley and Cardiff too!

We had seats about half way up the main stand, so the stage was over to our right, which was a great view and actually, something that happened later in the gig would mean we would have a good view of that too….

Squeeze

Now Squeeze were at a funny time in their career, the band line up had been through many incarnations. Currently, Jools Holland, Andy Metcalfe and Paul Carrack were no longer in the band, in fact it was really back to the two found members, Chris Difford (guitar, vocals, lyrics), and Glenn Tilbrook (vocals, guitar, music) and I’m not sure who the others were on the day.

I can’t find a record of the track listing for the day, but remember being pleased they played “Up The Junction”, “Cool For Cats”and “Take Me I’m Yours”, all great songs and well performed. A pretty good opening to the day.

Little Angels

Really keen to see Little Angels again, we last saw them supporting Cinderella at De Montfort Hall when they lit up the room.

They were once again on top form, belting out the hits. They didn’t have long as second on the bill, so the run through of classics finished off with a superb cover version of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” let a great impression on a rock focused crowd. It was great to see the crowd singing along, so they had already won over the audience from their previous releases.

Set List

• She’s a Little Angel
• Young Gods (Stand Up, Stand Up)
• Kickin’ Up Dust
• Don’t Pray for Me
• Too Much Too Young
• Radical Your Lover
• Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who cover)

Extreme

I was really looking forward to Extreme as well. They had already given us two fantastic albums in “Extreme” (1989) and “Pornograffitti” (1990) and had an extremely (ahem) successful UK tour the year before.

This was a classic band line up: Gary Cherone – lead vocals, Paul Geary – drums, percussion, Nuno Bettencourt – lead and rhythm guitars, keyboards, backing vocals, Pat Badger – bass, backing vocals

Gary Cherone was such a powerful singer and Nuno Bettencourt was superb guitar player. It was powerful rock music and possibly as hard as you can get and still retain a pop tune element to the music. It was really a breath of fresh air at the time, showing that melodies can sit in harmony with heavy rock music.

Big hair, big noise, tremendously big egos, these were a modern day Kiss, and, in my opinion, with a lot of tuneful rock songs.

Nuno Bettencourt loved to do twiddly stuff on guitar and both Gary and Nuno enjoyed strutting around the stage. It was a great spectacle and a massive danger it could blow away the on coming Bryan Adams…….

They even gave a quick taster of a new song off the album that would be “III Sides To Every Story”, in “Rest in Peace. This album would be my all time favourite Extreme album as it was a whole story through the album and had such a mix of styles to it.

Set List

• It’s a Monster
• When I’m President
• Play With Me
• Pornograffitti
• Suzi (Wants Her All Day What?)
• Rest in Peace
• Flesh ‘n’ Blood
• More Than Words
• Hole Hearted
• Decadence Dance
• Kid Ego
• Help! (The Beatles cover)
• Get the Funk Out

Bryan Adams

How do you follow that then! Three great acts had given the crowd an absolute treat today. As the sun was starting to go down, we just had the main act yet to come on, who was just a Canadian guitarist who had sung a number one for 16 weeks we dare not say (as you can’t get the tune out of your head), oh and had 6 hit albums and countless single……..he’s got a chance of following that!

Where do you start with such a big catalogue of songs, “House Arrest” apparently……”Well there’s gonna be a party, gonna make some noise….”

Great start and everyone has suddenly forgotten what’s gone before and ready for Bryan! Straight into “Kids Wanna Rock”, we’re suddenly dancing in the stand and pee’d off we couldn’t get standing tickets now!

The hits kept coming and the dancing kept on and on. It was clear we would lose our voices even at this early stage (truth be told, I hadn’t saved much anyway from singing to Little Angels!)

Bryan Adams doesn’t always get good press for his albums, but if you try one album, start with “Reckless”. This was my first hearing of him and “Heaven”, “Run To You” and “Summer of ’69” are quite rightly classics forever. His live show is phenomenal, there is no reliance on heavy stage stuff to take you away from him, what you see is what you get, just the music and the band are enough for the show to succeed.

I suppose it had to clam down a bit through the middle section with “Heaven” and “Lonely Nights” before THAT SONG , “(Everything I Do) I Do It for You – cue cigarette lighters (we still weren’t ready for mobile phones back in 1992). It sounded so much more powerful live, but then it had by now been over played on the radio!

The album “Waking Up The Neighbours”, although I bought it, had passed me by as quite weak song-wise, but again, live the sound was so much more lively than it seemed on record.

Back to some more upbeat numbers, “Run To You” and “Somebody”, then a couple of songs later, he had gone! Where had that hour and a half gone, brilliant.

There was a few minutes delay and then there was some screaming from down in front of us (remember the stage was to our right0, which sort of didn’t make sense and then as more of the crowd realised what was happening, they were turning around and scrambling around. In a way it was for a second or two a bit scary as it didn’t make sense, but then you realised a new smaller stage of instruments (a small drum kit) had sprung up toward the middle and side of the stadium……Bryan was going to come and sing some songs in front of us!!!!

It was only a couple of songs, but he was a lot nearer than on the main stage and a brilliant atmosphere as many people at ground level who hadn’t really had a great view up until now, suddenly got their own little concert.

Back to the main stage to complete an encore and the crowd left totally happy. I must admit until I started to remind myself of this concert, I had forgotten what a wonderful experience it had been. One of the best gigs for all round band selection and standard of play……brilliant!

Set List

• House Arrest
• Kids Wanna Rock
• All I Want Is You
• Hey Honey – I’m Packin’ You In!
• Can’t Stop This Thing We Started
• Is Your Mama Gonna Miss Ya?
• Cuts Like a Knife
• It’s Only Love
• Touch the Hand
• Heaven
• Lonely Nights
• (Everything I Do) I Do It for You
• Run to You
• Somebody
• When the Night Comes (Joe Cocker cover)
• There Will Never Be Another Tonight
  B-Stage
• C’mon Everybody (Eddie Cochran cover)
• She’s Only Happy When She’s Dancin’
  Back to Main Stage
• Encore: Summer of ’69, Diana, One Night Love Affair