Meltdown: David Bowie, Royal Festival Hall, London
Thin White Duke scores a lowly success
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Your support makes all the difference.The line-up at this year's Meltdown may have been less than spectacular but this performance from its curator arrives with an acute air of anticipation. From the second David Bowie appears on stage, the crowd are on their feet and straining to get a better look. Some rush to the front, steam-rolling security guards in their haste to get closer to their hero.
Our host calls to mind a panto villain as he stands, sleek-hipped and elegant, in a white shirt and dark waistcoat (the villain theme continues with the band – the bass player, Gail-Ann Dorsey, arrives dressed as a highwayman, hat and all). He may have cast aside the make-up and moon boots of his Seventies incarnations but there's still something curiously otherworldly about Bowie. Maybe it's because at 55, he still doesn't look a day over 40. Three decades on his voice, at once steely and soft, still has the capacity to make your stomach lurch with excitement. He's in a relaxed and chatty mood tonight. When a joke falls flat – something about committing alcoholic suicide in Berlin – he shrugs his shoulders and lets out a belly laugh.
In the first half of the show Bowie performs Low in its entirety, the experimental 1977 album which, he reminds us, was initially rejected by his record company. More fool them. It's an exceptional album, featuring classics such as "Sound and Vision", "Breaking Glass", "Be My Wife" and "Always Crashing In The Same Car"; it still sounds as vital and fresh as it did 25 years ago.
Low is a treat but you have to question Bowie's decision in the second half to play his latest album, Heathen, from start to finish. While it is his best album in years, it's not yet a classic and a couple of tracks would have been best left out, most notably "Slip Away", a dire power ballad that wouldn't be out of place at a Celine Dion gig, and "A Better Future", which contains some of the most toe-curling lyrics since Ronan Keating last put pen to paper.
The other songs stand up, however. "I've Been Waiting For You", a cover of the Neil Young song, is riotous fun, while "Everyone Says Hi", a touching ode to his son Joe, brings a lump to the throat. "I Would Be Your Slave" is the closest Bowie gets to the experimentalism of Low, with its metronomic drum pattern and electronic twitching.
Happily, Bowie saves the best till last. For the encore we are treated to a raucous version of "White Light/ White Heat" with the help of the Dandy Warhols, then "Fame" and "Ziggy Stardust". By the time he reaches 1997's "I'm Afraid of Americans", he has gone way past curfew.
It's not as if anyone's going to pull the plug on him, though. This is David Bowie, after all.
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