Get me to the church on time!

© Simon Poulter 2019

As I was compelled to mention in my recent post about Sarah-Jane Morris's John Martyn project, I hold a fascination - some might say obsession - for the meagre musical connections of the south-west London suburbs in which I grew up. This partly stems from the discovery that Martyn himself was born only a thirty minute walk from the New Malden house where I later sprang to life, a revelation akin to discovering royal blood in my veins.

That discovery gave no indication that there would be more intersections to come. The first - and clearly foremost - came when I met my other half and learned that she not only lived in New Malden (in a house more or less backing on to that in which my grandfather and his siblings were born), but also worked at my first junior school. Bizarrely, too, she grew up in south-east London, where I currently base myself. Then came the revelation that my local Greenwich MP, Matthew Pennycook, also hails from the area and even went to my secondary school, some years behind me, before going up to Oxford (a rare event for Beverley Boys, I can assure you). The next connection in this uncanny sequence, however, was another musical one: via an intimate basement gig one Saturday night in Tufnell Park, over there in that North London, my mate Sean introduced me to the music of singer-songwriter Peter Bruntnell. And, guess what? I discovered that Bruntnell was at Beverley too, albeit a few years ahead of me.

Readers, I will not bore you further (and again) with the other remarkable collection of rock connections to my home area (Clapton, Page, Beck, et al), because Bruntnell is one of two pressing local musical matters to address here. Once described by Rolling Stone, no less, as "one of England's best kept musical secrets", demonstrating customary American understanding of the United Kingdom construct, Bruntnell has, since 1995, delivered a stunning canon of Americana-tinged, bittersweet brilliance. And he's now added to it with a sumptuous new album, King Of Madrid. Incredibly, it's his 13th, which means that the previous 12 have probably passed under your radar over the last 25 years since he released his debut. But if that is so, then you will have missed out on a body of work redolent of one of my favourite periods of musical history, when the canyons of Los Angeles were a vital source of earnest musicianship and hippy ideals, and produced the likes of Jackson Brown, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons and more.

King Of Madrid continues in that rich Americana vein and should, with the right visibility elevate Bruntnell to an entirely different altitude, possessing the kind of hooks, lyrical richness, lusciously strummable guitar work and Bruntnell's gently urgent vocals that wouldn’t be out of place on anything emanating from Laurel Canyon in the late '60s. I’d even go as far as comparing Bruntnell with Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen, perhaps not for their denim earnestness, but more for the subtlety of lyrical observation attached to his rooted music. On this release, Bruntnell targets the utter mess Britain is right now, peaking with National Library taking shots at the legacy left behind by David Cameron (including soundbites from the former prime minister), while Memory Hood, London Hood and the album's title track, take clever potshots at the febrile state of the nation.

We stay in the KT postcodes, sort of, and add a very strong touch of Sheffield for the next musical revelation, also brought to me by the aforementioned Sean, whose appreciation of Americana goes unmatched. One spring Sunday morning, seven years ago, Sean sent me a link to a free stream of Richard Hawley's then new album, Standing At The Sky's Edge. Hawley had, like Bruntnell, hitherto passed me by, despite his early Britpop work in the Longpigs and later collaborations with fellow Sheffielder Jarvis Cocker. And yet here, on this particular lazy Sunday morning, lying in bed in my apartment in Paris, I became engulfed completely by Hawley's collection of songs about three families living in Skye Edge, a housing estate in Sheffield's Park Hill district, one of many Hawley has embraced in song. Sky's Edge subsequently turned out to be a new direction, leaving behind the gentle country croons of its predecessors and instead embracing a reverb and distortion-drenched set of psychedelic epics. I listened to nothing else for what seemed like weeks after hearing it. Two weeks after the awful Bataclan attack in Paris, Hawley was the first gig I went to, itself an emotional rollercoaster for everyone inside the Alhambra theatre, barely a fifteen-minute walk away from the terrorist atrocity in November 2015. Hawley's gentle humour and mellifluous songs were, that night, just what Paris needed. A musical arm around the shoulder. Soothing reassurance.

And so it is with a gentler context that the bequiffed and typically double denim-clad Hawley comes to a church in Kingston-upon-Thames, New Malden's 'parent' town, to launch his delicious new record, Further. Noting the "Holy! Holy! Holy!" banner behind him on the apse wall of St. John The Baptist Church (a change of venue from the All Saints Church, which was recently - and surreally - the location of a gig by Jack Bauer himself, Keifer Sutherland), Hawley is soon riffing in his dry South Yorkshire humour, suggesting "Hawley! Hawley! Hawley" as a more suitable slogan.

Even with one semi-accidental F-bomb, he is never disrespectful of the environment, making ample use of the ecclesiastic ambience to enhance the acoustic guitar work of Hawley and his ever-present sidekick Shez Sheridan, as they make their way through an eight-song set that includes new music such as the Beatle-esque Doors, the dreamily shimmering Emilina Says, Galley Girl and its tale of highwayman derring-do, and the utterly winsome My Little Treasures, a song which took Hawley 12 years to write, about two of his late father's drinking buddies. From previous albums Hawley and Sheridan combine wonderfully to produce all-acoustic versions of Sky's Edge and even the glitterball romance of Tonight The Streets Are Ours, returning after the briefest of discreet beer breaks to end with the absolutely mellifluent For Your Lover Give Some Time from the Truelove's Gutter album, a song that, via its bittersweet lyrics, shines the spotlight on Hawley's delicious barrtione.

The set is short and sweet, a promotional opportunity for Kingston's fine emporium Banquet Records as much as a Richard Hawley Gig, but in the church setting, before a largely white middle aged and middle class congregation - Kingston captured in its essence - Hawley wraps yet another soothing arm around the shoulder. The last time was in the tragic aftermath of Paris, almost four years ago. This time, we're in the innocent, perennially untroubling London suburbs, in a residential parish church. The circumstances and location couldn't be more contrasting.

Frexit, stage left

© Simon Poulter 2016

So that's it. Seventeen-and-a-half years after I moved to Amsterdam, and embarked on a journey that took me to California, back to the Netherlands and then, since New Year's Day 2011, Paris, I'm back "home". Yeah, London, baby!

Well, I say home, but it really is where the heart is. And mine has been enchanted by Amsterdam's canal-lined streets, the perma-sunshine of the Golden State, the quaint, rural Dutch village where I 'settled' for six years, and then on to Paris. Of course, I've never been that far from the old country: Amsterdam and Paris are barely an hour by plane, five hours by road, and with family and a Chelsea season ticket to return to, not to mention business commitments, it does sometimes feel like I've never been away. But in reality, there’s a big difference to actually living back here again and the frequent commando raids I’ve made over the last 17 years to stock up on Shreddies and deodorant, or to buy suits from Marks & Spencer that properly fit (France doesn’t do suits for someone of my…er…shape - more so short-arsed men who stay stick thin through chain-smoking and thimbles of weapons-grade coffee that renders them nervous energy-burning furnaces).

Returning to Britain after the better part of two decades as an ex-pat brings many new things to get one's head around. When I left in 1999 there was no broadband, no WiFi, and the Internet - which I accessed on a company-provided laptop - was connected to via a tectonically-slow dial-up connection. On top of that, everyone was running around like Chicken Licken predicting that the sky would fall in because of the Millennium Bug. This also reminds me that I left the UK in the 20th century and have now 'returned’ in the 21st. Of itself, this is not a particularly breathtaking fact - as it's been the 21st century everywhere else I've been - but it does shed daylight in on how Britain has changed.

Immigration may have been the extreme sunburn-sensitive topic that dominated the Brexit debate, but it has made for an enriching character shift to many British communities. There's not a café or coffee outlet in London now not exclusively staffed by eastern Europeans (and more power to them - at least they are happy to serve your cappuccino without giving off the sense of the job being beneath them...). A few Christmases ago I took a bus into Kingston-upon-Thames and was struck by the variety of accents and languages being spoken on the top deck. Here, in the area in which I was born and grew up in, were now conversations in Polish or Czech (working in an international community tunes the ears to foreign tongues), as well as Korean, the result of New Malden (my hometown) hosting Europe's largest Korean community, a legacy of Samsung basing its European HQ there a few years ago. And you know what? The Korean supermarkets and street signs, Polish delis, and Lithuanian-run tea shops have brought a new vibrancy to the area.

The other thing I've noticed is how risk-averse Britain has become and how bossy it is as a result. Such is the health and safety culture here that there is barely a trade not required to wear high-visibility attire (including, even, police horses). Viewed from space, I'm fairly sure that the United Kingdom shows up as a fluorescent yellow triangle in the North Sea. In France there is no such paranoia. In fact, health and safety just doesn’t exist. You can walk under construction cranes shifting heavy loads without so much as a “look up” sign to warn you, let alone a 100-metre safety perimeter and mandatory hard hat wearing. As with many things in France, workers are merely an inconvenience to be shrugged at in that inherently insouciant French manner.

Travelling by public transport in Britain is to be subjected to a never-ending babble of reminders and instructions. Actually, orders. Recently I was in a rush to catch the Heathrow Express into London, and I got barked at over the tannoy by the platform guard: “No need to run! Plenty of time!", in a voice not dissimilar to the schoolteacher on Pink Floyd's The Wall ("YOU! Yes, you laddie! Stand STILL!"). This was the same guard who’d shouted at everyone not to board the train until vital security checks were carried out, and then barked at everyone to board quickly. You can’t win.

Once on board a moving train, Bossy Britain subjects you to a running commentary, telling you which station you’ve just left, what station comes up next, what line you’re on, who runs that line, what terminus you’ll end up in. On the London Underground it’s even worse: “The next station is Bank.” “We are now at Bank.” “Mind the gap as you get off.” “Please allow people to get off before you get on.” “Move down inside the carriage please.” “Move RIGHT down inside the carriage please.” “Stand clear of the doors.” “The doors are closing - stand clear of the doors.” “The doors have now closed”. “The next station is Holborn”. I’m sure some public transport workers in Britain are failed wedding DJs - the type who just won’t shut up.

When I left the UK in 1999 I had a mobile phone that made calls and sent text messages. And that was it. Apple was regarded somewhat dismissively as a niche company with overpriced products designed for creative professionals and no one else. I used to drool over Apple Powerbooks in shop windows like Mike Myers drooling over that white Stratocaster in Wayne’s World. And then the original iMac came out, and all of a sudden the idea of an affordable and cool-looking computer at home seemed viable and attractive. I bought one in Amsterdam in 1999, commencing an addiction to the Apple brand as powerful and as financially destructive as an acute crystal-meth habit. Apple cleverly marketed the digital lifestyle, and I have enthusiastically bought into it.

While I'm trawling through the annals of an already-distancing past, let me also mention my football club. In 1999 Chelsea were still flirting with financial near-death, but since Glenn Hoddle had become manager in 1994, and players like Ruud Gullit, Gianfranco Zola, Gianluca Vialli and Frank Leboeuf had been added, the club’s stock had steadily risen.

© Simon Poulter 2016

By the time I set off for Holland, Vialli had replaced Gullit as player-manager, but they were still perennial sixth place contenders. Their 1995 run in the old Cup Winners’ Cup was their only foray into Europe since 1971. I made the decision to keep my season ticket when I moved abroad. Such was the growing popularity of the club, fuelled by the stars now playing in blue, seats for home games at Stamford Bridge were already becoming scarce. Even when I moved to California I decided not to give up the ticket, knowing that a three-year waiting list would be too painful to endure if I had to start all over again. In 2004 the Abramovich era began, bringing with it José Mourinho, and trophies and titles like I’d never seen in my lifetime. It’s going to be nice going to Stamford Bridge more often again, especially midweek games (I’ve only been able to attend one in 17 years), where the jeans-and-sweatshirt uniform of a Saturday afternoon matches is replaced by those who’ve just rushed from the office, wearing a suit and an overcoat, the Evening Standard stuffed in a pocket.

So what have I gained from these years abroad? It’s a chronic cliché to say that travel broadens the mind, but living abroad - especially on "the continent” - has highlighted just how much of an island nation Britain can be. Europeans are different, but not in a physical way. When I first moved to Amsterdam I seemed to be under the impression I was relocating to a developing country lacking supermarkets, flushing toilets or breakfast cereal. I was instantly wrong. The Netherlands is one of the smartest, modern countries in the world, full of people who learn languages in seconds and enjoy a sense of contentment known locally as “gezelligheid”. It’s an almost-impossible word to define, but imagine very tall, healthy-looking people, sitting outside a café with a glass of rosé on a warm summer’s evening, looking smug, and you’ve come close to understanding what gezelligheid means.

© Simon Poulter 2016

And, then, France (I'll skip my two years in the US - a nation you probably know of too well). The opportunity to live and work in Paris was the fulfilment of a romantic ideal I’d coveted over many years, the result of watching too many Alain Delon films and The Day Of The Jackal, and seeing Paris as somewhere stuck resolutely, defiantly, nobly in the 1960s. I dreamed of living in a traditional Paris apartment, like Inspector Clouseau, with a view of the Eiffel Tower from my window. I achieved that, and then some. And the fact is, Paris is still stuck in the 1960s: I recently watched The Day Of The Jackal again and, now familiar with many of the locations (the hotel at the film’s denouement is right opposite a regular meeting point for a friend of mine and I), I saw how the city really doesn’t look any different 45 years on. And I love it for it. When I moved there I wrote a love letter to it (A Paris Love Affair) on my old blog. That love hasn’t dimmed. Yesterday - my last morning as a Parisian - I went out for breakfast and walked part of the way back in brilliant blue-sky sunshine, soaking up the Haussmann architecture near the Sorbonne. A modern, progressive city but one which hasn’t lost touch with its aesthetic charm. Or its passion.

On this I’m conflicted about London. Yes, there’s plenty of ‘the old’ in London to remind you of its history, even its pre-Roman history, but there’s almost too much of the new. 17 years ago I would take the bus to work across Waterloo Bridge and look east to a skyline dominated by St. Paul’s Cathedral. Now, the skyline is dominated by vast monuments to glass and steel, an architect’s wet dream, in which they compete to out-design each other. Over the next few years, it is reported, there will be as many as 250 new skyscrapers going up in central London. On the one hand, it’s a sign of the city’s vibrancy as a place to do business, and even post-Brexit, an indication that things will be fine, after all. But on the other hand, it reminds me of just how architectural conservatism in Paris has ensured the city remains both liveable and effective, but also eye-wateringly attractive every time you step outside the front door.

When I moved to Paris I was warned by lazy British tabloid tropes that my life was going to be blighted by stereotypes. My day would be brought to a crawling pace by slow and indifferent waiters; strikes would impede any form of travel; and I would drown under an ocean of bureaucracy. Well, the last one proved to be fact. France appears to exist purely to provide employment for office workers processing pieces of paper. But the rest? Not really.

© Simon Poulter 2016

There hasn't, even, been much of the legendary French militancy, the spirit of the Bastille and rioting students at the Sorbonne in '68. Apart from aggressive taxi drivers (and outbreaks of riots this summer), I've seen little of this aspect of French expression. With one exception: being a part of the "unity" march on January 11 last year, in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo shootings, was one of the most profound experiences of my life, a tidal wave of more than a million and half people setting off from Place de la Republique. If only it had had the desired effect in warning off those who believe in the Kalashnikov and the suicide vest as the only means of making a statement. Ten months later, I was dealing with the news that two wonderful friends had been caught up in the attack on Le Bataclan. Thankfully, they got out safely. But this was an attack on the freedom you enjoy in Paris. Ultimately, it was an attack on a lifestyle I enjoyed more than anything else in Paris - the cafés and music venues. I won't dwell further on it - there'll be plenty of that from the media next month when the anniversary comes up - but the era of terrorism (including 9/11 - when I was living in California - and indeed July 7, 2005 in London), has become one of the darker undercurrents of the years I've been abroad.

Paris and London are comparable in size and, to some extent, economic influence over the rest of the nation. But while I am overwhelmingly excited to be back in London, there are many things I’ll miss from the last few years in the French capital. Firstly, the people. I’ve made lifelong friends there, but the fact that the city is only two hours away by Eurostar (well, 13 hours, given the number of breakdowns it experiences…) means they will never be far at all. But secondly, the way of living. Small things that make a big difference, like getting to see gigs by Robert Plant, the Stone Roses, Richard Hawley, Johnny Marr, Paul Weller and many others in small, intimate theatres where you’re only a few feet from the stage, as opposed to the cavernous venues these same acts would play on British tours (tip to self: stay tuned to the Paris gig listings, especially given how easy it is to get from London to Paris).

Then there’s the relative ease of getting about. Yes, Paris is still a choked madhouse of drivers riding their car horns, but that’s for those who still insist on driving. Two years ago I sold my car (which had been stuck in a garage, unused, for the previous two years). Owning a car in Paris is an utter waste of time and money. When public transport is subsidised, and your employer pays for your €70, five-zone monthly Navigo card (compare this to the £212 it costs you to travel the same distance each week in London), and there’s a Métro train every two minutes, there’s every incentive to get rid of the wheels. Getting used to this - and things like shopping every couple of days at the local supermarket rather loading up a car once a week at some giant out-of-town aircraft hangar - has brought an enjoyable simplicity to city living, one which I will replicate readily in London by living close to the centre and not going back to car ownership. That sense of simplicity is one of the many things I’ve acquired living abroad. I grew up in London’s suburbs, where car ownership is a near-necessity, but also a status symbol. In the days when a new number plate letter appeared on August 1, net curtains really would rustle avariciously when a shiny new motor appeared on the driveway across the road. I can do without that. Plus, thanks to being a frequent car hire patron over my years abroad, it’s nice to get an upgrade to something fancy on the few occasions I need to rent one.

17 years, out of almost 49, is a large chunk of my life. For example, I’ve spent more time, since passing my driving test, living in countries where you drive on the right as opposed to driving on the left. For 13 years my salary has been paid in Euros, and I’ve loved being able to visit friends in Germany or go on holiday to Italy without having to go near a bureau de change. These are, though, merely material differences.

Over 17 years I’ve seen two nephews grow from children into successful adults, one with a wife and daughter, the other with a self-made career as a personal trainer. A third came along in 2002 and is now a teenager. I’ve seen my brother and sister-in-law become grandparents, and witnessed, periodically, my own parents go from retirees in their late sixties to proud, but increasingly frail pensioners in their mid-eighties, my dad gradually (though slowly) succumbing to that cruellest thief of dignity, Alzheimer’s.

I’ve never been all that far away from my family over the last 17 years, but now I’m going to be even closer. My visits will not be dictated to by the need to get to an airport, phone calls won’t be scheduled around time zones, spare rooms won’t need to be reserved, and Hertz at Heathrow won’t be seeing so much of me. Everything I love about London will be a Tube ride’s away - the museums, the culture, Covent Garden, gigs, HMV in Oxford Street, the theatre, the diversity, an energy matched (or even eclipsed) only by New York. Over the last three years I’ve spent more time for business reasons in London, during which time I came to feel that there was something I was missing out on. Couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but it was there. One way or another I knew I’d be back, and through the good fortune of a job move, I am. I’m back. London, baby! Yeah.

The healing begins - Eagles Of Death Metal at the Olympia, Paris

© Simon Poulter 2016

It was hard to tell whether this was closure or continuement, but we knew why we were there, and they knew why we were there. And, to some extent, we knew why they were there, too. "It's much more than just a show," the Eagles Of Death Metal's Jesse Hughes had emotionally told CNN earlier in the day. "I always lose myself in the music, but I'm going to lose myself in the kids, we're going to get lost in each other."

And so we did. All of us. Not in doom or despair, but the revelry of rock and roll at its most powerful, at its most uplifting and at its most fun. Those might seem trite sentiments but, just like the EODM's music itself, there was nothing pretentious or leaden about their return to Paris last night. It was stripped-back boogie, crashing drums, power chords and fuzz, and charisma by the truckload.

Perhaps, given the security at the door - heavily armed police, first, and then three separate pat-downs before even reaching the Olympia's storied entranceway - 'fun' was not going to figure heavily on the agenda of this potentially sombre of occasions. But the mood was light, rather than grim, the police and their machine pistols stern but not intimidating. And once inside, even the sight of those limping on crutches, still bearing the physical scars of that night last November, provided no more than a reality check that this night was about getting on with what everyone had intended to enjoy in Le Bataclan three months ago.

The mental scars, of course, were less easy to recognise: some said that they had figited nervously with their watches, checking for the 40-minute mark that, three months ago, had changed their lives. A few approached the counsellors that had been brought in to ensure that comfort was there for those who needed it. But - and this will sound corny, and I make no apology if it does - the eventual appearance of the Eagles on stage brought about an overwhelming sense of mutual love and, yes, celebration to the room, even if the reason everyone was there was, without overstressing it, for awful reasons.

Before November 13 last year it's possible that you'd never heard of Eagles Of Death Metal. Despite being in existence, in one form, since 1998, you may have avoided them. You might have been mistaken into thinking they were, indeed, purveyors of death metal, and therefore not your thing. Or, you may have been baffled by the construct of Queens Of The Stone Age's Josh Homme forming a side project with Hughes in the arid heat of California's Palm Desert, Palm Springs' blistering next-door neighbour, just down the road from the Coachella Valley.

Now everyone knows who they are. No rock band in the world would wish to be known for their part in one of the most notorious acts of violence of our time. But it's because they were on stage that evening in the Bataclan, and because they witnessed the same horrors as many of those in the Olympia last night did, that what could have been a dangerously awkward and even premature reunion became such an utter triumph. In fact, it became more than just a show.

As the lights dimmed, it seemed an age before EODM emerged from the wings. I'm sure more than just me wondered whether they would come out at all. However, the warm-up act - the delightfully bluesy Austrian duo White Miles, who'd been the support at the Bataclan in November - had done their job perfectly, and set up the audience.

For the headline act to not appear would have been understandable, but enormously deflating, but we weren't to be disappointed: as Jacques Dutronc's Paris s’éveille played out over the PA, Eagles Of Death Metal took to the stage with a defiant - and clearly tearful - Hughes declaring "Bonsoir Paris, we’re ready for this!". Mostly, we were too.

As Hughes took in great lungfuls of air, there were a few nervous glances exchanged in the crowd. No great surprise, to be honest. By the evening's end, everyone would be joined in euphoric mass communion, one that had only a little to do with November 13, and was largely a celebration of why anyone would get in a band or go and see one to begin with.

© Simon Poulter 2016

They began with I Only Want You, the first track of their debut album, stopping after a minute or two for a moment of silence, a challenging task at the best of times inside a pumped up concert hall. It may have been spontaneous, it may have been not, but if it was meant to be a token reflection of the underlying reason for us all being there, it was momentary punctuation. This was, in the words of Hughes - in his guise as Southern baptist preacher with a guitar - all about putting trust "in the healing power of rock 'n' roll".

"We are having a good time tonight - amen!", he declared, adding "Ain't nobody going to stop us." Hell, yeah. They rattled through the songs - 23 in all - short, sweet, slabs of loud, grungy pop, the kind that Bowie and Bolan made good, even throwing in crowd-pleasing covers like Duran Duran's Save A Prayer. Hughes and Homme may be the focus of attention in EODM, but this is a band's band, all of its parts - the Billy Gibbons lookalike Dave Catching and Eden Galindo on guitars, bassist Matt McJunkins and second drummer Julian Dorio all colluding to create a frenetic two or three hours of foot-numbing fun.

There was precious little pathos, thankfully. The Eagles were there to finish the job that had been so abruptly halted in November. But there were, too, 'moments': a crocheted red-white-and-blue scarf, launched into the crowd by my friend Theresa, made it's way to the front of the crowd and then around Hughes' neck: "I want to identify the maker of that scarf, give them a big cup of cocoa and a big old hug after the show," he declared. Let's hope we can make that happen.

As they enterered the home straight, Hughes disappeared into the upper circle of the Olympia to embrace a wheelchair-bound survivor of the Bataclan. The band continued on stage, running out of songs and seemingly resorting to Catchling trying out some Jimmy Page-like slide riffs. No one minded.

The Olympia - one of the legendary Paris rock venues - was, for the evening, Hughes' own chapel. In television interviews he has allowed his emotions to run raw. For all his audacious shownmanship, Hughes has been seen to channel the entire band's emotion. And as frontman, he did again last night. "Let’s make a deal," he asked at one point. "This is an emotional moment for me so if I fuck this song up, ain’t no one going to get mad at me." They wouldn't. They couldn't. They didn't.

The crowd lapped up favourites like Cherry Cola, I Got a Feelin' (Just Nineteen) and Stuck In The Metal, their take on Stealer's Wheel's Stuck In The Middle With You. After an interval Hughes emerged with a custom-built guitar that had been crowd-funded in memory of the Bataclan victims. Emblazened in the French tricolour, Hughes - on his own - plucked out part of EODM's Bag O'Miracles before explaining that he'd injured a tendon in a finger, perhaps through pent-up stress. That stress became instantly released by him faithfully playing Brown Sugar unaccompanied by the band, not that anyone would notice, given the enthusiastic "woos!" from the crowd.

It was at that point that I realised - perhaps dimwittedly late in the process - that, in EODM, we had everything we'd ever enjoyed about the Rolling Stones themselves, the self-styled "greatest rock and roll band in the world": a unique frontman, outrageous guitar riffs, infectious boogie, total showmanship. If and when the Stones do pack it in, step forward their natural successor.

And at that point, it was possible to feel that the reason we were all there to begin with had disappeared into the background. Three months on, it wasn't too soon, or at least, by the show's end, it didn't feel so. But that's not for me to judge. I wasn't there on November 13. For those that were, I can only stand up and salute their consumate bravery for coming out to see the Eagles Of Death Metal again. And, I can only salute the Eagles Of Death Metal for coming back to Paris to play for them. I am amazed by those who were there last night, just as I have every inch of understanding and sympathy for those who chose not to be.

Healing doesn't come from instantaneous gratification, we know, but from this music fan, who has stood on the sidelines while people close to him have worked their way out of the tragedy, I can say that if anyone was looking for the healing power of rock'n'roll, at the Olympia in Paris last night, they would have found it. I know, I did.