Behind blue eyes

It may only have been a couple of weeks ago - and it was - that we bade farewell to the last football season with the somewhat anti-climactic final of Euro 2016, but even at the indecent hour of 5am this morning it felt like the new one was already underway.

Of course, the 2016-17 season proper doesn't start for another couple of weeks (Scotland, the Football League, Community Shield, et al, with the Premier League on August 13), but the intensity of this morning's/last night's apparent friendly in California between Chelsea and Liverpool provided a more revealing insight into what we can expect from Antonio Conte, in particular, and indeed Jürgen Klopp in his first full season at Anfield.

Chelsea's pre-season PR machine has certainly been keen to show off Conte's high-tempo, intensive training techniques, with videos and press images of players working on fitness and body strength with positively medieval-looking giant elastic bands, medicine balls and other gizmos that those in the know claim to be highly innovative.

Last week's friendlies in Austria were more boot camps than anything serious, a first opportunity for the Italian to run the rule over most of his squad (some who'd been in teams progressing late into Euro 2016 were excused to finish up their holidays). But this week's American tour under the auspices of the "International Champions Cup" - a four-way tournament involving the two English clubs, Real Madrid and AC Milan - looks like being a far more competitive affair. The all-Premier League tie at the Pasadena Rose Bowl was certainly uncompromising, with Cesc Fàbregas doing little to impress Conte by earning a straight red card for a sloppy studs-up encounter with Ragnar Klavan's ankle, and Liverpool picking up five bookings.

In principle, though, no one should be too excited by the result - 1-0 to Chelsea after a tenth-minute Gary Cahill header. As we are drilled to say, "pre-season friendlies don't matter". Well, at least that's how we responded to last summer's disastrous preparation, which included a humiliating 4-2 defeat to a significantly second-string New York Red Bulls team, adding to the precipitation of José Mourinho's mood and the entire team's season-long malaise.

But there was an exciting intensity to the Liverpool game of a kind that you would normally expect from these two teams meeting on a November afternoon in West London. And if that was the image that Conte, in particular, wanted to put across, both to fans and his new bosses, then he probably succeeded. In return, we got to see a steely Chelsea, and the Conte passion we were all thrilled by during the Euros, somewhat sweatily being played out on the Rose Bowl's touchline.

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Mental strength and physical stamina were, arguably, Chelsea's undoing last season, with the former most prevalent as the Mourinho cloud grew ever-darker, and the team going on to lose 12 games and concede 53 goals. What will certainly please Conte will be his defence, which last night comprised of Cesar Azpiliqueta, Gary Cahill, 19-year-old Londoner Ola Aina, and John Terry. Yes, the Terry who only re-signed for the club as the hours ticked down to his contract expiring at the end of May. Klopp was certainly impressed by the opposition his forwards came up against: "When a team with the quality of Chelsea defends so deep then every team in the world will have a little problem," he told the Liverpool FC website.

Terry, in particular, deserves credit for his performance against Liverpool. It wasn't necessarily spectacular - the game itself wasn't - or perfect (he is, let's be honest, beyond that now), but his application and fitness over this and the other pre-season games have shown what an inspirational captain he still is. 90 minutes for a 35-year-old in searing Californian heat should not be sniffe at. Not for nothing has he been putting in the hours to demonstrate his indispensability - and captaincy - to Conte, even with the club still looking for another centre-back (Napoli's Koulibaly an expensive possibility), and Kurt Zouma soon to return from long-term injury.

While Chelsea's high-profile signing N'Golo Kante is being spared the pre-season program following France's run to the Euro 2016 final, Michy Batshuayi's introduction two-thirds into the game provided another showcase of his potential. Same goes for Juan Cuadrado, whom Conte is determined to hang on to after an impressive loan spell at Juve. All that said, the core of Conte's team against Liverpool was from the Mourinho squad, with Willian, Traore and Loftus-Cheek looking sharp in attack, along with former loanee Victor Moses, who has been impressing in pre-season, as has Nemanja Matic, after his indifferent form last term.

With Hazard back to his best, and Diego Costa's head (and fitness) being mostly in the right place, regardless of new distractions from Madrid, there is a palpable sense - to use a phrase - that the Conte regime is already drawing a line under Chelsea's dismal championship defence, one which saw them flirt dangerously - and realistically - with the relegation zone until Guus Hiddink steadied the ship.

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It's easy, simplistic even, to become giddy during pre-season, with new players, the sunshine of a summer tour, and even a bright, shiny new kit to give everything a freshness. Conte, especially, is well into his Chelsea honeymoon, one gilded by such an electric run with Italy in the Euros. But with the forthcoming challenge of Mourinho's Manchester United and Guardiola's Manchester City, along with Liverpool, Spurs and, of course, defending title winners Leicester, honeymoons do come to an end early in football. But for now, it's nice to bask in the glow of a very bright start.

Breaking blues - the buddhas of suburbia

I had a somewhat low opinion of my surroundings growing up in the south-west London suburb of New Malden. It just wasn’t exciting enough, although that, I suppose, can be said of suburbia anywhere.

Apart from the twin office blocks by the station appearing in the sitcom Bless This House as a scenery backdrop, and that the mum of Mud’s bass player, Rob Davis, worked at Sainsbury's (he would go on to write Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head and Spiller's Groovejet...), the “village”, as my dad called it, didn’t offer much to get wild about.

Much later I would discover that my musical hero John Martyn was born in New Malden, and that one of its pubs would have been the location of a pivotal meeting in rock music history. But until then I had to make do with the not-exactly shabby news that Norbiton, our uninspiring north-westerly neighbour, had been the birthplace of The Yardbirds, the blues and R'n'B band that played a significant early role in Britain’s dominance of global rock music over the last 50 years.

The Yardbirds formed in May 1963 when guitarist Anthony "Top" Topham and his Surbiton-born schoolfriend Chris Dreja (with whom I share a birthday) met up with singer Keith Relf, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty - all from the Richmond area - at Norbiton's Railway Hotel. Succeeding the Rolling Stones as the resident band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, the still-young Yardbirds built a solid following in the West London blues scene. However, in October 1963 and after just five months, the 16-year-old Topham left under parental pressure to focus on his schoolwork. His replacement was an 18-year-old local guitarist by the name of Eric Clapton, who was offered the gig after seeing the band at the Crawdaddy.

Clapton had grown up in Ripley, the quaint Surrey hamlet (where, today, Paul Weller bases himself) but had gone to school in Surbiton, an hour away by bus, followed by an ignominious term at art school in Kingston-upon-Thames. He had taught himself blues guitar by learning Big Bill Broonzy records note-for-note while sat on a bench on Ripley Green, in the process developing a unique interpretative feel for the music of the mighty Mississippi. Still just in his mid-teens, Clapton hawked his talents around the riverside pubs of Kingston and elsewhere in the area, at one point forming a duo with Hawkwind founder Dave Brock, and later in bands such as The Roosters (the result of a meeting in a New Malden pub between Clapton and local music face Tom McGuinness).

Quite what drew these teenage, Surrey suburbanites to music forged in the searing heat of the Tennessee cotton fields before migrating north to Chicago and a rougher, amplified sound, is still not fully understood. But throughout south-west and west London, amid the red tiles of semi-detached Ealing, Kew, Kingston and Surbiton, venues like Twickenham's Eel Pie Island and Richmond's Crawdaddy provided the foundation for music careers that remain revered today. Clapton provided some explanation in his 1999 autobiography, revealing that, at the time, The Beatles were in the ascendency, but their pop pushed him further into the blues: “The gradual increase in popularity of the Mersey sound forced people like me to go underground, as if we were anarchists, plotting to overthrow the music establishment".

By 1965, however, The Yardbirds were moving beyond R'n'B and into more commercial pop. They had a hit with For Your Love (written by Graham Gouldman, later of 10CC), but this proved too popular for Clapton's blues purism and he decided to leave. The Yardbirds would only last until 1968 (but would remain a potent force - just listen to the superb BBC Sessions album just released). But in their five short years, they launched the career of Eric Clapton, his replacement - another local discovery, Jeff Beck from Wallington - who would in turn recommend as his replacement a teenage wunderkind from Epsom, Jimmy Page. Perhaps it is something in the water: as Beck has remarked himself, within the so-called 'Surrey Delta' and "a 20-minute bus ride of each other”, three of the greatest rock guitarists of all time had been produced by one band.

There may have been a brattish petulance about Clapton’s departure from The Yardbirds (and he says in his book how hard a decision it was, given that For Your Love had been a hit), but it was clear that his extraordinary talent as a soloist and his desire to play a heavier blues needed a more fitting home. Thus began another brief but historically significant association: in April 1965 Clapton joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, attaching himself to a musician who was - and remarkably, still is - regarded as the godfather of British blues. Mayall and his wife took the guitarist in, perhaps providing the father figure he’d missed out on. “Modern Chicago blues became my new Mecca,” Clapton recalled in his book. “It was a tough electric sound, spearheaded by people like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, who’d come up from the Delta to record for labels like Chess”. More importantly, with Mayall being 12 years Clapton’s senior, he provided a degree paternal steerage as well as further education.

Still only 20 years old, it was around this time that Clapton’s reputation was sealed by a notorious piece of graffiti on a wall at Islington Tube station declaring “Clapton is God”. Soon, the dawbing was being replicated throughout London. Clapton himself found it “really quite nice”, as you’d expect with an ego at that age. The Bluesbreakers had already been going for a couple of years before Clapton joined, adding to a flexing line-up that included Hughie Flint on drums and John McVie (later to provide the ‘Mac’ of Fleetwood Mac) - on bass. They gigged relentlessly which was how it was done then - there was no X-Factor to create instant fame.

However, by mid-summer Clapton and five friends broke off to form a band called The Glands. Returning in October, he found that he’d been replaced by Peter Green, who would later join McVie and Mick Fleetwood in Fleetwood Mac. Clapton’s dismissal didn’t seem to permanently harm his relationship with Mayall. The following April, a week or so after turning 21, he joined Mayall and the Bluesbreakers in Decca’s Hampstead studios to record an album of mainly blues and R&B covers, like the Otis Rush/Willie Dixon classic All Your Love, Ray Charles’ What I’d Say, and Robert Johnson’s Ramblin’ On My Mind, with Clapton on vocals (still, today, a staple of his live shows). It was a crucial album, with Clapton’s distinctive, heavily distorted guitar work pointing to what would follow with Cream, even forming a key component of Jimi Hendrix’s musical education. It was, and remains to this day, a brilliant blues album, but it played an even bigger role in cementing Clapton’s god-like status.

Released 50 years ago today, the album was notably entitled Blues Breakers - John Mayall With Eric Clapton. In just three years, Clapton had gone from suburban pub busker with a Mod haircut to sharing billing with one of the most formidable characters in British music, and he was still just 21. Clapton knew his power: for the album’s cover photograph - an arduous task for him at the best of times - Clapton sat reading a copy of the Beano comic, “To annoy everybody”. In the process, he ended up contributing - albeit somewhat petulantly - to one of the most iconic album covers of the period, with the record being known to this day as “The Beano Album”.

The cover art and joint billing notwithstanding, the Blues Breakers album was an important milestone in the evolution of British rock. Though artistically eclipsed by other albums released that year like Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ Revolver, Eric Clapton used this affectionate collection of Blues standards to establish a style of overdriven, heavily amplified guitar that would redefine how rock guitarists and wannabe rock guitarists would want to play for the next two decades, just as Scotty Moore and Hank Marvin had done a decade before.

Up to a point, Blues Breakers went some way to create a new form of blues. He may now be best known for playing a Fender Stratocaster, but on this album he matched a Gibson Les Paul with a Marshall amp. While that may not mean much to those who don’t play an electric guitar, it was enough that everyone else wanted to copy it. His work on Steppin’ Out, in particular, points to much of what Jimmy Page in Led Zeppelin and even Jimi Hendrix would become acclaimed for.

But even with Blues Breakers working its way into the album charts, Clapton already had his eye on the next thing. Inspired by Chicago’s Buddy Guy and his trio, Clapton accepted an invitation from Ginger Baker to join with Jack Bruce (a onetime Bluesbreaker) to create another short-lived venture that would have a long-lasting impact on rock music: Cream.

Just two weeks span the period between Blues Breakers’ release and Cream’s first gig, with their seminal debut album Fresh Cream landing only five months later. Cream came about less than three full years since the young Clapton had joined The Yardbirds in Richmond.

Time, in this period of music history, was clearly compressed. Careers and intervals between albums which today stretch out of years were then changing shape on a near-weekly basis. Indeed Cream, arguably the world’s first supergroup, would eventually split up just two years after Fresh Cream was released.

By then Clapton had progressed beyond simply a piece of iconic graffiti.Despite his earlier indifference towards the Mersey sound, he and George Harrison had been friends since The Yardbirds and The Beatles shared the bill at the London Palladium in 1963. Harrison had co-written the Cream single Badge with Clapton, and in return, Clapton provided the brilliantly inventive phased solo on Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps, one of the four non-Lennon/McCartney songs on the White Album. Clapton had become a firm fixture of rock’s royal circle, appearing in a makeshift band - The Dirty Mac - with John Lennon and Keith Richards in The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus TV special. Blind Faith, Derek & The Dominos and a further 40 years of solo success would follow.

Eric Clapton is now 71 and winding down his performing career. Nerve damage to his fingers - no doubt the result of playing all those blinding solos over six decades of touring and recording - is taking its toll. You can’t blame him, of course, but on this, the 50th anniversary of Blues Breakers - John Mayall With Eric Clapton coming out, it’s an album well worth listening to, either again or even for a first time, if only to hear for yourself how it helped shape the rock era, and all from a precocious talent that had been forged in the leafy avenues of suburban London.

Play it, Sam, for old times' sake

It is just a calendric coincidence that a new England manager should be appointed less than two weeks before the 50th anniversary of England's one and only World Cup triumph. Roy Hodgson's resignation after yet another ignominious English exit from a major tournament came only a month ago, and with the 2018 World Cup qualifying campaign starting soon, the Football Association has had to get a new man in place as quickly as possible.

As always when England goes through this brutal ritual a rich assortment of names is bandied about, from the plain fanciful to the unsparingly mundane. England, however, is not alone in such perpetual upheaval: just look around any of the world's national football associations and you'll see the same periodic disembowelling, the range of choices - even in Italy, France and the Netherlands, three of the world's traditional powerhouses of tournament football - it is usually pretty contentious, as the decision making prevaricates over which ex-pro or current club manager should get the job.

It is, of course, about making a choice on a role which acts as a touchpoint for national sensitivities, national pride even. But rarely in these countries do the choices stray beyond national borders. England, however, crossed that rubicon long ago, with the "marquee" appointments of Sven-Göran Eriksson and Fabio Capello, as the-then latest attempts to find the formula to improve England's dismal record. At the time of their appointments no one really questioned either manager's pedigrees, but after their respective departures there was a collective "was that really worth it?". With both men the FA stood accused of hiring 'glamourous' Eurocrats, managers who'd enjoyed reasonable success at equally glamourous European clubs, but wouldn't necessarily 'get' the expectation of England fans. Hope, though, was held high that their breadth of experience, coaching internationally, represented the missing ingredient to address England's stubborn failure to deliver more than a couple of semi-final appearances in the 50 years since Bobby Moore was famously held aloft by his teammates, clutching the Jules Rimet Trophy.

Since Hodgson resigned many have called for the FA to once again up their ambition by hiring someone of a Mourinho or Guardiola pedigree - unrealistic as that would be. So consider this: Eriksson took over from the flimsy Kevin Keegan (whose win ratio was just 38% from 18 games in charge) and reached three consecutive quarter finals. Capello took over from Steve McClaren, whose win ratio was 50%, also from 18 games, and failed to qualify for Euro 2008 before overseeing England depart the 2010 World Cup at the first knockout stage, being crushed 4-1 by Germany, and also putting in one of the worst games of football I've ever seen, a 0-0 draw with Algeria in the group stages. Of course, so they say, you can make statistics prove anything, but when you look at England's history since 1966 there is no pattern of success. Indeed Alf Ramsey, who managed England to that single World Cup trophy in 1966, took England to third place in the 1968 European Championships, a quarter final of the next World Cup, and then failed to qualify for both the 1972 Euros and the 1974 World Cup.

In Hodgson, England clearly went for a hybrid: an Englishman (tick) who'd managed so-called elite European clubs (tick) who would be somewhat plain vanilla when it came to fan expectations (tick). And still he oversaw England's early departure from two tournaments, despite having delivered consistently successful qualifying efforts for both. The only real conclusion we can draw from this is that there is no secret solution to managing England. Over 50 years, the FA has tried everything and everyone: Joe Mercer, Don Revie, Ron Greenwood, Bobby Robson, Graham Taylor, Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, Howard Wilkinson (ad interim), Keegan, Peter Taylor (also ad interim), Eriksson, McClaren, Capello, Stuart Pearce (for one game) and Hodgson, all with a similar topography of tournament qualification and performance records.

The England job isn't so much of a poisoned chalice as a supersized, Las Vegas-style mojito of toxicity. It will consume the appointee, turn their hair grey and after the mandatory media honeymoon, lay them open to vilification on a brutal scale. And, yet, that doesn't stop people thinking it's the job for them. In recent weeks we’ve even seen Arsène Wenger give an apparently "why not?" response to the idea of applying for the job, while Jürgen Klinsmann was said to be “intrigued”. For the rest, the list of runners and riders have included usual suspects like Harry Redknapp and Alan Pardew, plus Eddie Howe, Hoddle (again) and Steve Bruce - all as English as a sausage sandwich dripping in HP Sauce.

Wenger may have a mostly creditable club record on his side, and would have been an interesting appointment, but realistically he wouldn't have been available for another year, keen to see out the remaining 12 months of his Arsenal contract, when the FA needs someone available straight away to prepare for the qualifier with Slovenia in September. It's hard to have seen the FA trying to buy out his contract and risk a political rift with the Gunners. Klinsmann’s five years as USA coach saw the team rise in prominence but play utterly dull football - not a qualification for the England job; Redknapp may be a top bloke, a renown survivalist, wheeler-dealer and favourite of London cab drivers, but his history as a football manager has never been all that stellar, one season at Spurs and several narrow escapes notwithstanding; Pardew talks the talk but has yet to really prove he can deliver consistently; and Bruce might represent the image of grit and industriousness that England fans identify with, but could he conclusively transform the “overpaid”, “over-indulged” and “mollycoddled” players - to quote from Danny Baker’s legendary Twitter rant after the Iceland defeat - drawn from clubs managed by Mourinho, Guardiola, Klopp, Pocchetino, Ranieri, Wenger, Conte, et al, with such a diversity of footballing philosophies to go with them?

The answer, quite simply, is that we don’t know - and haven't known for 50 years - what the silver bullet is. So what, really, are the qualities required? More or less all of the names put in the England frame this time are seasoned managers, who know how to pick teams, organise and motivate them. In principle any one of them could hold the as-yet undiscovered key to make English players, most of whom play in the most revered and lucrative football league in the world, successful at international level. But, as we always seem to discover, promise and potential are rarely realised.

So step forward Sam Allardyce, who has been named by the FA as the successful candidate, having been the clear front runner over the last few days. His appointment does carry an odd parallel to the recent coronation of Theresa May as Prime Minister. Sorry to drag politics into this - we’ve all had enough of it this summer, I know - but May fitted the bill of what the Tories needed in a leader: a no-nonsense, unflashy pragmatist with a strong work ethic. Allardyce, the Dudley-born, 61-year-old former uncompromising defender, offers England the same. His totally unwarranted reputation for one-dimensional football and, simply, not being glamorous enough has divided opinions amongst some fans, but my argument is that Allardyce is EXACTLY what England needs right now.

He may not be the long-term solution (not that anyone ever is) but he does a good line in containment, having never suffered relegation at any of the Premier League clubs he’s managed. Now, I know that avoiding relegation is not the same as winning the title (I refer you to Chelsea last season…), and that the ability to stoically stave off disaster is the most British attribute of all, but Allardyce does have other things going for him, especially his approach to mindset management.

Following this summer’s sojourn to France, mentality may be England’s biggest challenge, as Danny Baker so eloquently pointed out. Allardyce has no time for egos, is an exceptionally good organiser and has the innate ability to fine-tune tactics to suit each occasion - a marked contrast to Hodgson’s intransigent lack of tinkering and dull, possession-based football which may have cost England so dear last month.

These are forensic examinations of Allardyce’s qualities, and the FA board responsible for hiring him will have, one supposes, done its due diligence by considering them in depth. There is clear risk, however: for all his English bulldog chops, Allardyce is completely untested as a manager on the international stage (having never coached a club in European competition). But could that even be to his and England’s advantage?

Is it so much of a prerequisite that England take on foreign teams from a position of trying to match them technically? What if England went out and played English football, the kind that adorns parks on a Sunday morning? It may not be pretty, it may not even be elegant, but if the defeat to Iceland demonstrated anything, it’s that winning football can’t just be measured in terms of salaries and expensive cars, but in the ability to get stuck in and do the job. And, simply, win.

Sam Allardyce might just be the manager to deliver that. Until the next one comes along, of course.

Blowin' a fuse: Bruce Springsteen at the AccorHotels Arena, Paris

Somebody recently asked me an impossible question: "what's your favourite gig of all time?". I was stumped. And for a number of reasons, too. I've been to many, many concerts over the last 36 years, some for fun, some for work, and in that time I've seen the stellar, the obscure, the legendary, the unfashionable, the overhyped and the just plain brilliant.

I've seen the Rolling Stones four times, and The Who and Prince twice; in seeing Robert Plant (twice in the space of a month) and Paul McCartney just the once I have at least experienced some linkage to two of the greatest bands of all time. Sadly, though, I only saw Bowie once, and that was on the awful Glass Spider Tour. Thank God for the live recordings.

My brief career as a music journalist began with the first and, possibly, last review of a Phil Collins gig in the NME. I was at the legendary Madstock festival which, so the apocryphal tale goes, was measured on the Richter Scale, such was the mass pogo triggered by Madness playing Baggy Trousers. At the same gig I finally got to see Ian Dury & The Blockheads, a long-held ambition and richly rewarded, and I also saw Morrissey get booed, which was harsh but funny. I've also enjoyed some of the most brilliant evenings of live music at the Montreux Jazz Festival, often ending up sitting next to the same performers at the remarkably informal Harry's Bar across the road (an encounter with Grace Jones unnerves me still - she was just so damned nice).

Gig-going has been intrinsic to my life here in Paris over the last five and a half years: it reunited me with my childhood friend Steven Wilson, having last seen him in 1974, and now a bona fide rock star, playing Le Bataclan; the city's smaller, intimate venues have brought me into close proximity with Johnny Marr, the Stone Roses, Paul Weller, Richard Hawley, The Church, Popa Chubby, Seasick Steve and the Kaiser Chiefs - to name a few, and not a bad haul either; and, perhaps most poignant of all, I was privileged to be at the emotional return to Paris by the Eagles Of Death Metal in February.

Still, though, there are plenty of gigs I regret missing out on, as well as plenty of gigs I regret going to at all (The Wedding Present at a sticky-floored college refectory comes to mind). On top of this, I really have no desire to attend any outdoor festivals, unless they're within a half mile of a Tube station and have paved footpaths. And I can very easily pass on the overhyped festival of Trench Foot, chlamydia and corporate hypocrisy that is Glastonbury, preferring to watch from my sofa with all the comfort, convenience and proximity to a fridge that implies.

© Simon Poulter 2016

However, nothing upon nothing compares on any scale to Bruce Springsteen. I've now seen him twice, and both occasions in Paris, too. Quite why it has taken me to just the last five years, living here, before seeing one of the greatest live acts in music history is hard to fathom, but I have no time for regrets, as these two concerts - Wednesday night at the AccorHotels Arena and three years ago at the Stade De France - will answer, unequivocally, that question I was asked.

2016 has been a year which has forced us to rethink our notions of mortality when it comes to our music icons. It's nothing new: for as long as rock stars have been dying prematurely - Hendrix, Joplin, Presley, Lennon...take your pick - we've reluctantly accepted that some candles burn brightly for only the shortest of time. With Bowie et al this year we've started coming to terms with the realisation that the heroes of the rock era are dwindling, along with the music that propelled them to hero status in the first place.

Springsteen, however, continues to defy rock's waning. At 66 he's as energetic, engaging and as downright brilliant as any legend past or present. What he takes from his audiences he gives back in spades. The frequent trips throughout the show into the crowd might be viewed as schtick, but Springsteen never overplays it. He is for his people, and of his people. It's an unbreakable bond.

© Simon Poulter 2016

The Stones and The Who, to some extent, might still come close, and though both still excellent entertainment, the former are now something of a high-end vaudeville act and the latter are largely now trading off heritage as they consciously wind down their touring career. Springsteen, on the other hand, is still producing albums of some vitality. They may not be as ground breaking as Born To Run, Nebraska or The River which, in its entirety, forms the main act of this latest tour, but it is patently clear that The Boss has lost none of his unique ability to tell a story. Or to do so live.

Because that is what sits at the very core of the Springsteen brand. Whatever the scale of his epic, three-hour shows, or of the superlative bombast of his and the E-Street Band's sound, Springsteen at his best is the blue collar barfly, regaling you over a brew with a story about the mundanities of life. Not even Dylan can romanticise about crossing county lines, screen doors slamming and steaming engine blocks and still be as authentic or as heartworn. You may be looking at a multimillionaire rock star, but you are also looking at working class New Jersey. You are still listening to songs forged in 1950s imagery of girls in their finery at the Saturday night dance, of unrequited love affairs, marriages and the dawning of dissatisfaction and claustrophobic relationships.

Sitting in an arena just a stone's throw from the French government offices of Bercy may have been an incongruity from the 'real' America Springsteen evokes, but somehow, amongst 16,000 rapturous [mostly] French people, we were in that bar, that autoshop, that high school dance hall. To get there, though, you must allow yourself to penetrate the stagecraft of the E-Street Band - Steve Van Zandt's endearingly entertaining hamming; Nils Lofgren's guitar virtuosity; Roy Bittan's delicate touch on piano; the 65-year-old Max Weinberg's breathless, virtually uninterrupted drumming; and Jake Clemons' deft sax playing, keeping his uncle, Clarence's flame alive. Cut through that and you listen to Springsteen's words and music, in that order, absorbing and contributing to the energy of the band and of the crowd, and the overwhelming sense of being a part of something that, even 41 years since his breakthrough, is still growing.

© Simon Poulter 2016

While this magical show was devoted to The River album, it opened with an obscurity, Iceman, recorded in 1977 for the The Darkness On The Edge Of Town sessions and then forgotten about. It eventually surfaced on the absorbing Tracks box set. Tonight was, evidently, the first time Springsteen and his band had played it on this tour, and it - followed by Lucky Town - worked brilliantly in getting everyone's eye in, like tennis players 'knocking up' before a match.

These were, however, just a prelude. The main premise of the evening and the entire tour is The River. Springsteen's albums are never conceptual as such, but they are certainly reflective of the times. The River, released in October 1980, held a mirror up to an America in recession, on the cusp of electing an archly-conservative president a month later, and still bearing scars of Vietnam in its heartlands, in need of both togetherness and contemplation alone. As a result, Springsteen deliberately sequenced the 20-track double album to offer shade and light, with tracks as bold and as classically Spectorish as The Ties That Bind interspersed with more frivolous material like Sherry Darling and the hit Hungry Heart (during which Springsteen conducts a full-on stage dive in this show), the pathos of Point Blank leading to the hoedown gaiety of Cadillac Ranch (complete with Patti Scialfa stand-in Soozie Tyrell going full "yee-hah!" with a fiddle solo).

But where, on the original album, The River could be accused of being a little uneven, 36 years on, with an E-Street Band as finely tuned as the smoothest-running German car engine you could imagine, there is a power to all of the album's songs in the live setting, even the quiet numbers, like Drive All Night, engineered by Weinberg's simple slowbeat, building to a compelling crescendo.

As The River's stories unfold, so does your appreciation of the palette Springsteen applied to the album's storytelling. You end up with no other conclusion that you have heard a unique canon of songs, performed by a unique collection of musicians. Yes, it may be Springsteen's music, but he never lets it be forgotten that Springsteen and the E-Street Band - a genuine band of brothers (several of them postponed personal music projects to jump on The River Tour, jumping at the opportunity to tour again for a last time before Springsteen concentrates on solo projects) - are one and the same.

© Simon Poulter 2016

It may not be fashionable anymore to sit down and listen to an album all the way through, from track-first to track-last, but the trend of touring entire records means that artists have a captive audience to hear the sequencing as intended. I'm sure the streaming era is creating a generation of dilettante music fans, missing out on the narrative of the musical novels that albums like The River are. This show is, however, a reminder of just how fulsome The River is, but even taking into account Springsteen's legend for lengthy shows, the momentum is relentless.

Anyone dropping off will have been woken back to full consciousness by Ramrod, the explosive rocker which, on Monday night, literally blew a fuse at the Paris venue. Tonight, no such worries, as it took the show into The River's fourth and final side, in old vinyl terms, a side with two of the album's many nods to automotive iconography, concluding with Wreck On The Highway.

By this stage, however, the only wrecks are us - sweaty but carefree. Springsteen and his band have no intention of stopping, or even basking in the glory of having breathlessly played through an entire 83-minute album from start to finish. Almost without pause we're into the mighty Badlands, opening what turns out to be almost another hour of extra music, and is quickly followed by a cover of Patti Smith's Because The Night, which Springsteen originally wrote before handing it over to Smith.

The hits tumbled out - The Rising (inspired by 9/11 and as poignant in France now as it would be looking across to New York City from Springsteen's New Jersey home), the ironically patriotic Born In The USA, an outstanding Born To Run, Dancing In The Dark and then Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, replete with dutiful on-screen tributes to the "the big man", the late Clarence Clemons, and original E-Street keyboard player Danny Federici, who died three years before the sax giant in 2008.

This second, hit-sprayed part ends with Shout, the Isleys' party favourite (some might think of Lulu, others, simply, "Toga!!!"), which ensures that all but the dullest, smartphone-hogging dullard (the Jeff Lynne-lookalike perched on the steps in front of me, for example) is on their feet and having, simply, the best of times.

And it is. If I never see another concert again I can and will have the satisfaction of experiencing something profound, something untouchable, akin to the Dutch notion of "total football", albeit with a travelling band of musicians who perform and behave more like a family than jobbing artists. What binds it all, of course, is Springsteen's songwriting. And thus, it is celebrated, fittingly, by the man himself, reappearing after his comrades have disappeared, with an acoustic guitar and a harmonica, strumming the opening chords of Thunder Road.

"The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves, like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely," he sings. We are enraptured: all of the joy, all of the emotion, all of the fist-pumping energy of the previous three hours condensed into this most beautiful of ballads.

"Well, I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk". Damn right he did.

© Simon Poulter 2016

Why I'm resigning. From politics, that is.

July. The time of year we all look forward to for a holiday. My Finnish colleagues have already been enjoying theirs, taking their traditional summer solstice escape to absorb as much Vitamin D as they can before darkness returns. Last week my American friends had their annual summer break, celebrating the colonial uprising of 1776 with barbecues and road trips. Soon it will be my French neighbours, disappearing south so fast on the last day of the month that their portals are left swinging like saloon doors in a Western bar.

I, too, am looking forward to a holiday this month. A holiday from politics. I'm done with it. I've had enough of it. In a year that started unconsolably with the death of David Bowie, and became steadily worse with a never-ending parade of celebrity deaths, we seem to be stuck in a Somme-like, unmoving frontline of hand-to-hand political combat which shows no signs of abating.

Incredibly, the Brexit referendum result only became known two and a half weeks ago. Since then, British political life has imploded, consuming all of us who watch or read the news with it. As if the Brexit result wasn't bad enough, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom - who'd rolled the dice to begin with - announced his resignation, waking up Her Majesty's Opposition, whose front bench suddenly realised that the physics teacher leading them was no good. This was followed by a gathering of leading Tory Brexiters to vie for the vacating leadership of their own party (oh, and prime minister, too), only to gradually drop off the contest by either Machiavellian knifing or realisation of their sheer inadequacy (and that must also include the hideous, gurning, casual racist Nigel Farage). And now we have the prospect of a leadership contest in the Labour Party, dragging this dull Westminster summer on further. And don't get me going about Euro 2016 or even Chris Evans doing the decent thing and walking the plank from his lousy Top Gear reboot.

I can at least afford a break from all things football, at least for the five weeks until the Premier League gets going again. And I've got enough episodes of 'old' new Top Gear on DVD and Netflix to not particularly bother missing Evans at all. But the one thing I really - really - need a break from is politics.

As I posted on the eve of the Brexit vote, I have little time for politicians at the best of times. And although I recognise that the murdered MP Jo Cox was that exception - a politician with integrity and a genuine concern for her constituency - what has followed since June 23 has left me exhausted. Exhausted by the naked ambition, the step-over-your-dead-grandmother egomaniacism and the fawning inconsistencies (viz Jacob Rees-Mogg, who first backed Boris, then backed Gove, then backed Leadsom - "all the horses", in his words - only to then throw his weight behind Theresa May as the anointed new Tory leader and PM). 

In 2002 May herself asked the Conservative Party conference in Bournemouth: "Why has the public become so cynical about politics and politicians? If we're being honest I think we know the answer. In recent years a number of politicians have behaved disgracefully and then compounded their offences by trying to evade responsibility. We all know who they are." These last few weeks in the UK - and, to some extent, the US too - have given fullsome answer to that proposition.

I wouldn't care less if I didn't hear another word from the political class again. That might sound like I'm sticking my head in the sand but, to be honest, the only thing I want to do with sand right now is to flop out on it with a good book and the entire John Martyn catalogue on-loop on my iPod.

The Somme remains the same

© Simon Poulter 2016

I suppose it's the point, that war cemeteries are meant to be pristine, serene gardens of remembrance in contrast to the horrors of battle that created them. Those in the Valley of the Somme are no exception - their calm, perfectly arranged rows of white headstones oddly representative of the carnage unleashed 100 years ago today.

Wars so often have a turning point, either planned or unintential, when events roll back on the trajectory. For the First World War, the Somme Offensive was meant to be just such a turning point, a concerted effort by the French and the British to take on the Imperial German Army and break up their entrenched lines along a 15-mile stretch of northern France near the River Somme.

When the attack came, on July 1, 1916, it would go down in history as one of the bloodiest days in the history of warfare, costing the lives of 19,240 Britain and Commonwealth men on that first day for just the acquisition of three square miles of territory. By November 18, when the Battle of the Somme came to an end, more than a million were dead or wounded on all sides, including 420,000 British, 200,000 French and an estimated 465,000 German. The distance between the frontline on July 1 and on November 18 is just seven miles.

© Simon Poulter 2016

Standing today on the rolling fields where the battle was fought it is, of course, impossible to get a sense of the industrial slaughter that took place over the course of those 141 days, the result of terrible new artillery munitions which didn't just explode, but fragmented, reducing combatants in trenches to bloodied pulps, as well as the new machine guns which literally mowed down soldiers as they were sent over the top. But the 250 military and 150 civilian cemeteries that dot this area of Picardie combine to tell a tragic story of the staggering attrition.

© Simon Poulter 2016

The Commwealth graves, at sites like Thiepval, Albert and Contalmaison, represent the breadth of nationalities drawn into battle from different corners of the world - the 12,000 Australians killed over the course of six weeks fighting for the strategic village of Pozières, as well as the New Zealanders, Canadians, South Africans, Rhodesians and Indians who died for a cause that geographically and politically was not their own but one out of sworn allegiance to a distant monarch. Their graves now sit a long, long way from home.

Throughout the region there are truly humbling sites of remembrance: at Beaumont-Hamel, five miles due north of Albert, is a memorial dedicated to forces of the Dominion of Newfoundland - now part of Canada - which suffered the largest single loss of the battle's first day. 1800 members of a 2000-strong battalion of the Newfoundland a regiment, roughly one in five men from the dominion itself, killed in an unsuccessful assault lasting not much more than 30 minutes.

As you walk up and down the rows of headstones, you pass a mass of nationalities, ages and social backgrounds. There is little hierarchical order - officers lie alongside the enlisted (more junior officers below the rank of major died on the Somme than privates, and the opening day led to the deaths of almost two-thirds of British officers involved). And then you come to those which simply say 'Known Unto God', one of 100,000 graves of those whose identities are not known. At the Memorial to the Missing, at Thiepval, the names of 72,085 British Expeditionary Force soldiers provide some respect for those who were killed but do not have a known grave.

Historians will now agree that Battle of the Somme proved to be a strategic victory for the Allies, that the German trenches were broken up, and the futile intransigence that has come to characterise World War One started to come lose. The cost on that first day of July would be huge, with the largest single day's loss of life for in the British Army's history alone. 

The war itself changed warfare, with the introduction of air power and tanks, weapons of mass destruction. And it also led to a redrawing of the maps of Europe and the Middle East, the political and diplomatic impact of which would resonate through the 20th century, in the Second World War and the Cold War, even the events we are witnessing still today in Syria and Iraq. But if the Somme would be the location of the First World War's turning point, it would be another two years before the Armistice would be signed on November 11, 1918. 

The beginning of the end of the war may have begun in the Somme Valley, but it came at a heavy loss. 100 years on, only the gardens of stone give any sense of the magnitude of that loss, and the bloodshed which occurred over just 125 square miles of Northern France during those four bitter months of 1916.