Review | PP Arnold at The Wedgewood Rooms - from First Cut to final note, the voice remains strong
At the end of PP Arnold’s gig I’m in the queue for the merch desk, waiting to buy a copy of her autobiography.
It’s a slow moving line – Arnold is taking her time with her fans – and it’s all good. To pass the time I get talking to the woman in front of me, who is in her late 20s. It transpires she’s from Canada and has built her whole trip to the UK around this gig.
To say she is thrilled that she’s about to meet her heroine – a performer who had her biggest hits years before she was even born – is an understatement.
And that right there sums up the enduring appeal of Arnold’s music.
She’s the voice behind such sweet soul classics as First Cut is The Deepest and Angel of The Morning, but there’s a steel to her character that’s kept her going – she passed 60 years in the music business last year.
Arnold’s been there, done that and got the songs to prove it.
The set encompasses her entire solo career – from opener Whatcha Gonna Do, the first song she ever recorded, to material from her most recent album, The New Adventures of… which was co-written with her son, Kodzo.
She can do bluesy, as on her early track Though it Hurts Me So Bad, to the Northern Soul stomp of Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, to an ultra-funky take on The Stones’ Can’t Always Get What You Want.
But it’s her version of The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby that really makes the hairs stand-up with it’s refrain of “all the lonely people.”
Arnold is a consummate name-dropper too – Mick Jagger, Steve Marriott, Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and of course her mentor Tina Turner – and why not? They all played a part in her career.
She inevitably finishes with First Cut..., introducing it with: “I sang it 10 years before Rod Stewart, I don’t think Sheryl Crow was even born. It’s my song!” Damn right it’s her song, and it is still stunning.
The voice remains strong and her passion rings clear. She is very much a soul survivor.