Who Do You Love?
Who Do You Love? (2nd version)
Who Do You Love?, partial clip
ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY
HAVING THE PLUG PULLED
22 August 2010 Update straight from the Horse's Mouth.
Chris Miller: I think High Voltage was a combination of errors all of which I had nothing to do with. They did apologize, but it wasn't all their fault. Like I said, it was a combination. I was annoyed because the stage sound was great and you never know what' it's going to be like on a festival. It's frustrating to ravel 3,000 miles - to rehearse for a 35 minutes set - which somehow becomes 10 minutes. I hadn't even started. I felt bad for Andy, who came with me and I felt bad for all those people who came to see us. The whole thing got blown out of all proportion. I got angry - for about 30 seconds - what can you do?
Bill McCue: 'Great RH pic of you with Pagey at High Voltage. Do you two get on these days? I remember bad blood between Zep and MTH at the Uris in the 70's. Re: age - what's your secret?' Jimmy came to a MTH gig at Hammersmith but I wasn't able to meet him as I was leaving the stage and going straight back to the hotel to preserve the vocals. It was great he popped down to High Voltage with Ross. We had a couple of chats before and after the gig - he was genuinely nice. We never mentioned the Uris. We were talking about the real early days. My secret is Ross Halfin!
According to Greyhound Croydon:
Agree that the Down'n'Outz and IH set turned out to be such a huge disappointment. Don't get me wrong... Joe and the Down'nOutz were brilliant. They seem to put more life and soul into some of the songs than the originals ever had live - and I do know - I have seen most of them live by Mott, British Lions, MTH and IH. They make you realise how good some of the more obscure or less popular songs were. The Quireboys are an exceptionally 'up' band and back Joe Elliot perfectly. If you get the chance, go and see them live. You won't regret it one bit. The problem at HV was the set length taking into account IH was meant to be a special guest. I must admit I was standing there thinking 'when are you bringin Ian on?' because I just knew they were running out of time. I think the brutal truth (sorry Joe) is that Joe just did too many songs before bringing Ian on stage, specially when you consider the last two before IH were true IH live classics. When Ian did come on with Andy York it was all a bit confused for a few minutes. Nobody quite seemed to know what they were doing - though that could well have been because Joe was getting hassle from the organisers. Two slightly uncomfortable songs later the PA system said 'thanks to the Down'n'Outz', followed by the band attempting another song to find all the PA system shut down. I really thought the crowd might be able to get another song out of the organisers but then the PA started playing recorded music and the stage hands were already pulling the equipment off the stage. A little entertainment followed when Ian raised his guitar ready to swipe at the organiser, but luckily realised his guitar was more valuable than the reults would have been worth. Nonetheless he still grabbed the organiser and started remonstrating with him. A waste of time though. Still - it did remind me of the last Hammersmith Odean gig by Mott, even though the result wasn't as satisfying. Nice to see Ian still has the old fighting spirit he always used to show though!And, there was discussion about the incident on the High Voltage web site and the web site contact music also ran a story about the event. Finally, Classic Rock emailed an attendee (name redacted) as an explanation:
So... that was that. Really annoyed at the organisers at first but you have to say, they have a strict deadline for ending the day and ELP were the headliner. It wouldn't have been fair to them or the ELP fans to have their proper time cut short. The organisers really should have let IH and Joe at least say goodbye though, rather than just cutting power. That is unforgivable.
Hi [Name appeared here]At least with the controversy they made the tabloids: any publicity is good publicity as in Hollywood I suppose. Even if the brief article is off-base it can not really hurt to publicize their music.
Thanks for your email. Your disappointment was shared by a lot of people, not least most of the Classic Rock staff. What appears to have happened is that Joe Elliott and co.'s set overran its allotted time. As the headliners (ELP) could not overrun to make up the time, due to a curfew that carried huge financial penalties (and possibly problems getting a licence for next year's event), Joe and ian had to come off before they had finished their planned set. They did, however, play for the amount of time they were scheduled to play. Maybe they timed their set wrongly.
Sorry for the disappointment, but it does appear to have been the artist(s) at fault, and not the festival organisers. .
Cheers,
CR