The weeks before this night had been nervous, should the guys make it here or would it go wrong again. Fortunately, no bad news reached me so we were in a greate mood in the car.
The warm up group Danger Danger was quite unintresting although they did a good job. We managed to get good places directly below the stage and when a roadie was doing sound check with the black and white Flying V I could feel a tickling in the belly. The stage went dark and suddenly they were there. Schenker to the left with a white Flying V (number 4 on it, the B&W is a spare guitar now) Phil in the middle and Paul behind the keyboards to the right. Pete was all over the place with his Thunderbird. They started with natural thing and wow. The sound was good but Schenkers guitar and Phils vox was a bit low. In the second song things went better and in the third song "A self made man" the sound was absolutely perfect.
Phil is in great shape he looks very fit and well trained (probably some gym hours) and his voice was perfect no problems at all through the show. Pete was incredible how can he keep going that wild for almost 2 hours. He is a real showman. Paul did a good job working on all those instruments changing all the time. Michael was in a very good mode and smiled and winked his eye to the audience and he did a lot of simultaneous movements with Pete. The drummer is a pro.
How did it sound? Well it is UFO. These guys know how to play. The music is absolutly tight almost no mistakes and it was rocking like crazy. We were in heaven for the complete show singing all the lines with Phil. Venus, Pushed to the limit, Love to love, Too hot to handle, Only you can rock me and Lights out were brilliant. Phil sang Lights out in Stockholm 2 times and we went crazy.
The encore Doctor doctor was good. The last song was Rock Bottom and for all of you waiting to see the show this is a killer, my god, they are doing this one good.
Michael Schenker is a one of a kind guitarist, I like a lot of guitarists and have a whole bunch of guitarist records, but Michael is unique. The performance he did in Rock Bottom was brilliant. My friend Anders said "This is the best guitar playing I have heard in my life" I can only agree.
How about the the relations in the band? Well everybody seemed to enjoy themself and Michael and Pete had fun together. Phil and Michael are though keeping apart. They are doing their own thing staying off eachother. To me it looks like an agreement between them. I could not see any bad feelings or indications of trouble in the band.
After the show Michael signed the 25th live for my brother and also my ticket. He looked relaxed and was very friendly to us. He did shake my brothers hand.
Leif Sundin was at the show and he went backstage afterwards.
The only bad thing about the show was that they skipped the second encore. Otherwise the set list was like in the earlier shows.
Micael Hamberg
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