Live Review : Paul Di’Anno + Gypsy’s Kiss @ The Waterloo Music Bar, Blackpool on August 22nd 2024

Gypsy’s Kiss hold a special place in the storied history of Iron Maiden, being one of Steve Harris’ earliest bands, and to see them on the same bill as the legendary Paul Di’Anno has to be a Maiden completists dream.  Formed fifty years ago Gypsy’s Kiss returned to action six years ago after a decades long hiatus and what is immediately apparent is that the six -piece band certainly still have something to say and play with a verve and flair that belies a half century pedigree.  

Original member, singer and vocalist Dave Smith, has a twinkle in his eye, a wonderfully strong and warm vocal delivery and a fine line in banter.  Throughout their set he and the rest of the band look like they’re thoroughly enjoying themselves, the interplay with the crowd and between the band members, natural, unforced and very easy to be swept along by.  One of the more unusual pieces of audience participation I can ever remember is when Dave, talking about the age of the band, gets the crowd to shout back “Fuck me, you don’t look old enough”.  It’s ridiculously fun old school rock like they just don’t make any more, and is a treat for not just the older heads in the crowd but also for those who weren’t even born in the seventies or eighties.  Dave promises that tonight will be a time machine to transport us back to those heady days of 1974 and that’s certainly what he and his band do. 

Gypsy’s Kiss deal in a wonderfully warm and infectious classic rock sound; yes, there is an occasional Maidenesque quality to some of their songs as you might well expect, but it’s not so obvious that they don’t have their own identity and personality.  There are great washes of keyboard, there’s a Flying V, it’s upbeat, beautifully melodic and feels somehow both comfortingly familiar and refreshingly new all at the same time. Much of the set is taken from the band’s excellent album “74”, with songs like latest single ‘We Come to Play’, and the atmospheric ‘Smoke and Mirrors’, showing both classic rock styling whilst also having an impressive sophistication in terms of the songwriting and playing. 

Ending with a fabulous ‘My Own Holy Grail’, you can only wonder what the band’s holy grail is now?  If it’s to be entertaining, fun and a reminder of just how joyous rock music was back in the day (and can still be now) then I’m pretty sure they’ve got a firm hold on that mythical drinking vessel already. What Gypsy’s Kiss prove tonight is that they’re not just a footnote in another band’s history but are an entertaining, vital and ongoing concern in their own right. It’s superb, exuberant, old-school fun, and you can’t ask for much more than that… 

If you were lucky enough to be a teenager first discovering Heavy Metal in the early eighties, there’s a pretty good chance that Iron Maiden was one of your gateway points; and whilst Maiden would go on to bestride the globe and become the metal colossus we know and love today, back then there were more albums with Paul Di’Anno leading the charge than Bruce Dickinson. This was Maiden at their most gritty and visceral, imbued with a fierce punk-tinged energy, those Eddie-haunted East End streets creating a unique atmosphere that some would argue they have rarely bettered.   The power, reach and hold those first two albums hold on a generation of metal fans is impossible to over-estimate, and that love and passion is writ large in the Waterloo tonight. 

For when Paul Di’Anno takes to the stage and ‘Sanctuary’ bursts from the speakers, the massed hordes pretty much lose their minds en-masse.  It’s a riotously powerful start (for a song that many of us of a certain vintage will always think of as being Maiden’s final encore) and the crowd are obviously here for it in spades.  But that’s Di’Anno to a tee – he’s going to do things how he wants to and consequences be damned.  Di’Anno is very much his own man, he knows his place in metal history is secure and whilst he tells us that he’s been criticised in some quarters for playing these songs too fast, to these ears, there’s absolutely no issue with the fire and energy with which both band and singer play.  Rather this is Di’Anno doing his songs, his way.  His health issues are well documented but they don’t distil the fire and bite in the belly of the Beast, whether shooting down shouts he doesn’t like from the crowd with a witheringly scathing riposte, or powering his way through the next number with a steely grit and determination, he’s a volatile and confrontational presence at times but tempered with that old East End charm too.   

The talented band he has around him do an incredible job of nailing these songs; you could close your eyes and it could be 1980 all over again, such is the accuracy and care with which the songs are delivered.  The set list is a Maiden fans dream with all bar one track taken from the debut album, alongside select cuts from “Killers”.  And whilst every track is a bona fide dyed in the wool classic, there are some that simply make the hairs on your neck stand up and make you remember why you fell in love with them so long ago. ‘Wrathchild’ is bruisingly beautiful, ‘Prowler’ rips in with that caustic riff you remember that followed the needle drop on Side One, ‘Running Free’ is all tribal beats and glorious singalong.  But towering gloriously above then all ‘Phantom of the Opera’ is quite simply spine-tingling from Paul’s gritty vocal to the wondrous soloing, it leaves the crowd with grins on their faces and tears in the eyes as it encapsulates everything in one amazing transcendent number. 

The emotions that hearing these songs again with their original singer provokes has a power that goes beyond mere music; it taps into our collective memories of youth and dreams and a time long past. But it’s not just an exercise in nostalgia for those of us for whom metal was our teenage obsession, our religion, our escape from reality; for alongside those fifty-somethings throwing themselves around with a reckless abandon, there are young people amongst the crowd who will have never heard these songs live before and are equally enraptured, experiencing something so real, powerful and visceral. 

As it could only be, ‘Iron Maiden’ brings the night to a close and we’re left with another vivid memory of a night spent in the presence of an icon of the genre; for some of us, that’s the latest in a long line that goes back decades, for others it may be their first, but at whichever end of the time tunnel you stand, it’s one that’s going to leave a lasting impression.  

Gypsy’s Kiss promised to take us back to 1974; whilst Di’Anno may not have taken us back quite so far chronologically, more importantly he took many of us back to the person we once were.  And that is a rare and precious thing…Iron Maiden’s gonna get you indeed… 

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Paul Di’Anno + Gypsy’s Kiss