Review: P.P. Arnold – Live In Liverpool
P.P. Arnold – Live In Liverpool
Format: CD – Vinyl LP – Digital / Label: earMUSIC
Release: 2024
Text: Tom Wouters
P.P. Arnold, London’s First Lady Of Soul, is an icon of the swinging sixties and seventies. In 1965 the American-born singer joined The Ikettes, the backing vocalists of Ike and Tina Turner.
A year later she relocated to the UK to pick up a solo career, that turned out to become a career as THE backing vocalist for the top of British pop rock. She recorded and toured with The Small Faces, Eric Clapton, Barry Gibb, Paul Weller, Peter Gabriel, Billy Ocean and Roger Waters. From the 1980s on she concentrated mainly on performances in musicals and session work.
But suddenly in 2019 there was a new solo album by the now 73-year-old soul singer, called ‘The New Adventures of… P.P. Arnold.’ The new album was promoted with a major UK Tour. Accompanied by a great 9-piece soul rock band, Arnold toured the UK, a tour that had its grand finale in the Grand Central Hall in Liverpool. And that grand finale was captured on Live In Liverpool and let us hear that P.P. Arnold still deserves her title as London’s First Lady Of Soul.
Soul vocalist P.P. Arnold shines in the first Motown soul tracks Though It Hurts Me Baby, Baby Blue and Everything Is Gonna Be Alright, and in the two tracks of ‘The New Adventures…’ album, the oriental-sounding I Believe and the Motown/Marvin Gaye-esque Hold On To Your Dreams. But that P.P. Arnold has been a pop soul vocalist from the beginning of her career is evident from the large number of pop songs she has in her repertoire, starting with Michael Nesmith’s Different Drum (The Monkees with soul!).
In 1967 Arnold recorded a number of tracks under the production supervision of Barry Gibb and Eric Clapton. The album under the title ‘The Turning Tide’ was never released until 2017.
On ‘Live In Liverpool’ she gives a wonderful rendition of Medicated Goo, originally written and recorded by Traffic. And then one beautifully sung and orchestrated pop song follows the other: a surprisingly beautiful version of Sandy Denny’s (The Grand Lady Of British Folk) I’m A Dreamer, Paul Weller’s Shoot The Dove and Lennon and McCartney’s Eleanor Rigby, which was a hit for her in the UK in the seventies.
Of course, P.P. Arnold’s biggest UK hits are also included, such as Cat Stevens’ The First Cut Is The Deepest (1967) and Chip Taylor’s Angel Of The Morning (1968), but perhaps the highlight of Live In Liverpool is the piano ballad Life Is But Nothing from her first album from 1967, a song she had never sung live before this New Adventures Tour.
‘Live In Liverpool’ is a beautiful live document of the triumphant return of London’s First Lady Of Soul.
Tracks:
01. Though It Hurts Me Badly (Live)
02. Baby Blue (Live)
03. Everything Is Gonna Be Alright (Live)
04. Different Drum (Live)
05. I Believe (Live)
06. Medicated Goo (Live)
07. I’m a Dreamer (Live)
08. Shoot the Dove (Live)
09. (If You Think You’re) Groovy (Live)
10. Hold on to Your Dreams (Live)
11. You Got Me (Live)
12. Eleanor Rigby (Live)
13. Still Trying (Live)
14. The Magic Hour (Live)
15. Angel of the Morning (Live)
16. Life Is but Nothing (Live)
17. God Only Knows (Live)
18. The First Cut Is the Deepest (Live)
Website: https://pparnold.com/home