They say it's not Christmas until you see Darlene Love and Wednesday night's concert at BergenPAC in Englewood, N.J. proved they were right. At 70 years old Darlene looks great and sounds great and looks exactly like in the picture above. Performing in a shiny gold jacket over a satin gold pantsuit and alternating between 4 and ten back up singers and an 8 piece band, Darlene proves she's still got it, full of enthusiastic enegy and can really wail.
For those of you not familiar with Darlene, she was in the original girl band groups of rock n' roll in the 60's being produced by Phil Spector who was a recording and producing genius before going insane recently. Darlene appeared prominantly on his famous Christmas album which she sang songs from last night. Darlene appeared in groups such as The Crystals and Bob E. Sox and the Bluejeans. She also appeared in the broadway production of Hairspray for three years doing 8 performances a week with only one day off each week.,"I'll never do that again," she said, "But we did have a lot of fun even though it was exhausting." She also appeared in all four of the Lethal Weapon movies as Danny Glover's wife.
At Wednesday's concert she opened with "Joy to the World" followed by "Marshmellow World."Darlene then went into some of her early hits such as "Da Doo Ron Ron," "The Boy I'm Gonna Marry," He's a Rebel" and "The Boy I Love."
After a brief 15 minute intermission Darlene returned and did "Winter Wonderland" and "White Christmas" She then introduced surprise guest Freida Payne who I haven't heard from since 1970 with her hit "Band of Gold" which she sang. Freida sang a few jazz numbers and Darlene joined her on Marvin Gaye's "How Sweet It Is (To be Loved By You)"
Darlene said she waited until she was 40 years old to begin a solo career and it was then that Bill Medley of the Righteous Brothers influenced her to go solo. She was in L.A. at the time when Stevie Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's band got her to come to New York to perform. That was 30 years ago she explained and she's been performing ever since. Her greatest accomplishment was being recently inducted into to the Rock 'n' Roll hall of fame. Darlene ended her concert with a fabulous encore everyone had been waiting for, her big hit Christmas song, "Christmas, Baby Please Come Home" which got everyone clapping and and singing along. The whole cast came out for that song including six of the cutest ten year olds in red dresses with white fur trim, one of which was Darlene's granddaughter all dancing to the song. Darlene has been singing that song every year now on the David Letterman Show and will again this year on Thursday night. To see Darlene sing that song on Letterman's show from last year, just click on the link below and enjoy. :)
1 comment:
Jaycee,
Nice review. Darlene Love waited too long to get the recognition she deserved from the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.
Interesting that Bill Medley persuaded her to embark on a solo career: In the '60s, I think, she had an affair with either him or the other Righteous Brother, Bobby Hatfield (I forget which)--they were all under contract to Spector--but had to hide the relationship because of the racism of the time.
In my opinion, Spector has been insane for far longer than "recently." In the 1970s, he pulled a gun when working with John Lennon on a solo album. Others (such as Springsteen's saxman, Clarence Clemons), had similar experiences. Ex-wife Ronnie Spector thought the fatal shooting accident from several years ago was very, very long in the making.--Miketubs
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