“Don’t worry, we’re not finished with you yet,” said Debbie Harry after a mesmerising performance of Rapture. And boy, she wasn’t wrong.
Blondie helped define the sound of New York’s new wave punk scene of the late 1970s, and on Sunday night, they made their long-awaited return to Manchester. Fans, young and old, were treated to hit after hit in what was almost two hours of non-stop electricity at Manchester’s AO Arena.
Special guest Johnny Marr took to the stage first, tasked with warming up what was initially a reserved, bums firmly-on-seats crowd. But he soon got them up on their feet with a dose of Mancunian-fuelled nostalgia. From the unmistakable riff of Charming Man to tremolo pulse of How Soon is Now and not forgetting There Is a Light That Never Goes Out - Marr looked and sounded genuinely happy to give a whistle-stop tour of The Smiths’ back-catalogue. He occasionally peppered it with some of his newer, underrated, solo material.
