George HaffendenThe icons long awaited return to the UK finally made it to London’s O2 arena.
After two years of COVID related delays, there was always a risk that the reclusive star would actually do the tour at all. After all, surely someone like Diana Ross doesn’t need to spend her later years travelling and touring.
But promises made, promises kept, and the Motown icon appears to have made a triumphant return to the UK, her first appearances here in over a decade.
Given her slightly wobbly performance at the Platinum Jubilee concert a few weeks previous (either was she miming, or more likely, using a backing track she either couldn’t hear or remember), I was nervous the tour wouldn’t be the success that she deserved. Thankfully, I needn’t have worried. Even at 78, this diva knows the score.
She might be pushing 80 but the UK and European tour dates have been crammed in, including 2 dates at London’s O2 Arena. Inflation might be sky high, but these tickets were expensive when they first went on sale in 2019. The cheapest in Level 4 is about 80 quid, whereas where we sat on Level 2 it’s £125. Considering Ross’s show is a 90 minute set, it’s almost a pound a minute.
Either times are hard in the Ross household – or the promoter is seeking to make money from a twice delayed tour – but there’s no support act as such. Instead poor DJ Ruckas has his decks wheeled on stage, and tries his best to mix 70s and 80s jams for an hour before Ross takes the stage. He gets some of the audience up dancing, but given the mix of older and younger in the crowd, he’s got a tough gig. And for most, there’s only one person they’ve come to see.
As the band begin the opening overture and the big screens run through highlights from Ross’s career, the entire arena stood up in unison as the opening bars of ‘I’m Coming Out’ rang out. Ross appears in her first outfit of the night to a thunderous applause, and for the next 20 minutes the fast pace continues as she performs songs from The Supremes and, presumably for her own enjoyment, a cover of ‘More Today Than Yesterday’.
The setlist was broadly the same as the time we saw her in Las Vegas (and apparently she hasn’t changed much of the set in about a decade). The first 20 minute block was dedicated to The Supremes, and as the only original Supreme left after Mary Wilson’s untimely passing, the legacy of the group now rests with her. But given she’d need hours and hours to sing just the Supremes catalogue alone, Ross sings just six of their greatest hits: ‘Baby Love’, ‘My World Is Empty Without You’, ‘Stop In The Name of Love’, ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ and ‘Love Child’. Considering (if you look at her live albums) she barely used to touch the Supremes material, this is pretty good going.
With the first set complete, the band vamped ‘Love Child’ while Ross danced offstage into what I can only describe as a small gazebo to change gowns. A few moments later – in another elegant gown and matching fan – Ross reappeared, immediately launching into ‘Chain Reaction’, although at times she struggled to keep up with the frantic pace of the song. Not that it mattered, as the crowd sang half of it for her.
Then onto another UK-favourite, ‘I’m Still Waiting’. Not originally a single until DJ Tony Blackburn plucked it from the Everything is Everything album, it eventually went to Number 1 in 1971 (I assume Blackburn got a card of thanks, at the very least). At The O2, this generates another mass singalong.
Then it’s back to the disco with a fierce version of ‘Upside Down’, complete with more singalongs and dancing, before exclaiming that “If I can move my body at 47 like this…” before admitting that, actually, she’s 78. And to be fair, I can’t imagine I’ll be dancing and singing like that at 78.
The disco continues with a slightly odd medley of ‘Love Hangover’, ‘Take Me Higher’ and ‘Ease On Down The Road’, taken from the film The Wiz, originally featuring Michael Jackson. All songs are great and the band and singers do a fantastic job on them, but with a song like ‘Love Hangover’ that’s originally like 7 minutes long, cramming it into a medley feels like a waste. Nevertheless, it’s still great – and ‘Take Me Higher’ is one of Ross’s later-era masterpieces.
And with that it was time for another gown change, and, much to the delight of her record label, time to plug the new album Thank You. As we wrote last year, Thank You promised so much, yet delivered very little. Yet given Ross’s involvement in writing and producing the album (co-producer Troy Miller is also in the band for this tour), it’s unsurprising that she wanted to drop a couple of songs into the set. ‘If The World Just Danced’ was the better of the two, and with that horn section, it sounded much better live than the version on the LP.
Sensing perhaps that the crowd might not have come to hear relatively unknown material, the band then went back to her classics: ‘Theme From Mahogany’ and the classic ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’. She really shines on the latter, again with another mass singalong. It’s the highlight of the evening, and the climax of the show.
Then, despite having songs like ‘The Boss’ or ‘Touch Me In The Morning’ or even ‘It’s My House’ in the locker, Ross instead sang an extended version of ‘I Will Survive’. Of course, the original by Gloria Gaynor is far superior to Ross’s own version on the Take Me Higher album, Ross’s arrangement (particularly with her backing vocalists) is sensational on stage. And there’s no denying it didn’t get the crowd moving.
At this point Ross seemed to be struggling – she complained earlier in the show she was losing her voice – and gave her daughter Rhonda the mic to sing a verse (her entire family seemed to be in the front row, to Ross’s obvious delight). But ever the diva, she completed one final outfit change for the encore.
Ross returned wearing what can only be described as sparkly pyjamas, and took a chair centre stage to invite the audience to shout out any questions they might have (no one shouted, “WHERE’S CINDY?” – but I suspect no one else cares about where the only other Supreme alive who performed with Ross is).
The Q&A is a nice idea if you’re in a smaller venue, like her Vegas residencies in a more intimate theatre, but in the vast O2 Arena Ross couldn’t hear anything. She did manage to answer one question – “What’s your favourite record?” – using it conveniently to flog her album again, and started singing her final song of the night ‘Thank You’. Compared with the rest of the album (as we wrote about last year), ‘Thank You’ is pretty decent. And it was fitting that for her encore, the thanks go both ways from performer to audience and back again.
At nearly a pound a minute, the show is nevertheless a triumph. The crowd on the floor, and around us on level 1 most people barely sat down for the 90 minutes, even during the night’s slower numbers.
We may have all gone to hear those classic Motown hits, but it also felt like the audience was there to pay their own tribute to an iconic figure who is reaching the end of her long, glittering career. Any bum notes or forgotten cues are forgiven, everyone willing Ross on for potentially one final time.
If that’s the last time we in the UK get to see her perform, what a truly magnificent way to bow out. There are few women as revolutionary or iconic as Diana Ross in music, and for an hour and half we got to experience one of the original divas in full glory.