A Night Of Memories, Hits And A Career Spanning More Than Four Decades
On 24 November 2016, David Essex brought his I’ll Be Missing You Tour to the Regent Theatre in Stoke, carrying with him more than forty years of songs, stage performances and memories. By then, Essex was no longer simply the young heartthrob who had exploded onto the British music scene in the 1970s. He had become one of those rare performers whose career had crossed generations, moving comfortably between pop music, musical theatre, film and television. The 2016 tour was especially significant because it was presented as a farewell style tour, giving these concerts a sense of reflection from the very beginning.
The setlist itself was almost a musical autobiography. Songs such as “Beautiful Day,” “Lamplight,” “Hold Me Close,” “Oh What a Circus,” “A Winter’s Tale,” “Rock On,” “Gonna Make You a Star” and “Silver Dream Machine” brought different chapters of Essex’s career back into the room. “Rock On” had introduced him to a huge audience in 1973, while “Gonna Make You a Star” became a UK No.1 in 1974 and “Hold Me Close” followed with another No.1 in 1975. Decades later, these songs were no longer simply chart records. They had become part of the personal soundtrack of the people standing in the theatre. The setlist documented from other November 2016 dates on the same tour shows just how deliberately the concerts were built around that career spanning journey.
There was also something beautifully appropriate about the tour carrying the title I’ll Be Missing You. Essex had spent much of his career writing and singing about love, distance, memory and the complicated spaces between people. The final section of the show brought the audience through “Here We Are All Together” and “It’s Gonna Be Alright” before arriving at “I’ll Be Missing You.” On the 2016 tour, that final song could feel very different from hearing it on a record. After years of seeing Essex on television, hearing his songs on the radio and watching him move between music and theatre, an audience could suddenly hear those words in the atmosphere of what had been described as a possible final concert tour.
For the Stoke audience, the evening must have carried that particular feeling of watching an old friend return with a suitcase full of familiar songs. “Lamplight” belonged to the early years, when Essex was one of Britain’s most distinctive young stars. “Oh What a Circus” recalled his celebrated connection with Evita, while “A Winter’s Tale” opened another door into his later recording career. Then came “Rock On”, the song that still sounded unmistakably connected to the image of David Essex that had first captured the imagination of Britain in the early 1970s. By 2016, however, the man singing it had lived through decades of changing fashions, changing audiences and changing versions of himself. That history was present in the performance even when the songs themselves remained unchanged.
What makes the 24 November 2016 Stoke footage particularly interesting today is that it preserves a moment just before the tour itself became part of David Essex history. The tour eventually produced I’ll Be Missing You Tour (The Final Show), released in 2017 as a live collection containing performances from the final concert. The album preserves songs from the same career spanning show, including “Beautiful Day” and “Missing You (Magic)”, allowing that period of Essex’s career to live beyond the theatre where it happened.
And perhaps that is why a recording from Stoke’s Regent Theatre on 24 November 2016 feels more valuable with time. There is no need to turn it into something it was not. David Essex simply walked onto a stage and sang the songs that had followed him for most of his adult life. But for the people in that theatre, “Hold Me Close,” “Rock On,” “Gonna Make You a Star” and “A Winter’s Tale” were never just titles on a setlist. Each one could open a different memory. A voice from the 1970s was suddenly standing in front of them again in 2016, carrying the sound of another era into the present. That is the quiet power of the Stoke performance: the concert lasted one evening, but the memories inside those songs had been accumulating for decades.