Autumn 2022 has seen a number of eagerly awaited shows announced pre-Covid finally come to fruition. One such is Richard Marx, who after his first UK show in ages supporting Barbara Streisand at Hyde Park then announced some solo acoustic shows at the Union Chapel for April 2020. Well, look how that turned out.

Fortunately the American was true to his word and after queuing outside to bag an unreserved spot on the hard pews of this converted Church, the crowd was crackling with anticipation long before a rather humblebragging on screen montage of his achievements and archive interviews heralded his arrival. Casually dressed in denim, his ever youthful appearance belied his 59 years (cue the Dorian Gray clichés).

With happy timing these shows coincided with the release of a new (and bumper) album, ‘Songwriter’, though this was not the focus of the show. Indeed he admitted that as a fan he always wanted his favourite bands to play the hits, so, armed only with an acoustic guitar, he opened with three songs that were exactly that in ‘Endless Summer Nights’, ‘Take This Heart’ and ‘Satisfied’, with a bit of a sing-along on the latter. After initially there was a slightly raspy edge to his usually pure voice, on ‘Keep Coming Back’ he hit his stride with a super smooth delivery including holding an extended note at the end.

To carry off an intimate solo show requires warmth of personality as well as musical talent, and he showed a healthily irreverent sense of humour, affable but with a sense of mischief never far away (notably an anecdote about failing to give Bryan Adams quite the correct information about a sore throat treatment!).

He invited people to shout out requests for songs that otherwise wouldn’t be in the set and after ‘The Way She Loves Me’ a snatch of ‘My Confession’ was one such. Of course there had to be a smattering of songs from the new album. Divided into pop, country, rock and ballads as if to show his wide talent, the former was represented by new single ‘Same Heartbreak Different Day’.

And though a one man show, on certain songs such as that he was aided from time to time by a video projection, also providing a recorded accompaniment. Another showed his three adult sons harmonising with him to ‘When You Loved Me’ while a surprisingly early ‘Hazard’ was also accompanied by the story song’s video.

Richard then moved to a grand piano for a request in ‘Chains Around My Heart’ and the song penned for Josh Groban ‘To Where You Are’. He then complied with another shouted request for ‘Through My Veins’ which he wrote as a tribute to his late musical father. It seemed to knock him sideways as he spent a moment rubbing away tears from his face before saying ‘to whoever requested that, I don’t know whether to say thank you or ‘f— you’, before composing himself, looking up at the chapel’s high ceilings and saying ‘he would have loved this place ‘. He then spoke equally proudly of his collaboration with a 94 years young Burt Bacharach on new song ‘Always’.

Returning to guitar, I was pleased to hear one of my favourite songs ‘Too Late To Say Goodbye’ before singing the praises of son Jesse and introducing a rocker they had written together in ‘Shame On You’ with the surprisingly angry lyrics from the usually mild-mannered figure- ‘sitting in that chair, wasting all that air…’.

A single ‘Front Row Seat’ from last year’s ‘Limitless’ album was accompanied by a soft focus video of Richard at home with wife Daisy and dog, enjoying a lazy morning in bed or strolling the ocean beach, leaving us all feeling rather inadequate at the state of our own lifestyles, while not begrudging such an obviously good guy the fruits of his success.

Son Lucas joined him to harmonise in ‘This I Promise You’, a hit for N’sync, further proof how he successfully reinvented himself as a contemporary songwriter when fashions changed and his own run of solo hits dried up.

After some more snatches of requests, including to my own personal delight Vixen’s ‘Edge of A Broken Heart’, admittedly written for a female voice rather than his own, he joked he would rather people not sing along and ruin his ballads ‘Now And Forever’ and ‘Hold On To The Nights’. However he then tested the superb acoustics in the venue to the full, going without mike as he went to the edge of the crowd to sing ‘Angelia’ before we were finally allowed to sing along to ‘Should Have Known Better’.

There was of course one obvious encore yet to be played, but we got three of them- a virtual duet with Vertical Horizon’s Matt Scannell on ‘This One’, then debut single ‘Don’t Mean Nothing’, preceded by an anecdote about being flown to Ronnie Scott’s for his debut UK show, being upset he wasn’t getting the reception he was getting elsewhere and finding it was a press-only event for jaded hacks.

Finally, as he reverted to piano he closed with ‘Right Here Waiting’, even more beautiful in this most still of environments with the clarity of the sound bringing out the emotional catch in his pure voice.

One man with just a guitar, his voice and a few stories had managed to hold people enraptured for a generous 2 hours and 20 minutes. Witty, well-preserved, a family man, and surviving the music industry with sanity intact, there is much to admire about Richard Marx. But these special surroundings brought out the most important of all, his ear for writing memorable songs.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

Album review (Songwriter, 2022)

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

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