The Guardian (London)
June 13, 1998
A Real Big Splendour;
Only one woman can out-oomph Diana Ross.
For the many crop-haired young men in the crowd, it was as if their birthdays, Christmas and Eurovision had all come at once. The divas' diva had just swept on stage, resplendent in regulation gold divawear, and was standing absolutely still, glittering. Even before she opened her mouth, the boys' brigade rose and led a standing ovation that seemed to go on and on. Your correspondent has seen Diana Ross, Whitney Houston and Madonna, and none of them got a reaction even approaching this.
Then the flowers began to arrive, starting with white tulips proffered by a blushing twentysomething. Shirley Bassey, CBE, looked the tiniest bit perturbed. Perhaps her sequins were giving her gyp, or she could have been contemplating tiptoeing through all those tulips for the next 10 sold-out nights. But her smile soon returned, and she glittered again, the combined wattage of teeth and gown blinding the front row.
Although Bassey lends herself to affectionate parody - a drag queen isn't a drag queen unless Shirley is in his act, along with Judy and Barbra - it is generally agreed that she's a Good Thing. And now, after years of gay-icondom, she's having a pop moment. As a result of last year's heavily camped-up collaboration with DJ duo the Propellerheads, Bassey is fashionable again. Tickets for her London run were snapped up, and a new pictorial biography, My Life On Record And In Concert, went on sale this week. The public even chuckled indulgently when she was taken to court by her former assistant over alleged diva-ish behaviour (she won the case).
This Diamond Tour commemorates the 61-year-old singer's 40th year in showbiz, and the girl has learned a thing or two along the way. One, pardon my prurience, is how to wear a sheer, side-slit dress, often hiked up to the thighs to display enviably toned legs, without showing anything she shouldn't. The other, as Tony Bennett has latterly discovered, is that if you keep doing your thing without trying to 'modernise', the zeitgeist will eventually find you again. Bennett may still be wearing the same tux and singing the same songs as he was in 1956, but guess what, he's doing Glastonbury this year. By the same token, Bassey, whose act has been based on glistening eveningwear and show tunes since the dawn of time, is the obvious choice for '99.
Of course, she may have a problem with the mud, and isn't likely to appreciate the revellers' taste in crumbling combat trousers. She takes so much trouble to look old-school glamorous in her floor-length gowns and diamond jewellery that it's only fair to meet her halfway. At London's Festival Hall, ties were de rigueur for the gentlemen, and the ladies were uniformly sparkly. She repaid the effort by putting on the sort of show that is only performed by a dwindling clutch of entertainers who reached maturity before the rock'n'roll era.
Basseyworld is different from the real world, where guitar strings break and singers are grumpy. In Basseyworld there's an impeccable 22-piece band, the star knows how to flirt without getting too familiar, and songs tell stories. She even explained the songs before she sang them: 'This one always reminds me of my first big love. He went away to London and left me in Cardiff. . .' God knows where the gent in question is now, but Shirl sang the song like it happened yesterday, eyes closed, arms beseechingly outstretched.
It was all a fantastic fake, of course. She was no more tearful over the ex -boyfriend than she was terrified when Goldfinger beckoned her to enter his web of sin. It didn't stop her from acting out the songs - going utterly over the top, fingers fluttering, eyes wide. And when she ended Goldfinger on the longest sustained note I've ever heard - she could teach Pavarotti a few tricks - the place erupted into a frenzy of applause.
So it went for the rest of the 90 minutes. Songs began and finished with a blast from her well-muscled larynx, with quieter bits in the middle. When a song has been Basseyed, it doesn't know what hit it. Several thousand people will never again be able to hear Madonna's You'll See without picturing Shirley clutching her bosom and turning Maddy's wimpy ballad into something gothic and huge.
Her fans were similarly pummelled and left gasping for air. During Kiss Me, Honey Honey she summoned three scarlet-faced acolytes to the stage, allowed them a peck on the cheek and sent them to their seats, broken men. When she got to Big Spender, her hip-shaking rendition of the classic gold-digger's anthem made a cluster of fans so forget themselves that they pushed their way to the front. 'Well, if you like it so much, I'll sing it again,' said Shirl, and she did. What a girl. 'Fabulous' doesn't do her justice.
By: CAROLINE SULLIVAN