This year’s City Pulse festival was a rather weak affair, mainly comprising of nostalgia bands with one original member. There was only one act worth watching on the main stage today, and it was a 77-year-old man. Rock and Roll nearly man Wee Willie Harris rounded off an afternoon of 1950s based jollity. Perhaps due to the rain, the crowd was not as big as it should have been for such a significant artist, (who was according to Ian Dury, A ‘Reason To Be Cheerful’), but like the old school professional that he undoubtedly is, he played as it were Madison Square Gardens.
Amazingly, he was playing with a band he had only met 24 hours prior to this gig, but they played as if they had been together since the first toddling steps of Rock ‘n Roll as we know it. Shuffling around the stage like a cross between Ted Bovis and Charlie Drake, his body might not have been quite up to the job, but his voice was as powerful as ever. Wee Willie Harris still has ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ is.
