Leo Sayer and Lulu Team For World Premiere Tour In Australia

Leo Sayer and Lulu together simply works as a show. Individually their hits are staggering. Combined they are mind-blowing.

The Leo and Lulu tour had its world premiere in Australia this week. It was the brainchild of promoter Tim Woods who musically match-made the two icons.

Leo Sayer’s catalogue of hits is gobsmacking. He has had 11 Top 10s, 16 Top 40 and 20 Top 100 hits spanning over 40 years.

Lulu was 16 years old when she had her first hit. She owned The Isley Brothers ‘Shout’ in the UK with the song reaching no 7 for her in 1964. By the time her signature song ‘To Sir With Love’ rolled around in 1967, she was a household name in the UK and still a teenager.

The Leo & Lulu show is not only a walk though some of pop music’s shining moments, the stories these two have to tell are a firsthand account of music history. Lulu was the first person to put Jimi Hendrix on TV. She had a show on the BBC, saw Hendrix in a club and invited him on her show. Jimi didn’t quite understand the rules of TV and instead of performing ‘Hey Joe’, as introduced by Lulu, broke into Cream’s ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. The producers were mighty pissed off. Hendrix was banned from the BBC and never appeared on the network again.

Jimi Hendrix on Lulu’s TV show

(Scroll 7 mins into this video to see what happened).

Lulu was married to Maurice Gibb from the Bee Gees. She dedicated their ‘Run To Me’, ‘To Love Somebody’ and ‘I Gotta Send A Message To You’ to that period in her life. She was in the room when the Bee Gees wrote ‘Run To Me’, their first day back in the studio after breaking up and shared the story of the reformation that created one of their greatest hits.

There is her Bond theme ‘The Man With The Golden Gun’. She’s not fussed on it. I think it is one of the classic Bond themes. (Fun Fact: Alice Cooper did submit his own theme for this movie. His song was rejected in favour of the Lulu one. Alice put his on his next album ‘Muscle of Love’).

Lulu – The Man With The Golden Gun

Lulu also starred in the controversial movie ‘To Sir With Love’ and sang the theme. That came about via a smart manager who wrote it into her contract to appear in the film.

Lulu – To Sir With Love

The younger end of the audience were treated to her hit with Take That ‘Relight My Fire’ with Leo filling all parts of the boy band.

Take That with Lulu – Re-Light My Fire

Then there was ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, her Bowie penned UK hit produced by Bowie and featuring Bowie on sax on her version. Its incredible the amount of music history bookmarks Lulu has in her career.

Lulu The Man Who Sold The World

I had no idea until this show that Lulu wrote the Tina Turner global hit ‘I Don’t Wanna Fight’. Lulu wrote the song about the break-up of her second marriage to John Frieda. It worked for Tina in the context of the ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ biopic. It was even more emotional performed by its composer.

Tina Turner – I Don’t Want To Fight

Leo Sayer faces an unusual predicament when doing a show like this. He has to cut back his setlist. With so many hits that is a dilemma but somehow Leo managed to add one song he had not performed in a long time in Australia, ‘Dancing The Night Away’.

Leo Sayer – Dancing The Night Away

Leo has currency in his catalogue. While Rod Stewart gets the accolades (and in recent news the Knighthood) Leo has a greatest hits portfolio that rivals Sir Roderick of the Round Table.

The show opened with ‘Thunder In My Heart’ and while it did get the audience’s hearts racing when a spotlight falls on Leo Sayer and he sings ‘Have You Ever Been In Love’, the audience goes silent and just listens. True classics like this became frequent in this show. ‘Moonlighting’ drew a similar reaction.

Leo Sayer – Have You Ever Been In Love

Leo Sayer – Moonlighting

And on it goes … ‘More Than I Can Say’, ‘Long Tall Glasses’, ‘When I Need You’ and the finale ‘You Make Me Feel Like Dancing’ are songs everyone knows, everyone loves and everyone sings alone too.