Hull, Supporting Elton John - 19th July 2003

 The day was brilliant and the band/David sounded fab.

TRIP TO HULL

O.K. then folks are you ready, hope you don’t get too bored. Might take a while.

Great journey up to Hull, on route, masses of text messages and phone calls flying all over the place, yes we are all as excited as each other and everyone’s checking to see where each other is. The excitement is gradually building, to calm our nerves, we decided to play the entire Sneddon collection in the car, well you have to really!!

THE HOTEL/JOURNEY TO STADIUM

Arrive safely, on the way, see a helicopter coming in just over Hull, both myself and Leeza immediately say "hey that’s David" (we later find out it was). In hotel, Sue introduces herself, tells us about her journey up and we agree to walk to the ground together. Whilst it had been hot on the journey up, in Hull it seems to be boiling, and during the course of our 20 minute walk to the stadium, with Leeza directing us, it gets more and more stifling. We decide to upgrade our seats, to get a better view of David (well we’ll come back to that one).

It’s now 4.00p.m. and we have over an hour and a half to wait until David is on stage. We decide anyway to walk round to the back of the stadium, where there are security people and an access road, which we assume is the most likely route David will take into the stadium. It’s hot, we are all tired, but hey spirits are high!. After a bit of loitering with intent, a journalist/photographer approaches our group, and asks to do an interview with us, they first speak to Sue, and ask her name, age, etc and then "why are you here". Sue replies to "see David Sneddon". Journalist looks taken aback, and then says "what do you like about David Sneddon", well I’m mean ask a silly question folks! (but hey Sue you soon put him straight girl - love the headline too). We have a group photograph taken.

Shortly afterwards, John appears, near the back door, we all rush up, get autographs, he says David’s not arrived yet. I then put my pennyworth in and say that he must tell David how brilliant "Let You Go" is, that a lot of people on the site love it and also am amazed that David does not think it is good enough. John looks a bit startled and then says that he previously got confused when he spoke to Hazel- at CRC and that it is not called "Let You Go" but "Shadow" instead.  O.K. excitement over, but where’s David, we spend next half an hour or so, waiting for his car to arrive and when cars do arrive, which we think contains David they run into another stage door. Oh well, we had better get into our seats.

THE CONCERT

Arrive inside the stadium, find our seats about a third of the way on the pitch, with a good view of stage.

5.20p.m. David is announced, and starts the intro to a song which does not sound familiar, a few seconds in realise it’s "Follow Me". Stadium is not full and there appears to be empty spaces at the front, so we run up towards the stage and stand and stare. Just to say, David looks absolutely stunning, even better than on the telly and it’s lovely to be so close.

David starts "BOO", two girls are running up towards the stage, one turns round and I notice that this is David’s sister Pauline, the other one with long red hair is of course Eleanor. It is totally evident that as soon as David catches Eleanor’s eye, he has eyes for nobody else!

We notice there are a couple of empty seats in the third row from the front and sit down. People are cheering, and clapping and enjoying themselves. Suddenly a bloke appears near where we are sitting, taking photographs and shouting "We Love you David", the security people try to stop him taking photos and he protests that he is David’s Dad, we look round and yes it really is David’s Dad AH!  We all start jumping up and down and cheering and then realise the camera is on us (oops).  

David did a stonking version of "BOO" and was excellent, a very lively performance.

David’s also performs "Don’t Let Go", "Bluebird", Lazy" and O.K. and lastly "Stop Living the Lie".

A special mention to the absolute terrific version of "St. Pepper’s", what more could you ask! and shows his versatility off to a tee. 

Also a truly wonderful acoustic session, with John on guitar, of my favourite song on the album "Long Time Coming". The power, the range, the control of his voice was exceptional.

A truly wonderful concert, and David did us proud and, of course, converted some more people.

I will always remember  - talking to the man behind us, who was a staunch Elton John fan, he was very impressed with David and we all told him to buy "SYTW" (well Leeza - did really) The ladies behind us enquiring of Leeza who we were and all about David Sneddon. Gave us tremendous pride.

AFTER THE CONCERT   

We arrive in a heap at hotel, all hungry and tired, but full of talk of the wonderful concert. By the way, Elton John was pretty good, gutted we missed David coming down to the stage, we were getting refreshments.

We all watched clips of other’s video cameras, digital cameras and my memory is of myself, Leeza and Sue acting like a pair of schoolgirls watching the clip of "Long Time Coming" on the video camera.

Wonderful, it was too.

So that’s it, sorry if I left anything out or rambled on too long.

It was truly great to meet everybody, you all know who you are and made the day even more extra special!.

Question: How to have the perfect day.

Answer: Do all of the above!

A

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'I had a really good time out there. The show went really well. We've had some of the best feedback we've had all summer.' David