I’ve just seen the delectable Rufus playing at Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath and it was a dream.
Although the skies had glowered on-and-off all day, there was, miraculously, no rain, and we sat in our striped deckchairs and drank in his luscious voice along with free fruit cider and a gradual music-drawn moonlight.
I’d seen him once before, but that was in front of a distracted Hyde Park festival crowd, where he was sandwiched between mediocre performers in one of those 3-songs-per-artist days; it wasn’t really his natural element.
This time the Kenwood grandeur was like a homecoming, allowing him to stretch out and bask in a committed fan-base who cheered and whooped the opening chords of every song.
At which point his natural, effortless talent as a performer was almost startling; he was so patently born to do nothing else. Chatty, totally relaxed and yet intent on getting everything right, at one point, half-way through a typically grandiose piano introduction he suddenly stopped playing -“Sorry, the mike’s too close and it’s making a weird sound,” he explained placidly, and so he started all over again, hammering out the beautifully broken chords like it was Rachmaninov.
“You’re in my living room“, he added, smiling, which was exactly how it felt, if his living-room was a massive outdoor park carpeted with grass, where you were allowed to picnic and hear him mess around and thread sweet harmonies on a grand piano.
Live, it’s striking how totally unpop-like his voice is, with its high classical power and span; trained so he can splice long notes seamlessly, sipping breaths you can’t tell where.
“Where you been Zebulon?“, about an unconsummated crush on a schoolfriend from Canada, was a gem of a song that I hadn’t heard before, including the characteristically lovely lines: “I only need your eyes/ Your nose was always too big for your face/ Still it made you look kinda sexy, more like someone who belongs in the human race”.
And he ended his three-song encore with his ever-assured, pitch-perfect version of Hallelujah. My thoughts exactly.
“his ever-assured, pitch-perfect version of Hallelujah”
See, this is why I don’t much like his Hallelujah. Wainwright makes it pretty, and sad. Where’s the anger at a petty, incomprehensible god tormenting his worshippers?
It’s not just Wainwright; most other recorded versions seem to blank out the rage, and even Leonard Cohen tiptoes over the most powerful bits.
The Hallelujah I want is one screamed by a despairing, half-crazed old man, beaten by the world but adoring it regardless. I haven’t heard it yet.