Ten minutes before James Brown is due to appear on an English stage for the first time since his release from prison, there is an emergency message over the PA system: could a hairdresser please go immediately to Mr Brown's trailer? Clearly, this is no Woodstock.
What can have happened? Perhaps the Godfather's pompadour has flopped at the last minute, which could mean anything from emergency para-tonsorial treatment to the cancellation of the show. But then, just as such worries start to nag, James's band is up onstage, vamping away, and a white-tailed MC asks us to welcome The Soul General. This, it transpires, is not another of The Minister Of The New New Super Heavy Funk's countless stage pseudonyms, but the name of his latest band, an enormous aggregation featuring two drummers, a percussionist, two keyboardists, two guitarists, three horns (two trumpeters and one saxist doubling on tenor and gorgeous baritone), four backing vocalists, four dancers, the white-tailed MC, an arm-waving band leader, a managerial-looking chap in a black suit who stands at the corner of the stage gesticulating at the audience, and – most unusually – two ba**ists, one of whom rattles out the riffs while the other mainly just cradles his instrument, adding a little high-register emphasis on certain parts. And, following a string of one-bar excerpts from his most famous songs by way of introduction, James himself appears, in red glitter catsuit and silver shoes, pompadour proudly aloft, belting through 'Living In America'.
The show is as slick as you'd expect, though for an old pro James makes a couple of mistakes early on in his set. The first is when he appends a supposedly crowd-pleasing "London, England!" to a list of place-names in time-honoured showbiz manner. The response is negligible, so he tries again. Still no go: if he'd said "Illford", or perhaps even "Romford", things would have been different with the Ess** soulboy crowd, but Americans are traditionally baffled by the intricacies of British parochialism. The second mistake is when the atmosphere built up through 'Cold Sweat' and 'Gonna Have A Funky Good Time' is dissipated by a long jazz vamp on which the band-members take turns to solo. It serves to show how James makes sure his bands are always up to R&B scratch by choosing jazz musicians – and the sight of him conducting the band, ushering the riff from one soloist to another with a wave of his hand, like Zappa, is admittedly entertaining for a while – but the lengthy jazz noodling cools a crowd primed for funk. As, it must be said, does his ill-judged rendition of 'If I Ruled The World'. What's going on here?
It's noticeable, too, that James is less energetic than before, but I suppose the same goes for us all. He eventually executes a little twirl and knee-drop in 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World', expertly catching a tottering mikestand on his way round, and momentarily gets on the good foot in 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag', scuttling across the stage on one limb, but for the most part he lets the band, and especially the scantily-clad dancers, take the strain. This is understandable, but still disappointing: it's far more interesting, surely, to see a 66-year-old man getting on the good foot, however restrictedly, than lithe young ladies shaking their tail feathers with abandon. Well, maybe.
There's no faulting his stamina though: James plays for about an hour and a half, ultimately covering most of the bases up to a finale of 'I Feel Good' and 'Please Please Please', whereupon the blue lame cape is brought out and ritually refused a couple of times, before the show closes with a sizzling 'Sex Machine'. The first flush of his youth may be but a distant memory, but James Brown is still the hardest-working man in showbiz.