LIVE: BRITISH LION with Tony Moore – Perth, 31 August 2024

Magnet House, Perth, Western Australia

Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

Photography by Linda Dunjey

 

Tony Moore was ever so briefly a member of Iron Maiden when they were still finding their sound – and realising that his keyboards weren’t part of it. He’s here supporting ol’ mucker Steve Harris’s side project British Lion, who are here taking advantage of the Iron Maiden juggernaut traversing the country (Harris being Maiden’s bassist, as I have no doubt you are well aware). Moore went on to play keyboards with Cutting Crew on their smash hit I Just Died In Your Arms Tonight and do a load of other things, which Google can fill you in on.

 

Moore explains that his 2021 solo album Awake – written with the assistance of a lot of lockdown phone calls with Harris – touches on the pandemic’s anxieties and difficulties as well as his mother’s descent into dementia at the time.

 

It’s a deeply personal work of art, performed solo in front of extensive backing tapes – and I use the term art advisedly as it’s as much a prog rock performance piece with a storyline and costume changes as it is a rock concert. At its heart, always, is love, as he implores us from the start – “if all you take away from this is love, that’s great.”

 

As Moore jumps from electric to acoustic guitar to keyboards, a screen behind him swings from pictures of his childhood and his Mum, to AI imagery to support the tracks, including Just One Night, Remember Me, Crazy In The Shed and Asleep, all moving his heartfelt story forwards and – respect – articulating the confusion of the pandemic and the need for more respect and love superbly.

 

It’s an interesting and thoughtful show, one which rewarded proper attention paid (and less mindless chatter, thankyou), and – perhaps surprisingly, given both its unknown nature and its artyness – both riveting and entertaining. 

 

 

British Lion may have taken an album or two to find their feet in the studio, but live they are a bigger, fuller, more powerful force to be reckoned with. That the quintet are exemplary musicians should be no surprise, given Harris’s perfectionism – who, incidentally, is dressed almost exactly as he will be for the following night’s Maiden show, in shorts and a black singlet bearing the slogan “Whale oil beef hooked” which I thank my ol’ mate Andrew for translating in a broad countryside English accent as “well I’ll be fucked”!

 

To address the elephant in the room, no, British Lion don’t sound like Iron Maiden. But they don’t not sound like Maiden either. There are some common threads – Harris’s galloping bass, David Hawkins and Grahame Leslie’s searing guitars, and a shared amount of formative influences – but to over-simplify it, British Lion are a more ‘70s hard rock vibe.

 

Singer Richard Taylor is lithe and sinewy and has a muscular voice to match, while Simon Dawson is a powerhouse drummer. The entire band play as though they’re at the Arena, giving their all to the smallish crowd and sounding epic, especially on Spit Fire (the most Maiden-alike song tonight), the catchy Land Of The Perfect People, The Chosen Ones and Up Against The World.

 

If some of their songs on their 2012 debut album sound a bit lacking in retrospect, they’ve been rebuilt bigger, badder, better. In short, what we have here is a great band playing with depth and intensity, and tonight’s show is relentless and as a bonus includes a brand new track, 2000 Years.

 

Harris is the focal point, of course – part of British Lion’s appeal is the opportunity to see the Maiden bassmeister up close and personal in the flesh in a small club rather than in the distance crammed in with thousands of others. To say that he’s hungry to make a success of his second band is an understatement, and he’s obviously enjoying playing music for its own sake again, without all the trappings of a stadium production.

 

The wall-to-wall Maiden shirts and shouts of “up the Irons” show that the two bands work in tandem – the bigger one perhaps guaranteeing a crowd for the newer – but whether British Lion could tour independently of Maiden remains unknown, despite them winning the crowd over unreservedly after delivering an epic set.

 

Set List:

 

This Is My God

Judas

Father Lucifer

Bible Black

2000 Years

The Burning

Legend

These Are the Hands

A World Without Heaven

Spit Fire

Land of the Perfect People

The Chosen Ones

Us Against the World

Wasteland

Lightning

Last Chance

Eyes of the Young