As emotionally resonant and overtly explicit symbols go, the Berlin Wall takes some beating. While its baleful influence has inspired some remarkable music, it’s as well to remember that it wasn’t Bowie, Iggy or Lou Reed atop the rubble when the wall came down: it was David Hasselhoff.
The popular vote generally flies in the face of the critics’ cartel, and so it proved when Barclay James Harvest were invited by the Berlin Senate Cultural Committee to stage a free concert in front of the Reichstag – a brick’s throw from the Berlin Wall – in August 1980. Anywhere between the official figure of 175,000 people and an unofficial head count of close to a quarter of a million turned up. A Concert For The People duly conveys the band’s pre-gig nerves and euphoric sense of occasion once the concert is under way. The opening shots of roadies erecting the staging in the shadow of the wall are as mindboggling as any footage of that dreadful physical and psychic barrier tends to be. As for the music: well, it’s earnest and overstated, as per; but Mockingbird and Hymn have never sounded more anthemic and apposite. Promo film Time Honoured Tales from 1975 rounds out the package.
