Live Review: Engelbert Humperdinck @ Hamer Hall

Engelbert Humperdinck said farewell to Australia with eight sell-out shows made up of original ‘60s fans and younger fans of romantic pop.

He made a career out of deep-voiced love songs and matinee looks, his early songs diving into versions of country and Italo-pop where the most emotional stories lay. 

On his 2017 album The Man I Want To Be, he mined similar newer romantic songs by Bruno Mars and Ed Sheeran. The title track sent a powerful message of where he was at the time as an 81-year-old —looking at the highs and lows of his life and still enthusiastically looking to make changes.

The farewell show started with that sentiment, with Funny How Time Slips Away (“I gotta go now” goes one line) and Am I That Easy To Forget, before moving to familiar ground as A Man Without Love and early b-side Ten Guitars.

Another message to his audience about positively dealing with advancing age came with his choice of US country singer Toby Keith’s Don’t Let The Old Man In. Keith wrote the song after meeting actor-director Clint Eastwood at a charity golf tournament in California in 2018.

He told Eastwood he was surprised at how much energy the 88-year-old (he was filming The Mule at the time), and Eastwood responded, "Toby, I don't let the old man in". 

The show was a masterclass in stagecraft, turning a large theatre into a small living room that touched each of the 2,500 people in Hamer Hall. 

The voice was still velvety even at 88, and there were tried-and-true tricks, such as removing his jacket to shrieks, wolf whistles, and wink-wink good-natured humour that sometimes bordered on the bawdy.

Fronting a cracking band, the first high came with the jaunty Quando, Quando, Quando, the uptempo early ‘60s Italo-pop, followed by Simply Red’s If You Don’t Know Me By Now.

His tribute to his late wife Patricia, Everywhere I Go, for which he explained,  "I promised I would sing this everywhere I go,” visibly struck a chord. The upcoming cover of Journey’s piano ballad Faithfully could easily be the song’s bookend.

Spanish Eyes and The Last Waltz followed and peaked with Release Me. Trivia on the latter: Jimmy Page played on the studio version, and it kept The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever / Penny Lane off the top spot in the UK in 1967.

Through How Do You Keep The Music Playing and Kris Kristofferson’s For The Good Times, the Hump said farewell. After a stage exit, he returned in a red Versace dressing gown and gold cuffs and threw red hankies to the crowd. Neither the crowd nor the star wanted to say goodbye, and it showed.