Live Review: Magnum - Manchester : The Razor's Edge

Live Review: Magnum - Academy, Manchester

22nd January 2025

Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Scott Clarke

It’s been a year since the death of founder, guitarist and main songwriter, Tony Clarkin, just before the release of the Magnum’s twenty-third studio record, Here Comes the Rain, and this short, five-date tour, is to be the band’s farewell.

Manchester is the second night of the trek; London last night and Glasgow tomorrow, with the final couple of performances coming from Wolverhampton’s KK Steel Mill over the weekend. Quite fitting as the final official Magnum release featuring Tony was the in-concert record, Live at KK’s Steel Mill, issued a couple of weeks back.

Billed as A Passage of Time: A Tribute to Tony Clarkin, Magnum’s close relationship with their fans means this tour is a way to say goodbye to a performer and a band that clearly means a lot to the people here tonight. Proven by the spontaneous outpouring of affection when Bob first mentions his name.

Cheers and applause fill the venue, and the air rings with the chant of “Tony”, stopping the show for a moment. Prior to this, Magnum had teased us by opening the first half of the set with How Far Jerusalem; its heavy sweeping intro seeing a masked figure standing before the drum-riser, announcing the track. It feels slower and heavier than usual, the solid hits of the establishing rhythm more deliberate and reshaped to compliment Bob’s maturing voice.

But it’s a classic Magnum tune for a reason and gives a hope that On a Storyteller’s Night might be played in its entirety tonight. No such luck as Lost on the Road to Eternity’s title tune blends chugging guitars – courtesy of long-standing guitar tech, Brendon Riley – with vast and lush sweeping sounds. A forest of hands sway in the grandiose bombast, while the light and airy feel of Wild Swan is accompanied by the stage washed in indigo illumination.

Central to the first half of the show are three songs you wouldn’t necessarily be expecting. 1994’s When We Were Younger is a proggy hard rocker, opening with tumbling, cascading keys and some gritty riffing; The Tall Ships, from 1994’s Rock Art album, has Bob, Brendon and bassist Dennis Ward all seated and acoustic’d up, sounding like the more radio-friendly latter-era Marillion at times, it’s a world away from the ominous darker tones of The Flood (Red Cloud’s War).

Always including an anti-war song on each album, tonight Magnum close out the first section of the show with crowd-pleasers Les Morts Dansants and Wings of Heaven’s epic closer, Don’t Wake the Lion (Too Old to Die Young). Both arrive and are greeted like long lost friends and fulfil the promise of their classic status.

The band then take a short break and return with one of the oldest songs in the set, Soldier on the Line from the third record, 1982 Chase the Dragon. It’s clear that the older material is something ingrained into the psyche of many of the attendees, fragments of the soundtrack to their lives. Knowing that this will be the last chance to see them live and to be immersed in their waves as they flow from the PA is a moving feeling.

Just Like an Arrow clearly means much to many of the couples in the room, and Vigilante’s Need a Lot of Love makes references to many situations alien to more contemporary listeners, but the overall message of the song can’t be lost on anyone paying attention these days. On a Storyteller’s Night and All England’s Eyes make it fifty-percent of that album played tonight, Vigilante is a rollicking stomper of a tune that never fails to reinvigorate a tiring crowd and the set is closed by the obligatory Kingdom of Madness.

For their encore and their last musical interaction with Manchester, Magnum goes back to Chasing the Dragon and one of their signature moments, The Spirit, leaving us with our memories of them through an emotionally wrought and fitting When the World Comes Down.

As I file out with the rest of the crowd, I’m filled with a certain amount of sadness that Magnum is now over. They say you never forget your first, and my mind goes back to that April night in 1988, at the Guild Hall in Preston, and my first ever proper gig. Now, thirty-seven years – and about 5000 bands – later and the comforting knowledge that Magnum are there if needed is no more. It’s a truism to say “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone”.