Friday 22nd December - Manchester Apollo

I was fifteen at the time and this was the event me and my mates had been waiting for since early summer when tickets went on sale. Like everyone else, we got down to the Apollo before the doors opened and joined the longest, most over-excited queue I've ever waited in outside a gig. Typically, it was pissing it down, but everyone was far too hyper to care.

The atmosphere inside the Apollo was one of total anticipation, I still couldn't believe they were actually going to turn up. The wait seemed to go on forever, the excitement really began to build once the stage was set up. The sound system was playing a lot of dancey, northern soul stuff. The lights went down and the machines started to cough out tonnes of smoke.

The recorded intro to Breaking into Heaven kicked in, but still no Roses. I was right down the front in the pit and after a couple of minutes the stage was totally covered by the smoke, the searchlights waving madly. By this point the crowd was totally frantic, everyone craning to see through the smoke. As the bass kicked in to I Wanna Be Adored, I could just about pick out the shape of John Squire. The smoke cleared to reveal Ian Brown, face framed by Parka hood, staring out into the crowd. John's guitar kicked in, 4,000 ecstatic Mancs singing every note.

To be honest, the start of the gig may be etched into my memory, but the rest of it is a bit of a blur. It was the most energetic, excited crowd I've been in, at one point, possibly during She Bangs The Drums, my section of the pit fell to the floor domino-style.

Ian's voice was excellent, at least to me (one reason why I'll never listen to the bootleg) except at the start of Your Star Will Shine when he'd had a smoke. The band was tight, and louder than anyone else I've seen at the Apollo. The Daybreak/Breaking Into Heaven section was heavy and the transition between the songs was wonderful. The Tears guitar change-over is really clear in my mind. They did I Am The Resurrection as the encore, Ian saying ‘What do you want for Christmas?‘ or something similar, half the crowd shouting for Resurrection, the other half for Sally Cinnamon.

I'm sure the crowd's singing to Resurrection could be heard a couple of miles away. The lights came on, The Fozz played, and that was it. It was the best gig I had seen, and probably always will be. I'll never listen to the bootleg, and only play others from that tour very occasionally. Sometimes memory is better than reality.

I can't rate the quality of the performance, I was too excited. The band was a legend, a dream, they were my heroes, could never ever had lived up to my expectations, but that night they did. I will always wish I could have seen them in 89/90, but that's just greed, I'm more than lucky to have seen them once.''