Give Peace A Chance, The Words Of John Lennon In Concert @ Festival Theatre, Adelaide 12/7/2025

Back in the day you were either a Beatle or a Rolling Stones fan and never the twain shall meet. If you were a Beatles fan, you then had to choose between John or Paul. Don’t ask why, it was just the done thing back in the late 60’s. I always went for John Lennon. I found his songs a little more edgy, more political and many of his songs gave food for thought.

Give Peace a Chance gives us the songs of John Lennon as presented by some of Australia’s leading singers in Adalita, Diesel, Steve Kilbey, Isabella Manfredi and Kevin Mitchell, all under the musical direction of Ashley Naylor. The setting was the beautiful Adelaide Festival Theatre, the ideal place for such a show.

Shrouded in darkness, the band and singers took to the stage and the opening chords of Nowhere Man echoed around the theatre. This wasn’t just going to be a show of John Lennon’s solo songs, but also the songs he bought to The Beatles. The sound of five singers, singing the song, flowed forth beautifully.

For the rest of act one, singers came out for solo or duet performances. Adalita remained on staged while the other left and Ash Naylor’s guitar sounded out the start of Dear Prudence. Adalita provided a fine vocal performance to the song before introducing Ashley Naylor for his take on Beautiful Boy. Not only a fine musical director for the show, he got to show his talent with guitar and vocals to everyone.

Diesel sang Instant Karma, his rawer vocals making the song just as Lennon sang it, with Ash and Isabella Manfredi shining on tambourines. Diesel also covered the classic Beatle’s song She Said She Said, not an easy song to perform live. It was Steve Kilbey who gave the audience morsels of what it was like to be alive when the Beatles were actually around. All the other singers were far to young to have been part of that era. “Pre Beatles” Steve told us, “the world was grey and cold.” He recounted first hearing The Beatles in 1964 and his mother and aunties saying they were dirty and you couldn’t understand what they were singing and they gave the band six months at best. His cover of I’m Only Sleeping was unexpected, but wonderful.

Isabella Manfred and Adalita did a later Lennon song in Watching the Wheels before Isabella Manfredi nailed what many of us thought would have been the evening’s closer, Imagine. It was an emotional and moving performance with the band in the dark and just a solo light shining on Isabella. Diesel announced “This is a song with kooky lyric” and played Dig a Pony following it with a powerful Jealous Guy, sounding more Roxy Music version than Beatles.

Only one of the singers could have covered Working Class Hero and that was Steve Kilbey. It was a hard hitting, cutting performance from Steve. How do you follow that? Easy! Bring out Kevin Mitchell to do Woman (“John sure got good at saying sorry” said Kevin) and then bring all three males together for a rocking Twist and Shout, although it has to be said, as good as Diesel’s scream was near the end, it was no match for the original Lennon scream.

Steve had another story to regale, this time from 1967 (“it wasn’t the era of London flower power, the summer of love on Haight Ashbury, it was the cold winter of discontent in Canberra”) when he heard music coming from a school room. Upon opening the door, it was a teacher playing the new Beatles album, Sgt Peppers. “I knew then music would never be the same again” he told us before singing the Lennon classic from the album, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Set two had the five singers back on stage for Power to the People, with the audience joining them for the chorus. As with set one, Adalita again stayed on stage for a very strong and engaging Gimme Some Truth, another of many highlights for the evening. Steve Kilbey gave us another story, then Mind Games and the two girls followed it with a great version of Don’t Let Me Down, standing back-to-back while singing the song.

Kev Mitchell admitted to “this being my favourite Beatle track, well for now anyway. It always changes”, gracefully launching into Across the Universe. Ashley Naylor stepped to the fore with another evening highlight, In My Life, telling everyone “Imagine writing a song like that at twenty four years of age”. Ashley the introduced the band that had been laying the foundation to all the songs for the evening. Wez Prictor (piano), Lachlan O’Kane (drums), Richard Bradbeer (bass), and Ben Mellonie (guitar) were faultless all evening.

But as good as the evening had been to this point, a new high was delivered when Isabella sat behind a lone keyboard set at the front of the stage and delivered a heart wrenching version of Love, a song to Yoko from John’s first true solo album. Ashley’s quiet and delicate guitar piece in the middle of the song added to the haunting beauty of the tune.

Steve told another story of when his dad, an actual Beatle fan, first heard Strawberry Fields Forever on the radio and said to Steve, “What was that?” and Steve replied “I think it was LSD”. The fact the band perfectly reproduced the sounds of that single on stage, while Steve sang the song, says a lot for their excellent playing.

All five singers came on stage for the set closers, a trio of Beatle songs in Come Together, a raucous Revolution and All You Need is Love. Each singer taking turns at verses and all blending and joining in on the choruses.

While the singers took a bow and left the stage, the band remained, with Ashley thanking the people behind the scenes, “without whom a show like this would never happen”. He singled out Lindsay Field, one time backing singer to John Farnham, for his work as vocal coach to the singers and for his work on the production.

Lindsay stayed on stage to supply backing vocals to the first of two encore songs, Give Peace a Chance. Steve Kilby then said “We sometimes celebrate Christmas in July in Australia. This is Happy Xmas (War is Over) and the words are still relevant today”. The band, singers and audience all became one vocal during the song, with the audience rising as one at the conclusion of the set.

A wonderful evening celebrating the songs of a genius songwriter whose life was tragically cut way too short.

Rest In Peace John. Your music will live on forever.

Live Review by Geoff Jenke