Review: An Evening With Europe - 40th Anniversary Time Capsule Tour

Review: An Evening With Europe – 40th Anniversary Time Capsule Tour

DeMontfort Hall, Leicester (October 24^th 2023)

Reviewer/Photographer: Dan Mann

Let’s start this here review by giving some background to the evening’s performance.

40 years ago, just let that sink in, 40 years ago! a Swedish band hailing from the Stockholm suburb of Upplands Väsby released their debut album. Over the course of the evening, split into two halves, Europe gave us part documentary and part live performance of songs from across their career. Things kicked off with a short (8 minute) film explaining how the band members met, their previous music history and the initially negative reaction to lead singer Joey Tempest‘s suggestion of the name ‘Europe‘ for the band.

The curtain then dropped and we were straight into ‘On Broken Wings‘. Photographers were meant to shoot from the sides of this theatre, as per other venues on this tour, but to our collective delight security waved us across and we had the pleasure of photographing 3 songs from each set.

I certainly wouldn’t have been in the band’s shoes when they sat down to decide which songs to play on the tour. What was great was hearing stuff from those early days, the heavier material from the self-titled debut and ‘Wings Of Tomorrow‘. Plus we heard some new material, with new song ‘Hold Your Head Up‘. It wasn’t all Europe material either, with various little snippets of other artist’s songs, an impromptu ‘Smoke On The Water‘ performed acoustically at the start of the second set, which the crowd seized on as a sing along opportunity. An acoustic rendition of the Bowie classic ‘Space Oddity‘, and an electric led sing along of Whitesnake’s ‘Here I Go again‘.

What was great was each member of Europe, vocalist Joey Tempest, guitarist John Norum, bassist John Levén, keyboardist Mic Michaeli and drummer Ian Haugland were given their own ‘slot’ to talk and perform, a lot of it tongue in cheek.

It was the band inviting the fans in, trying to make the evening an all encompassing affair.

Whilst I thoroughly enjoyed the whole evening, the one criticism I’d give is it being an all seated affair. Okay I get what the band were aiming for this theatre tour. But it did stifle people to some degree, this being a rock concert people should & need to be on their feet, embracing the music, but hey that’s me being picky.

If you’ve not seen Europe on this ‘Time Capsule‘ tour and you have the chance too, then grab that chance and enjoy the 40 years of music from a band who’ve always managed to successfully change and mould themselves as the years have past.

All I can say is, Europe, thank you for the music…