Watching Cruz Beckham - impish, likeable, possessed of a clear talent but widely judged by the hefty legacy of what’s come before him - there’s the sense of what it might have been like to catch Robbie Williams in his early, post-Take That solo days: a man setting out to prove himself against the weight of a public mostly expecting him to fail, who looks like he may well just manage it.
Alongside David and Victoria, mobbed by iPhone cameras in a VIP area at the back, Robbie’s old mucker Geri Halliwell is in the audience tonight - maybe she can pop him a WhatsApp. But actually, playing the last of three shows at north London’s Courtyard Theatre and completing his first ever headline tour alongside backing band The Breakers, the youngest Beckham son has the chops to win some nepo-baby naysayers over on his own terms. People might be here because of the family name, and the frequent football chants of “There’s only one Cruz Beckham” make it hard to forget where he’s come from, but if a band of complete unknowns bashed through this same set of slightly chaotic indie hits-in-waiting, it’d still land. Cruz, it turns out, can genuinely play - and his tendency towards a slightly batshit creative choice suggests he’s got the balls to take a few risks and put his personality commendably out there.
There are flourishes - roadies with Crews Beckham-branded T-shirts; ‘collectors item’ tickets bearing the band’s faces handed out at the door - which underline the fact this isn’t quite your average jobbing band. But as soon as the frontman bounds out through a door at the back of the stage, dressed in a baggy harlequin-diamond shirt like a half-arsed Harry Styles, his enthusiasm is infectious. First tracks Waste Your Pain and Better Times hint that there’s probably a fair amount of Britpop played at Casa Beckham, while the rogue lyrics of recent single Optics (“I love me some mushrooms and good head”) work substantially better in the rowdy setting of a live show, Cruz leaning into a crowd who are already yelling back its “na-na-na-nas” with gusto.
On Star Treatment, Alex Turner once declared that he “just wanted to be one of The Strokes”, and now, nearly 10 years later, we have Cruz Beckham intoning that he “wants to be John Lennon”, which is… well, not quite as realistic but you have to applaud the sheer audacity of the sentiment. He’s evidently not lying either - the influence of The Beatles coats much of the set, whether on the psych pop of genuinely very good third single For Your Love or the bluesy grooves of new standout Jackie. His guitar strap is emblazoned with Get Back while, later, a two-piece brass section transition from the self-reflective balladry of Loneliest Boy into the inimitable opening parps of All You Need Is Love.
One of two covers including a game take on Springsteen’s I’m On Fire, these are big, legendary classics to line up against, however Beckham seems to have put in the hours. If nothing else, lessons have been learned from big brother Brooklyn’s forays into cheffing and photography (elephants sadly remain so hard to photograph but incredible to see) and Cruz has taken the far more advisable route of learning the job in private before launching himself to the world. He’s a dab hand at a guitar solo, with a soft, pleasant voice that adapts to the slight hodge podge of styles that fit into his set. Wear And Tear has a solid, baggy Stone Roses-esque swagger and while there’s a couple of duffs near the end (Dumb Down and Yeh Yeh Yeh veer a little too close to pub band territory; the ska-nodding Lick The Toad is so mad it’s hard to know if it’s good or awful), there’s an excitableness to it all that feels like someone testing the waters and finding a lot that fits.
Ahead of the Americana twangs of On and On, Beckham declares that “he’s got a very special lady in the house tonight”. A moment of baited breath for an IRL recreation of Victoria’s wedding dance passes, and he dedicates the track to sister Harper down the front. A missed opportunity. But the frontman still has a tongue-in-cheek parting message for us in the form of final track Tie Don’t Fit and its chorus of “I promise I’m not an arsehole”. In fact, I’d go as far as to say Cruz Beckham is surprisingly easy to root for: cheeky, charming, actually talented. He might never be John Lennon but he could have a good crack at this pop star thing regardless.
