When Frank Turner headlined London’s O2 arena last year, he told the 20,000-strong audience, “I didn’t write songs for this size of venue. I wrote them to play in bars.” Doing his bit for Independent Venue Week here, he gets to prove the point, playing his 1,631st live show in a venue where he once played to 65 people. There are more than that now, and many who can’t get in. “I’ve got a cold,” he begins, “so if you know the words, help me out.” Every single voice in the room sings almost every lyric.
The Hampshire folk-punk star is a man of many contradictions. Eton-educated (via a scholarship), he’s a former anarchist who fronted a post-hardcore band, calls socialism “retarded” and David Cameron a “twat”. And yet, his scattergun passions and frustrations are key to his everyman appeal.
Minus his usual band and armed with just a guitar, the T-shirted 33-year-old seems to be undergoing a bizarre physical metamorphosis into Bruce Springsteen, and has similarly got something for everybody. There are new songs (Getting Better, about the duel between insecurity and ambition) and old favourites, pieces that combine the Smiths’ romanticism with Billy Bragg’s holler and words about everything from self-harming to one-night stands. It could be a cynical pitch for mass appeal if the man wasn’t so palpably sincere.
He tells us how he recently took a break from gigging and hated every minute; how he got his hand tattooed and his mum told him to wear gloves. A rousing speech about gigs being “our culture” nearly brings the roof down. As his fiery voice finally ails, Turner ends up standing on the monitors as the crowd belt out I Still Believe’s lyrics about how rock’n’roll saved us. In an intimate venue, it’s a huge, communal experience.
• Independent Venue Week continues until Sunday. Details: independentvenueweek.com
