“From Olympus to Sauchiehall Street: Glenn Hughes Proves Rock Never Ages”

Review by Paul Tagget. Images by Ali Burman

Glenn Hughes at The Garage, Glasgow. Final night of the tour, last gasp of autumn, and the air’s thick with the kind of anticipation you only get when the old gods descend from Olympus to remind us mere mortals what thunder sounds like. Hughes, 74, should by all rights be a relic, a museum piece wheeled out for the nostalgia circuit, but instead he’s a living, sweating, howling contradiction: proof that rock and roll is the only religion that doesn’t care about your birth certificate.

The venue’s an oversized shoebox, the crowd a cross-section of the faithful—Deep Purple lifers, Trapeze diehards (there actually seems to be such a thing), and a smattering of kids like my son who probably found Hughes on Spotify sandwiched between Greta Van Fleet and some algorithmic playlist called “Classic Rock Resurrection”. But hey-ho, it’s how you flow.

First up: Sophie Lloyd. Thirty fingers like lightning, playing like she’s been mainlining Yngwie and Eddie since birth. She tears into the “Top Gun Anthem” like she’s trying to break the sound barrier, and for thirty minutes, the stage is hers. Her band’s tight, her husband’s on drums, and the crowd loves it, but it doesn’t really work for my tastes.

Sadly I’m more Bikini Kill than instrumental takes on Bon Jovi that go down well on TikTok; there’s the occasional original song, but it lacks in the grit department for me. There’s nothing wrong with Lloyd’s act; she and her band are super tight. It’s just not my thing.

Then, with all the subtlety of a freight train painted neon green, Hughes and his crew slide onstage. No fanfare, no lasers, just the funky pulse of “Soul Mover” and the kind of groove that makes you want to quit your job and start a dodgy garage band. Søren Andersen’s guitar is all smoke and mirrors, Ash Sheehan’s drums are a jackhammer, and Hughes—well, Hughes is a force of nature. His bass is a seismic event, his voice a soul-funk banshee wail that’s somehow survived five decades of abuse and excess and still hits like a sledgehammer.

The setlist is plucked from all eras of his career, including some from the new album Chosen (“Into the Fade” is a rollicking meditation on mortality on the record that feels like it was written in blood, sadly not played), old classics (a solo acoustic “Coast to Coast”, a thunderous “Medusa”), “Dopamine” snarls with Sabbathian heaviness, and “Muscle and Heat” aches like Henry Rollins after too many weightlifts. Through it all Hughes banters like your favourite bartender—humble, grateful, and just a little bit mischievous, even if on occasion he starts to ramble.

Encore time: Lloyd’s back, and suddenly it’s a guitar duel for the ages. “Burn” explodes, with Andersen and Lloyd trading solos like heavyweight boxers, and Hughes anchoring the chaos with bass and vocals that sound like they could level buildings. Burn? More like Inferno!

Sure, the sound mix is a little muddy at points, and Hughes’s set was cut short for the sake of the shitty nightclub night. But who cares? This isn’t about perfection. It’s about sweat, soul, and the kind of reckless abandon that makes you believe, if only for a night, that rock and roll can still save your life. Even if it is a funk rock song from the 70s or a guitar instrumental of the Top Gun theme, it’s whatever works.