When Bonnie Raitt was a young girl, she was enthralled by the power and charisma of such blues and folk greats as John Lee Hooker and Sippie Wallace, modelling her own music and guitar-playing on them.
Later, when she became a recording and touring artist herself, she got the chance to play alongside some of her heroes and remembers learning about professionalism, grace and longevity from them, all of which helped her to transcend some of her own challenges. These days, after the self-penned, apposite and resonant song Nick of Time from her 1989 album of the same name helped her achieve “overnight success” some 18 years after her debut, she’s become something of a hero herself, especially to a generation or three of women for whom her defiant independence and consistent support of liberal causes means a whole lot more than (just for instance) donning a succession of cowboy outfits ever could.
As well as her manifest love and respect for her “uppity blues women” forebears like Sippie Wallace, whose mischievous Woman Be Wise has long been a staple of Raitt’s shows, and Mable John, whose 1966 classic Your Good Thing (Is About To End) appears early in the set at Manchester’s 02 Apollo by way of tribute to the late soul-singer, she has a superb ear for more contemporary songs penned by the likes of John Hiatt (Thing Called Love), Richard Thompson (Dimming of the Day) and, of course, the late John Prine. His Angel from Montgomery has been a highlight of her appearances for many years now, and an already-poignant song has only become more affecting in the wake of her old friend’s tragic death.
Even so, the exquisitely heartbroken lament I Can’t Make You Love Me runs it pretty close in the tear-in-the-eye stakes as does her more recent Grammy-winning tale of redemption, Just Like That. But Raitt is still impressively sassy in her 70s and there’s a whole lot of friskiness and boogie in there too, graced not only by her own knife-sharp slide guitar and rough-edged, lived-in voice but also by superbly intuitive musical support from her four-piece band, supplemented for much of the set by the New Orleans-style piano of Jon Cleary, who played in Raitt’s band for a decade or so and had already been the night’s solo support act.
It’s a superlative, moving show of warmth, maturity and real soul, shot through with compassion, and offering, as she says (echoing Bruce Springsteen a few days earlier and a few miles down the road) “a healing experience in this suffering, hard-assed world”. Sometimes that can be enough, despite the bombs falling and the egos flying.
Main image: Bonnie Raitt. Photo by Shervin Lainez.
