Chilly northern Germans? Not at all! Rod Stewart tickled the party mood in Bremen

The Rod Stewart Express travelled on from Dortmund to Bremen at the weekend. After the rousing performance on Saturday evening in Dortmund, Sir Rod and his band continued on to Bremen, some 240 kilometres away, on Sunday morning.

It was chilly on the banks of the Weser when the troupe arrived in Bremen at midday. It was just 11 degrees and there was a chilly wind - just north German grubby weather.

But this in no way dampened Sir Rod's spirits. Just like on Saturday, the singer was in the best of moods in the sold-out ÖVB Arena. This could also have been due to the fact that the football fan had watched his favourite club and new Scottish football champions Celtic draw 1-1 with Rangers in the Glasgow derby at lunchtime.

At 7 pm sharp, Sir Rod took to the stage in Bremen and opened the evening with his 80s classic ‘Tonight I'm Yours’. The previous tour favourite ‘Infatuation’ was removed from the setlist in Bremen, as was the blues song ‘Rollin’ and Tumblin'. Instead, the Bonnie Tyler smash ‘It's A Heartache’ and ‘It Takes Two’ slipped into the programme. Stewart recorded ‘It Takes Two’, originally by Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston, together with Tina Turner in 1990 and released it as the lead single on his album ‘Vagabond Heart (1991)’.

Otherwise, Sir Rod presented the more than 10,000 fans in the former Bremen Stadthalle with the hits that he had already included in his programme in recent weeks. Unlike in Dortmund, however, ‘Sailing’ was not the last song. Although the curtain came down after what is probably Stewart's best-known anthem, it then rose again and Rod ended the evening with the Faces classic ‘Stay With Me’ and a strong version of ‘Hot Legs’.

Holger from Berlin had also made the journey from Dortmund to Bremen on Sunday and was at the start on time in the ÖVB Arena - in row one, of course, very close to the action on stage. ‘Rod was in a great mood again,’ said the Berliner happily. He particularly enjoyed the moment when Sir Rod left the stage with his singers during ‘Da Ya Think I'm Sexy’ and shook hands with the fans in the front row. ‘Once again, it was a marvellous evening,’ says Holger. ‘But the audience was better in Dortmund. They were immediately on fire from the very first song. It all took a little longer in Bremen’.

Which brings us to the well-known cliché of the undercooled North Germans. But in the end, Sir Rod had them all wrapped round his finger again and encouraged even the last listless party crasher to have a great evening. And the media also recognised this. The ‘Weser Kurier’ wrote: ‘The hip swing is perhaps no longer quite as smooth as it was 30 years ago and the jumps are no longer quite as high as they were in the 1980s. But that doesn't matter to Rod Stewart! At his concert in the sold-out ÖVB Arena on Sunday, the British rock and pop musician dances, hops and swings so hard to believe that he celebrated his 80th birthday in January. Stewart is living proof that music keeps you young. The organisers could almost have done without the chairs in the interior of the ÖVB Arena. There's hardly any sitting here’ And the writers didn't miss a thing. They noticed the many green and white Celtic jerseys in the audience. ‘In Bremen, of course, this is well received,’ wrote the “Weser Kurier” in reference to the club colours of Werder Bremen. After ‘Hot Legs’, Sir Rod calls a hearty ‘Good night’ into the arena and the curtain closes for good. The fans make their way home, energised. ‘That was great’ is heard again and again in the corridors as you walk past beaming faces. ‘This is exactly what a successful concert evening looks like,’ summarises the “Weser Kurier”.

And so it continues in the coming days: from Bremen, Sir Rod and his band are travelling to Gdansk today, where he will be on stage tomorrow evening in the Ergo Arena. After that, further concerts in Krakow, Milan and Lisbon will round off the first part of the European shows. Sir Rod will return in autumn/winter, when he will play in Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne, Mannheim and Munich.

Setlist Bremen
1st Tonight I'm Yours
2 Havin' A Party
3 It's A Heartache
4 It Takes Two
5 You Wear It Well
6 Some Guys Have All The Luck
7. The First Cut Is The Deepest
8 Tonight's The Night
9th Forever Young
10 Young Turks
11th Maggie May
12 I'd Rather Go Blind
13 Lady Marmalade (Band only)
14 Baby Jane
15 I Don't Want To Talk About It
16th If You Don't Know Me By Now
17th Proud Mary (Band only)
18 Da Ya Think I'm Sexy
19 Sailing
20 Stay With Me
21. Hot Legs