Simply Red

Simply Red, the band of Manchester singer Mick Hucknall (born 1960), has sold tens of millions of records with a warm blue-eyed soul, from “Holding Back the Years” to “Stars”. A regular at Montreux, the band played there eight times between 1986 and 2023, and recorded several concerts there.

Simply Red in Montreux

1986: the debut at the Casino

Simply Red played their first Montreux concert on 8 July 1986, at the Montreux Jazz Festival, on the stage of the Casino de Montreux. Mick Hucknall was only twenty-six, with an already famous red mane; surrounded by the band’s original line-up, he opened with a cover of Bill Withers’s “Grandma’s Hands” and rolled out the songs of “Picture Book”, their first album, including “Holding Back the Years”, “Come to My Aid” and the hit “Money’s Too Tight (to Mention)”. The night was filmed and would be released on DVD.

▶

The following year, in May 1987, the band also appeared on the bill of the Golden Rose, the town’s other great gathering, again at the Casino.

Eight times at the festival

Mick Hucknall and his band became festival regulars: after 1986 they returned in 1992 at the Casino, then to the Auditorium Stravinski in 1996, 2003, 2006, 2010, 2016 and up to 30 June 2023. Eight concerts in all, tracing the festival’s move from the Casino to the great hall of the convention centre.

Montreux often served as a studio for the band. In 1992 a recording captured at the festival became an EP that climbed to number eleven in the British charts, with covers of jazz and soul classics. The concert of 15 July 2003, given by Hucknall and a ten-piece ensemble in a very jazzy mood, was released on DVD: eighteen tracks, later supplemented by songs captured at Montreux in 2010.