Singing at the top of
their lungs: Ultimate Power night at the Electric Ballroom in London.
The crowd roar the words to each hymn, and it's like church, except with rousing choruses and huge hair, for Ultimate Power is filling the place not with the latest club 12-inch mixes, or indie disco
staples, but with power ballads – music that exists at the interface of light metal, album-oriented rock and melodic soft rock. More surprisingly, few of the people here are the ageing Heart FM listeners one might expect; rather they appear to have been conceived between the release dates of two of Ultimate Power's defining statements: Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart (1983) and Meat Loaf's I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) (1993), regarded by the night's organisers as the late-period apotheosis of power balladry, if one takes the genre's golden age as lasting from the late 70s to the mid-80s.
Each reaction is more exultant than the last – there is rapture for Maria McKee's Show Me Heaven and a mass a cappella chantalong to Belinda Carlisle's Heaven Is a Place on Earth. Wilson Phillips's Hold On incites aggressive air-punching – and that's just from the women.
"Everyone loves a power ballad," says Delia from Manchester, here to celebrate her 31st birthday. "There's nothing ironic or try-hard about it. It's not for hipsters. It's for anyone. There is a real inclusive feel." She considers this part of a long tradition of social-musical interaction. "It goes back to when people used to sing around the piano in a pub. This is one of the few places where you can get that communal feeling."
Tiger, 24, who has driven up from Kent, is more succinct. Previously a non-believer, she is now a convert. "I thought it would be shit, but this is actually the best night of my life," she shouts with whatever is left of her voice after several hours of power balladeering. "It's exciting, and really emotional."
Some of the biggest-selling rock songs of all time – from I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That) to Bryan Adams's (Everything I Do) I Do It For You to Journey's Don't Stop Believin' to Foreigner's I Want To Know What Love Is – are power ballads. So it stands to reason that an evening devoted to such emotionally resonant, melodramatic anthems would be successful. But why here? Why now?
"There's something missing in modern music," declares Jo Kendall of Classic Rock magazine, a regular attendee at the Ultimate Power nights, which are held across the country. "People want to emote, and they're doing it to old-school power ballads. It's bringing people together. There's a really strange, slightly religious element to it. You see people belting out songs at the top of their lungs because they're not allowed to anywhere else. It's communal regression therapy meets church, and it's totally cathartic. I find it absolutely extraordinary. The maelstrom of emotion is very affecting. In a secular world, they have brought back the element of communal worship."
"They" are the organisers of, and DJs at, Ultimate Power: Steve Proud, Brian Mahoney, "Mr" Flash, Dave Fawbert and Alex Gilbert. They don't just stand behind their decks, they frequently go to the front of the stage with inflatable guitars and microphones to strike ridiculous poses and whip the crowd into a frenzy. All of them work in or around the music business in various guises (management, A&R, journalism or advertising) and describe Ultimate Power as "an evening of the greatest songs ever written". They all have the gift of the gab and an ear for the OTT soundbite, prone to claiming their tracks are "more important than any form of organised religion, the cure for cancer and the meaning of life".
"It was originally done totally for a laugh," explains Proud, backstage at the Electric Ballroom, his voice almost drowned out by the sound of 1,500 revellers bellowing along to Mr Mister's Broken Wings and Toto's Rosanna, the epic surges of these soft-rock standbys becoming evident at great volume. He recalls that the working title for the night was I Want To Know What Love Is, I Want You to Show Me. "There was never a plan," he admits. "We just wanted to earn enough to get pissed."
The event started in a pub near the Electric Ballroom; soon, they were selling out venues four times that size. "We were shitting ourselves," he remembers. To begin with, they were glorified wedding DJs. "We weren't mixing or doing anything clever, just pressing start and stop," says Proud who, like the others, has a background as a dance/electro DJ.
It was when they started getting swept along by the histrionics that are an essential component of the power ballad that their reputation grew. "Part of our success," says Mahoney, the first to admit he's no natural performer, "is the hugeness of the songs. What happens is, we get pissed and do air guitar and air drums. We're all failed musicians, so this is us living out our dreams."
They even managed to convert hordes of hardened heavy-metallers at Download when they DJed an Ultimate Power set there. "People were waiting to bottle us off until they saw how much we loved the music," he marvels. "It's like performance: you've got to give 90% more than they're going to give."
It might have started as a wheeze, but they have taken it a long way, even if it has yet to reach its tipping point. They agree that preposterous majesty is the key to it all, but not irony. "The natural assumption is that we're taking the piss," says Proud, "but there's no ironic element. It's playful – we're not po-faced and serious – but we love these songs, genuinely."
They're all surprised by how young the audience is, using terms such as "osmosis" and "cultural permeation" to explain how the music seems to have seeped into the consciousness of these twentysomethings. He smiles at the way the cool kids turn up to Ultimate Power with cynically folded arms, only to be seduced by the grandiose glory of it all.
Flash says: "A lot of the people who come weren't even born when these songs were around, but they're written into the collective DNA because they're so ubiquitous. Or they might vaguely remember listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart in their dad's car on the way to school. It's fascinating." He checks himself before things get too scientific: "Of course, it also helps that this music fuckin' rocks."
Proud and co know exactly what they're doing, with a similar approach to build and release, dynamics and "drops", as a dubstep DJ (as Mahoney reveals, they even edit songs or extend sections for maximum effect). As midnight approaches, they bring out the big guns: Cutting Crew's (I Just) Died In Your Arms, Don't Stop Believin', Mike & the Mechanics' The Living Years. There is dry ice and a full Flaming Lips-style confetti blitzkrieg ahead of Total Eclipse – the emotional epicentre – and John Farnham's You're the Voice, which is the surprise totemic heart of the Ultimate Power concept of sheer surging optimism, its devotional appeal particularly evident when afforded the sacred-karaoke treatment.
"Ultimate Power, you changed my life," reads the tweet from Hannah Lee beamed on to the Electric Ballroom wall as Whitesnake's Here I Go Again has an eruptive effect on the assembled crowd. Then Fawbert introduces I'd Do Anything as "the greatest song ever written" – the full, unexpurgated 12-minute version, naturally – as a man dressed as Meat Loaf appears onstage.
"We're five slightly overweight blokes playing air guitar, and it's ridiculous," acknowledges Mahoney. "But we're very good at what we do, and we love it – and people can see that in our eyes. We love to see the reaction on people's faces."
For Jo Kendall, the joy of hearing one power ballad after another is all about sustaining the high that people struggle to achieve in real life.
"It's all highs," she insists. "That's why they call it 'Ultimate'. Just when you think you can take no more, they're like: 'We're going to take you over the edge!' They pull on every heartstring, but these are people willing to be manipulated. They want it! They want it so badly because modern life is complicated, and this simplifies it down to the raw essentials. They make you feel something.
"In fact," she adds, and it's too late, and certainly too loud, to tell if she's joking, "as Boston said, it's More Than a Feeling."
Ultimate Power's top 10 power ballads
John Farnham – You're the VoiceJourney – Don't Stop Believin'
Bon Jovi – Always
Bonnie Tyler – Total Eclipse of the Heart
Céline Dion – Think Twice
Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You
Aerosmith – I Don't Want To Miss a Thing
Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is
Guns N' Roses – November Rain
Prince – Purple Rain
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