Andy Brown, 25-year-old lead singer of British pop-rock band Lawson, wouldn’t be around today were it not for a brain surgeon named David Lawson.
At age 19, Andy had a brain tumor that the surgeon successfully removed. However, the procedure left Andy permanently unable to hear from his right ear and with difficulty walking. When Andy told bandmates Ryan Fletcher, Joel Peat and Adam Pitts this story, they decided then and there to name their new band Lawson.
April 9 at the Eastwood Mall Open Park grounds, a buffed Andy came onstage bearing no trace of his physical ordeals, save for an earplug protecting his sensitive left ear. The singer from Liverpool came out wearing a tank top, much to the squealing delight of the mostly tween and teenage female fans.
‘Chapman Square’
Lawson traveled thousands of miles wanting to tell a different story, though. With Ryan and Joel on bass and lead guitars, respectively, and Adam on the drums, Andy and his gang energetically performed seven of the songs from their debut album “Chapman Square”—so named from where Lawson first played and recorded its songs, and so made for Andy’s former love Mollie King of the all-girl group The Saturdays.
The album’s “heartbreaking” material, plus the winsome persona of these four young Brits—Andy being the oldest, while the others hover around 23—would explain why they are showered with such adulation by their fans. Imagine yourself as a young, emotionally vulnerable girl seeing and hearing four handsome hunks sing of a love that couldn’t be. Wouldn’t you just want to give them a hug? Maybe more than that, even. One fan put her less-than-noble intentions in black and white, raising a placard that read, “Save the drums, bang me instead!”
Encore
Others repeatedly shouted in unison, “Take it off!” Laughing, Ryan declared, “I am not a piece of meat!”
Lawson performed “Everywhere You Go,” “Gone,” “Taking Over Me,” “Make It Happen,” “Learn to Love Again” and “When She Was Mine.” Midway through, Lawson performed its cover of a Maroon 5 original, “Moves Like Jagger,” with Andy looking much like a beefier version of Adam Levine. Lawson also performed its rock version of the techno hit “Don’t You Worry Child” by Swedish House Mafia.
The band saved its most popular song, “Standing in the Dark,” for the encore.
The audience of around 1,000 sang the first few verses and the chorus while the young men from Liverpool, where so many music legends were born, stood silent, visibly amazed at what they were hearing—a thousand young Mollie Kings singing back at them.