The man is back in Marbella!
George Benson in concert is always going to pull in the crowds and you can guarantee it will be a memorable concert. Saturday night’s concert in Marbella was certainly memorable for many reasons but we will start with the positives and that is George once again had the entire auditorium up and on their feet rocking to all of his classics.
The crowd, which included Marbella’s elite, were also treated to a master class in guitar from George as he played a fabulous selection of jazz / funk to the delight of the audience.
The Starlite Marbella venue located in the hills of Nagueles, has been revamped to include a modern food and drink area, trendy furniture to chill out on and a VIP area and restaurant that would put many top London venues to shame.
Unfortunately the organisation on the night was extremely poor. People queued in the searing heat on what was the hottest day of summer so far in a makeshift ticket collection area only to find that masses of tickets had simply disappeared. There was no record of numbers or who had what allocations and there didn’t appear to be anybody capable of sorting out the mess.
Looking around so many Marbella people had ‘dressed to impressed’ only to find that they had to struggle through a rocky dusty car park and then be treated to nearly two hours of queuing. In fact little did we all know this was to be the first of many queues that evening.
Eventually after what seemed an age tickets were distributed and we were directed to….a queue for the buses which were to ferry us all up to the quarry. Once at the venue in the Marbella hills lots of the women who had turned out in high heels and glamorous clothing literally had to tip toe up lots of steps to find a hugely impressive Starlite auditorium.
People by now were gasping for a drink and queued at the bar only to be told they need to purchase tokens at the cash booth. This involved another long and slow queue as people were told that needed to know what they were drinking in order to purchase the correct tokens (water, beer and soft drinks priced at a horrendous 8€ and vodka, gin etc priced at 13€).
With tokens in hand people headed back to the bar to queue again for a drink. Now it was time for food and yes you guessed it, tokens were required in order to get food. Back to another long, slow queue which this time involved the booth running out of tokens. Eventually tokens were purchased for hamburgers which were 8€ a burger. Now to head to the burger counter to queue for what can only be described as a ‘gone in two (small) bites excuse for a burger.
In the background we could hear what sounded a bit like George Benson, no hang on it WAS George Benson. The concert had started and yet half the audience were still queuing for food and drinks.
A quick dash to the main auditorium we found our seats having tripped over one step that for some reason was double the size of all the other steps, something that caught out EVERYBODY.
Now at least we could relax and enjoy a fabulous concert and even despite all the problems prior to the actual event, George Benson singing seemed to cancel out all of the queuing and heavily priced food and drink. And after the concert there was a fabulous after-show party with great music and dance acts where lots of people literally danced the night away.
Will we head up to the Starlite Marbella venue for another concert? Probably. (Since this article we have been up to Starlite Marbella on a few occasions to see some fabulous acts and I have to admit they have sorted out all of the opening night issues)
The Starlite venue in Marbella is stunning. And watching a concert under the stars in the hills above Marbella is a magnificent experience.
