Tom Rush at the Union Chapel

As we listened to Tom Rush interpreting Jackson Browne’s “These Days” on Sunday night, it was impossible not to reflect that here was an 85-year-old man singing a song written in 1964 by 16-year-old. All time is eternally present, as the poet wrote. Rush recorded “These Days” in 1970. He wasn’t the first, but Browne was among the songwriters whose work he promoted by placing their songs on his albums when they were still little-known. Others were James Taylor, who saw him as a mentor, and Joni Mitchell, whose “Urge for Going” was also in Sunday’s repertoire in Islington’s beautiful Union Chapel. Renarkably, this was Rush’s first London gig since the 1960s, when he was one of many singer-songwriters touted as the “new Dylan”. Goodness knows why he’d never been back, because — for those who’d never seen him before — he turned out to be a wonderfully humorous raconteur as well as a still-agile guitarist and a singer who knows how to work around the limitations imposed by age. We were…

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