I Saw Fire and it’s Called Ed Sheeran.
He’s a bit of a contradiction, is Ed Sheeran. The kid with his guitar and loop pedals who is a globe-straddling Rock star. The multi-millionaire who married a girl he went to school with. In Ipswich!
Next time you’re bored on a family car ride, play the game, Name Ten Famous Rock Stars From Ipswich. You won’t get past one, I guarantee it.
Last night at Go Media Stadium Ed Sheeran opened his world Loop Tour 2026. Opened doesn’t do justice to the extravaganza he delivered. The last time there were that many fireworks and flame throwers at a gig was probably when Kiss played Western Springs in 1980. Golly.
The near capacity 40,000 strong crowd started trickling in from mid-afternoon, gathering before the stages, anticipation and contradiction already sowing their seeds – why was there a small stage halfway into the main field?
And even the big stage wasn’t that big for a gig like this. What was biiiiig, though, was the monumental screen behind the main stage – aglow in fuchsia pink it is, by all accounts, the largest ever assembled in this country. Already the anticipation was palpable.
From 5pm we were warmed up by a string of well-chosen support acts – the wonderfully glamorous all-girl Irish jig-a-long that is Biird, a kind of traditional instruments (was that a school satchel or a squeeze box that our Colleen was playing?) meets Riverdance-In-Trainers with some lyrical loveliness and a bit of kick-arse foot stomping for good measure.
Mia Wray was a bit of a misfire – an Australian success story she veered wildly from Adele-like Soul soaring to grungy mid-90s Rock, via a few too many quiet moments for a crowd that wanted to move it, move it. Moments of beauty all the same, to be fair.
Vance Joy was the perfect fit, a bit of Aussie swagger, and enough hits for the singalongs to really start.
Riptide was a knockout, and a cover of, indeed, the Kiss classic I Was Made for Lovin’ You a perfect party starter.
The crowd – an endless stream of mothers-and-daughters, families, entire phalanxes of seventy-year-old girls out for a big night, and lots of teens shaking off their NCEA results were primed by 8.00pm when Ed took to the stage.
The little stage in the middle! Trickster. It rose mightily with him upon it, a ginger Lazarus, the usual black t-shirt, jeans and big trainers combo, hitting the first of several fine acoustic guitars for all he was worth.
Which is, as we know, quite a bit. And there’s the delightful contradiction. Here’s a guy who rubs spangled shoulders with Taylor, (who, lest we forget just concluded one of the Biggest Tours of All Time,) and he’s Down Under, guitar on his back, grin on his face, delivering song after brilliant song like he’s still busking on Carnaby Street.
I was prepared to be impressed. I was delighted to witness such a scintillating spectacle. Whether you were an ardent fan, an interested observer, or were there to fetch the chips and drinks for the family while you checked the Auckland FC score on your phone, you were entertained, with 30 odd songs over 3 hours. And the energy and the professionalism and the delivery didn’t drop for a moment.
Course we got the hits, new and older, a punchy Sapphire early on, an energetic yet wistful Castle on the Hill only a few songs in.
He brought his Irish band Beoga on for, of course, Galway Girl – anywhere in the world someone always loses their shit to this one, he quipped and then, making brilliant use of the remarkable retractable bridge between the main and smaller stages, he went back to the centre for a heart-wrenching Eyes Closed, the song enabling him to engage in another great skill he has, the lost art of between-song banter.
Walking us through how this was a paean to a suddenly dead friend, in words that sounded as fresh and on-the-spot as his performance did, he then opened up the back catalogue and delivered some rare, and older treats.
The big screen had invited us all to request a song before the show; Ed explained that he and the crew then count the numbers and pick the most requested few for the evening.
For a superstar on a world tour with a show incorporating such a range of choreographed elements, it was a leap of faith and a charming addition of some spontaneity. As he said, introducing the delightful Little Bird and intriguing Sofa, the latter not played live since 2013, he enjoys taking the risk, mixing up the set, and delivering something that’s not just The Big Hits.
And that’s the thing. He’s got a back catalogue as long and beautiful as that damned retractable bridge, hits as big as that super-screen, and yet delivers these moments where, for a second, it could be just you, the man and the dog, and your pint, at the Ipswich Arms, nearly 20 years ago when it all began.
He was witty, charming, talkative – he went some way to explaining how his loops worked, why he was playing the songs he was, and included some self-deprecating back stories that only endeared him further to an already Ed-can-do-no-wrong audience.
His if I could live in New Zealand I would and I’m so pleased to be starting my world tour in New Zealand, I love it here comments are standard Rock-star-comes-to-our-little-shores fodder, yet he seemed to genuinely mean it. And that’s this guy, right. He genuinely means all of it! Genuine, authentic, these are his trademarks.
By the time the final strains of Bad Habits had drifted into the warm summer air – he even made the rain stay away! – there was not a dry eye to be had.
Nor could there possibly have been an unmet expectation. The dude delivered, over and over again. With charm, panache, wit, skill and, most of all, that overused word: passion!
He sings every line like he means it. He bashes those acoustics like they can take it; he sweats, he smiles and every now again that big screen showed him in truly awesome detail, stopping, staring out at 40,000 flashing cameras, or waving torches, taking it all in, clearly enjoying it as much as we did.
That’s what you go to a live gig for. That exchange, that connection. The Ipswich Boy gave us that in spades.
As he said: Thank you for coming. I love doing this more than anything else in the world.
And that’s why Ed Sheeran is so damned good. He loves it as much as we do. If you can wrangle a ticket for his second show tonight, get one. This is as good as Rock’n’roll gets!
Michael Larsen
Photography by Leonie Moreland
