David Hasselhoff is one of those curious pop-culture figures—a celebrity who has imprinted himself onto pop consciousness by playing up to the tongue-in-cheek mythology that surrounds him.
Do not underestimate the power of irony: The Hoff’s career is powered by it.
The lights go down and instead of being greeted by The Hoff’s leathery visage, a video montage begins playing (the first of many), projected onto what looks like an old bed sheet hanging from the back of the stage. It documents, at length, the highlights of Hasselhoff’s colourful career.
This multimedia spectacular over, the music rises and a spotlight shines through the crowd onto The Hoff as he strolls in through the rear entrance. Standing tall in what looks like a Lite-Brite studded leather jacket he strides through the crowd singing “This Is The Moment”, from the musical Jekyll And Hyde. Women throw themselves around his neck, men reach in to shake his hand, and more than one person grabs his ass.
Reaching the stage, The Hoff is flanked by four oddly shaped dancing-girls. Choreography seems nonexistent as the girls repeatedly glance, giggle, and shrug at one another. There is a distinct possibility that these girls were corralled off Boundary Street moments before the show.
Once The Hoff is propped on a stool centre-stage like a Vegas crooner, with the “dancers” awkwardly stumbling round him, one glaring absence becomes noticeable: there’s no band, just two pedestrian looking dudes working Macs. This is, as Hasselhoff himself points out, the budget tour.
He takes a break from singing to talk to the crowd. Now, The Hoff is no Rollins-esque raconteur. His spoken word pretty much involves whipping out every Hoff pun you can think of with the manic intensity of a flailing standup.
While this is going on a pair of women’s underwear is thrown up on stage. With what looks like a practiced motion he whips the g-string onto his head and continues running The Hoff gag into the ground.
After introducing the Knight Rider video montage (accompanied by an awful remix of the theme music), Hoff returns to the stage wearing a self-referential “Don’t Hassel The Hoff” t-shirt to sing the Ted Mulry classic “Jump In My Car”.
He then readies the crowd for what is probably one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind: the video for his version of “Hooked On A Feeling”. He prefaces this clip with the Hoff quote of the night: “I love cheese”. This simple statement sheds much light on this gig, his career, and his on-going popularity.
After the surreal madness of that clip, he launches into a couple of old favourites, “Rhinestone Cowboy” and John Denver’s “Country Roads”. Obviously, he is now wearing a cowboy hat. The cheese-factor has now blown the roof off The Hi-Fi.
And finally, we get to the inevitable Baywatch moment. He briefly considers the centrality of slow-motion to the sociological ethos of the show’s narrative arc before playing another YouTube-esque montage. He returns to the stage wearing aviator sunglasses, red jacket, and brandishing the iconic red Baywatch buoy in one hand and a Super Soaker in the other.
His dancing girls run out with him and clearly the “budget tour” has impacted the costume department. One girl is wearing an ill-fitting red Baywatch swimsuit. The other three wear what look like red council high-viz vests over their street clothes.
The Hoff lip-syncs the Baywatch theme song (not having the requisite Jimi Jamison range), before cranking out two of his hits, the crowd favourites “I Am The Night Rocker” and “Looking For Freedom.” He finishes with a medley of singalong oldies, including John Farnham’s “You’re The Voice”, The Proclaimers’ “500 Miles”, and The Angels’ “Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again”.
The Hoff understands the old showbiz adage of “keep them wanting more”. He plays for just over an hour (including numerous stage absences during the videos), leaving before the joke gets old.
The gig made one thing clear: it is difficult to tell where David Hasselhoff ends and The Hoff begins; where the self-deprecation stops and the self-aggrandizing delusion begins. In the end it probably doesn’t matter. An evening with The Hoff offers a camp and often mystifying night of pop-culture irony, a guilty pleasure that
