I sleep fitfully in my bunk when we leave Cleveland. Eventually I clamber out and sit in the back lounge with the windows open. The air is cold and damp and the outside the new New Jersey morning is lush and misty. I’m excited to be going home-however briefly-and I watch the countryside pass.

Nearly a week off. Driving down Ninth Avenue on Saturday morning and there’s no traffic and I haven’t seen New York for six weeks and it looks fantastic. Better still, with no traffic, I’m home in no time.

My friend has been watering my plants and collecting my mail so I’ve a pile of bills all ready to be dealt with. Ah, and then there’s the simple joy of taking my suitcase to the cleaners and asking for it back clean that evening. It cost a fortune but it was worth it. Sitting in my apartment that first night and I can’t settle. In some ways, it could be another hotel (It is a New York apartment, after all. Many of the rooms I’ve had on tour have been bigger…).

The following day I’m on a plane to San Francisco. It’s a busman’s holiday but you have to take the breaks when you get them. I get to advance the next leg of the tour from a friend’s apartment. I spend two days frantically calling promoters and trying to calculate the drive times between cities and when the band will sleep where for the next six weeks. It’s the part of my job that I like a lot even if every time I do it I’m always racing a deadline and trying to keep too many details in my mind at once. The band will never be able to commit to travel times, preferred locations, etc, etc this far ahead of a show so I make best guestimates as to routings and timings based on practicalities and when we have to be in certain places. I know for a fact that at least fifty to seventy five percent of everything I’m doing now will likely be changed as we go along. However, if we don’t have it to start with then we’d be in poor shape. (don’t get it right, get it written!) I’ve finally realized (Doh!) that I can’t plan the tour as I would do it (leaving in good time, planning to arrive early, etc) as that rarely happens, but I have to plan the tour as the band would have it from the get go. It seems obvious when I write it now, but for some reason it took a while for me to figure this out. Now it’s a way of entertaining myself, I give myself a small, discreet round of applause every time a flight isn’t changed, or a departure time is kept. My inner monologue oft resembles Billy Liar’s in many ways. (And if you haven’t seen that movie featuring Tom Courtney and Julie Christie then you should, it’s a pearler.)

It’s relaxing in the California sunshine and it’s good not to be responsible for anyone for a few days. I like San Francisco a lot. The first time I came to America I sat on the Dock of The Bay and had one of those “Fuck Me! I’m HERE!” moments while looking at the Golden Gate Bridge—which quickly turned into one of those “Fuck me, I’M here…” moments; which then led to many more months of drinking too much in an attempt to remove the me from all the cool places I was visiting at the time. It didn’t work, but you work with what you’ve got, right?


It’s the centennial of the San Francisco Earthquake which is a strange thing to celebrate, especially as the city is still sitting on a time bomb. Looking at the devastation that happened in 1906, and reading reports of what would happen to the whole of the Bay Area today if/when another large quake occurs, made me wonder quite what people are thinking by living here. It’s a beautiful place, for sure, and the City has a great feeling to it but it’s permanently poised to liquefy and sink into the bay. Maybe that’s where the atmosphere comes from? I mean, there’s nothing edgy about Tulsa or Tucson and maybe that’s because there’s nothing dangerous in the air (or underground) there?