Visas: Man in a Briefcase.
Because we’re traveling so much I feel like I’m playing a game with border patrols and foreign consulates. During the course of this tour we’ve had to get visas for Russia, Japan, New Zealand, Korea and Australia. For us Britishers it is (sometimes) easy – we are allowed to carry two different, valid UK passports and while we travel on one the other one can be on a desk somewhere getting a visa stamped in it. Easy-peasy. But for the Americans it’s not so easy; they can only carry one passport.
This means whenever we want to get visas we have to do so when we’re not using the passports to travel. Now there’s the EU this should be a doddle, right?
Should be, except where you’re going in and out of Switzerland. Except when you’re going into the UK and Ireland. Suddenly this becomes quite a song and dance. We got the Russian visas while we were in England for three days doing the Wireless festival, the passports arriving back at the festival site while the band were on stage and one hour before the crew bus pulled out for continental Europe to go to the Southside festival in Germany. The Australian visas are done electronically and probably don’t really count; the Japanese visas I processed on a quick fly-back to London while the band were in Cologne, borrowing their passports to take them to the Japanese consulate on Piccadilly. Just to make this interesting, the consulate refused two of the passports because they didn’t have enough pages in them which meant the following day in Berlin I had to go to the American Embassy to get new pages put in the offending documents and take these back to London when I went back 3 days later (while everyone was in Paris) to pick up the visas. To the Japanese Consulate’s credit they turned the two errant passports around inside 25 minutes when I returned. I must have looked pitiful (But they won’t thank me for telling you they did this). We were in London for 2 days just after the Russian show just before the Oxegen festival in Ireland so we got the New Zealand visas inserted then (again, the consulate helped us out and did it quickly) and now I’m at Charles De Gaulle airport after taking the train to Paris from Lyon this morning while everyone else went to Nice. I’m flying back down to the south of France to rejoin the tour tonight and then returning on Thursday, on the day off before the overnight drive to Spain, I’m flying back to Paris to pick up the passports, hopefully full-to-brimming with Korean visas. I had to forge a signature on an application on the train. The guy sitting next to me looked puzzled as to why I was obviously forging signatures while carrying a pile of fourteen passports. I felt like Donald Pleasance in the Great Escape. I probably looked like him too after so long on the road eating all the crap food I’ve been eating…
So today I had breakfast in Lyon, Lunch in Paris and tonight I’ll be eating something rich in Nice. (On Saturday we woke up in Switzerland, played a show in Italy and went to bed in Lyon. There’s a pattern here). As the travel becomes more ridiculous, (and I’m fascinated by people who’s jobs are always like this—write in and tell me your extreme travel schedules) I find myself getting more and more used to the idea of flitting anywhere for anything.
(Jumping forward: In Lisbon at the end of the tour I’ll find myself sitting in a hotel lobby, checked-out, with no idea what I’m doing that afternoon: staying in Lisbon? Flying to London? Flying to Berlin? Suddenly going anywhere becomes nothing more than a phone call to a travel agent and a series of automatic procedures to get on a plane. I end up flying to see friends in Berlin, btw. But once you’ve got a couple of hundred quid and a passport it’s very easy to imagine flying anywhere. What a giant fat luxury that is...).
Three days later….
Getting an 8AM flight to Paris was okay, kind of like taking the bus to work – it’s only an hour and a half flight. Once the wisecracking consulate guy gave me the passports back (The guy at the Koran consulate likes to make witty remarks…things like “If you don’t speak French or Korean why are you in the Korean Consulate in Paris?” “Because I’m a twat, obviously.” This might just be clumsy humour on his part and not intended to be condescending, but I’m like Beyonce in that my mother taught me better than that. We came to an understanding when I asked him in Mandarin if he wanted to speak Chinese. Not that I can speak it very well, but it was enough to stop the thinly veiled ridicule at my language inadequacies. Twonk).
After my chat with Oscar Wilde at the Consulate I had a couple of hours to kill. I took myself on an impromptu date and walked along the Seine, finally taking an early lunch in St. Germain Des Pres. It was a first date so I didn’t talk myself into going back to a hotel, instead I jumped back in a cab to return to Orly airport to fly back to Nice to get to the buses just in time to give the crew their passports so they could drive into Spain and make the load-in at the Beniccassim festival.
As I arrived at the hotel I ran into some of our party leaving for dinner and we all left to go eat at a very good but very slow Mexican Restaurant run by the most unfriendly host I’ve met in a long while. He kept telling us we didn’t want the things we’d ordered and curling his lip in contempt. It was a strange sales technique because everyone started ordering more to spite him, until we were bilious and had doubled the check.
That showed him, eh?
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Monday, July 17, 2006
Lake Geneva.
This is the view from my hotel room at sunset. Boss, isn't it? Lake Geneva is one of the most beautiful places I've been too. Here you can see the shadow of the French Alps on the left across the water. This is where Evian is made in a huge industrial plant where it's wrung out of the rock like orange juice. That's why it's so pure. That, and all the chemicals they put in it to make it transparent and to get rid of the rock-mites.
Montreux is a pretty town, snug between the lakeshore and the moutains. It feels like nothing bad can happen in Montreux. Sometimes its hard to be agnostic with all this majesty in evidence.
However, if there's one thing to make me think that the universe is Godless it's jazz and blues and The Montreux Jazz Festival was in full effect. Aside from a few old duffers, who plays blues well? No one, right? People only like playing it because it's easy to do badly. All those pointless tossers blathering on and on about being down....BB King, Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson - what did you do to us! I mean, those guys sang the blues, but these days people are at best only moping. And Jazz...what's wrong with the right notes in the right order, eh?
I went swiming in Lake Geneva on the day that we left. The water was warm and fresh and I could swim and stare up at the Alps with the sun on my face. The air was so calm and still it felt like all of Switzerland was whispering so as not to distrub the beauty of the day. Then some selfish wanker started playing a gig on the outdoor stage behind our hotel. I think it was the deaf bastard son of George Benson pushing a barrow load of smooth jazz guitars off an Alp and scatting over the top of it. When I climbed out of the lake I noticed a strange thing....people were listening. What's up with that? And scratch that thing I said about nothing bad happening in Montreux...
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Shakira! Shakira! Shakira!
To while away the hours I’ve dumped a ton of Pop Music onto my I-pod. It’s a guilty pleasure, for sure. That Shakira single is boss – riddled with naffness, but to be honest, being a bit crap is an essential part of pop, I think. Take Dusty Springfield’s cheesy “I love you so,” at the end of the perfect The Look of Love as an example.
Shakira, though; What a pop monster! The single “Hips Don’t Lie” is great. Infectious, sexy, short, more hooks than a butcher’s fridge but Christ the lyric is pants! Not that it's important but I think if you're writing a pop song you can at least come up with some decent words. You only need about 12 lines... That the song is by Wyclef--that should be enough in itself, but it gets better. Wyclef sings “Stop fighting” all the way through. Who’s fighting? Shakira and her legion of salsaing admirers? Nope. Oh, it’s ‘Clef, because he’s from Haiti and he’s still a ‘Fugee” at heart. He's the people's poet - keeping a nation together while talking about Shakira's dance moves. Utter Tosh! The guy is minted – money coming out of his ears. The last time this bloke was in a fight it was with Sheryl Crow about who got the next bag of cash for the Amex Sponsorship Gig. But I guess ‘Clef’s keeping it real for all those ‘fugee kids he still hangs around with.
Next, Wyclef sings—when he’s not busy placating the assembled mass of pugnacious Haitians—“She make a man wanna’ speak Spanish,” (And then, to prove a point, in Spanish)”What is your name, pretty? My house is your house.”
Shakira, replies with, “Ooh baby when you talk like that, you make a woman go mad.”
Ladies, tell me: is that really all it takes?
F*** me! I’ve been studying the Tang Poets in Mandarin in the hope of being able to pitch a little woo. I’ve definitely been overthinking things if you can say 'My house is your house' in Spanish and you pull Shakira…
There’s also a great line where she sings. “Oh boy, I can see your body moving, half animal, half man.” Manimal? Shakira likes Manimals?
Freaky.
Still, if you see the video it makes more sense. She’s very hot. But she does this thing with her chests; it’s a weird boxy/ in-out dance. The first time she does it, it’s cute. It definitely interrupted me while I was doing the ironing. But, then, in another video, the one where she’s been fixing a car and is covered in oil or something, she does it again and it’s not so cute. I’m all for unusual chest movements—we all need a little pep in our lives, don’t we?—but when its something done with the bold-font subtitle “this is sexy, isn’t it?” for me it loses some of its charm and it becomes a little naff. Shakira doesn’t have to try to hard, but she does: through most of the video, sadly. Having said that I still watch it to the end whenever its on TV, even though I obviously don’t like it….
On a side note there was a kid down my street who did something similar to Shakira with his chest (except he was 11 and didn't have a cleavage). His name was Steven and we used to pick on him mercilessly for having a pigeon chest and for being a freak. I hope he sees the Shakira video and finally feels some validation and takes his weird ribs out dancing somewhere. I’d like to think he’d be proud now, running along the trail blazed by Shakira, undulating his thorax in time to whatever music he's into. I hope he’s not another drunk with a shattered, lonely, unconsummated life because of a childhood marred with abuse about the shape of his body.
Hips Don't Lie is one of my four favorite songs of the year so far. Maneater by Nelly Furtado, Ain’t No Other Man by Xtina and Don’t Cha’ by the Pussycat Dolls are the others. I think all the songs are ruined by their videos – which make them perfect in a pop sense, I guess. Each one of them tries to hard to be sexy—like they were produced by men my age trying to make things hot and edgy. What’s with Nelly Furtado losing her dog and then leading an underworld S&M club in some dance moves? Why are those women rolling around on the bed in the Xtina video? The Pussycat Dolls are really only Nicole, aren’t they? Or maybe that’s just me missing the point. The other Dolls don’t seem to do much apart from some crap dancing. (However, maybe one of them drives the van, the other one knows how to fix the keyboards, one books the gigs, one does the tour accounts…. ? I don’t want to be presumptuous…).
Cee-Lo wrote Don’t Cha’. I felt vindicated when I heard that. What a burden it is to be a snob.
That three months ago I was listening to Neko Case and Emiliana Torrini and now I'm on Pussycat Dolls and Shakira. Whatever next?
To while away the hours I’ve dumped a ton of Pop Music onto my I-pod. It’s a guilty pleasure, for sure. That Shakira single is boss – riddled with naffness, but to be honest, being a bit crap is an essential part of pop, I think. Take Dusty Springfield’s cheesy “I love you so,” at the end of the perfect The Look of Love as an example.
Shakira, though; What a pop monster! The single “Hips Don’t Lie” is great. Infectious, sexy, short, more hooks than a butcher’s fridge but Christ the lyric is pants! Not that it's important but I think if you're writing a pop song you can at least come up with some decent words. You only need about 12 lines... That the song is by Wyclef--that should be enough in itself, but it gets better. Wyclef sings “Stop fighting” all the way through. Who’s fighting? Shakira and her legion of salsaing admirers? Nope. Oh, it’s ‘Clef, because he’s from Haiti and he’s still a ‘Fugee” at heart. He's the people's poet - keeping a nation together while talking about Shakira's dance moves. Utter Tosh! The guy is minted – money coming out of his ears. The last time this bloke was in a fight it was with Sheryl Crow about who got the next bag of cash for the Amex Sponsorship Gig. But I guess ‘Clef’s keeping it real for all those ‘fugee kids he still hangs around with.
Next, Wyclef sings—when he’s not busy placating the assembled mass of pugnacious Haitians—“She make a man wanna’ speak Spanish,” (And then, to prove a point, in Spanish)”What is your name, pretty? My house is your house.”
Shakira, replies with, “Ooh baby when you talk like that, you make a woman go mad.”
Ladies, tell me: is that really all it takes?
F*** me! I’ve been studying the Tang Poets in Mandarin in the hope of being able to pitch a little woo. I’ve definitely been overthinking things if you can say 'My house is your house' in Spanish and you pull Shakira…
There’s also a great line where she sings. “Oh boy, I can see your body moving, half animal, half man.” Manimal? Shakira likes Manimals?
Freaky.
Still, if you see the video it makes more sense. She’s very hot. But she does this thing with her chests; it’s a weird boxy/ in-out dance. The first time she does it, it’s cute. It definitely interrupted me while I was doing the ironing. But, then, in another video, the one where she’s been fixing a car and is covered in oil or something, she does it again and it’s not so cute. I’m all for unusual chest movements—we all need a little pep in our lives, don’t we?—but when its something done with the bold-font subtitle “this is sexy, isn’t it?” for me it loses some of its charm and it becomes a little naff. Shakira doesn’t have to try to hard, but she does: through most of the video, sadly. Having said that I still watch it to the end whenever its on TV, even though I obviously don’t like it….
On a side note there was a kid down my street who did something similar to Shakira with his chest (except he was 11 and didn't have a cleavage). His name was Steven and we used to pick on him mercilessly for having a pigeon chest and for being a freak. I hope he sees the Shakira video and finally feels some validation and takes his weird ribs out dancing somewhere. I’d like to think he’d be proud now, running along the trail blazed by Shakira, undulating his thorax in time to whatever music he's into. I hope he’s not another drunk with a shattered, lonely, unconsummated life because of a childhood marred with abuse about the shape of his body.
Hips Don't Lie is one of my four favorite songs of the year so far. Maneater by Nelly Furtado, Ain’t No Other Man by Xtina and Don’t Cha’ by the Pussycat Dolls are the others. I think all the songs are ruined by their videos – which make them perfect in a pop sense, I guess. Each one of them tries to hard to be sexy—like they were produced by men my age trying to make things hot and edgy. What’s with Nelly Furtado losing her dog and then leading an underworld S&M club in some dance moves? Why are those women rolling around on the bed in the Xtina video? The Pussycat Dolls are really only Nicole, aren’t they? Or maybe that’s just me missing the point. The other Dolls don’t seem to do much apart from some crap dancing. (However, maybe one of them drives the van, the other one knows how to fix the keyboards, one books the gigs, one does the tour accounts…. ? I don’t want to be presumptuous…).
Cee-Lo wrote Don’t Cha’. I felt vindicated when I heard that. What a burden it is to be a snob.
That three months ago I was listening to Neko Case and Emiliana Torrini and now I'm on Pussycat Dolls and Shakira. Whatever next?
Friday, July 14, 2006
It's been so long, so long, so long....
Just like Dave says in Cat People.
The tour’s going well but it’s relentless. Ultimately, for me, the hardest thing about tours is not that there’s a lot of travel or that there’s a lot to do; but that there’s a lot of travel and a lot to do for a long time--day in, day out (Look--more Dave!). And there’s no getting off. The past few weeks have been particularly grueling as we came out of a 3-month US tour into five weeks of festivals. The festivals are all like single shows rather than a cohesive string of dates (like a tour); consequently all the planning for the festival dates is very very bespoke, time consuming and full of duplicated fact-finding and detailing. As we don’t stop moving for five weeks there’s no real time to catch one’s breath. Still, it beats working for a living and I’ve no time for anyone whining about working too hard in the music business, so it would be poor form if I were to start. But that's why I’ve not been blogging…tour malaise.
A lot has happened over the past month, so much so that even the events of last week feel a long way away. Some selected highlights are:
Cat Power’s dancing during her appearance on Later with Jools Holland and the fact that she was having a crafty fag in the studio when the cameras panned around, cupping it in her hand like some kid behind the bike sheds at school (once taping starts no one is allowed to leave the studio and all the bands stay on set). That earned a collective “ooh, she’s so cute,” from all the assembled road-crews who all smoothed-out their Radiohead tour tee-shirts and wiped the crumbs of rider from their chins before smiling at her doe-eyed all through her performance--me included;
The sauna in the hotel in the small town of Jönköping, Sweden where we stayed when playing at the Hultsfred Festival. Jönköping is a tiny town and there was a little bit of culture shock when arriving from New York but the hotel had a sauna on the top floor with the view of the lake—it didn’t get dark until around 11:30PM and it started getting light at 2AM so it was easy to get confused, especially when schwitzing in a sauna. Saunas and steam rooms are excellent. Trust me, if you’re not middle class and don’t ponce around in these places already then get yourself in one and sweat the prole out of you…;
Zurich and that lake—gorgeous, clean, Swiss. ‘Nuff said;
Wireless Festival in Hyde Park – comedy backstage village – does someone give out uniforms for bands? Black! It's all gone black! John Major's young Conservatives go indie! Jack White was a geezer but really everyone else, ”must try harder.” Regressive and bland. And if anyone says, “but it’s all about the music” then get off a stage in front of thousands of people you drab numpty. Christ, so many black jeans, so little personality. At least it reminded me I’m a Mod at heart;
Berlin – there was a beach on the river behind the venue, completely man-made and completely genius and completely full of gorgeous Germans of both sexes. Danke schön, baby Jesus. For the first time ever I saw the crew all want to take some exercise and go swimming. Not me, of course. I only went there when I had to to remind people to return to work. Honest, I did. It would be easy to leave your heart in Berlin. I always do—have done for years;
Copenhagen—our hotel was on the beautiful, calm quayside. The water was blue, like liquid sapphire. I wanted to leap into it. I went out walking past the moored boats and the Little Mermaid statue (which was once beheaded by vandals). One yacht had a mini helicopter parked on the stern. I want one of them! In fact, I’d like to have one of them so I could crash it into an island. That would be rich, wouldn’t it? Crashing yachts and helicopters into islands and walking away like they were rental scooters. (btw: check out Yacht Rock on Channel101.com. The real story of Kenny Loggins, Hall and Oates, Michael Macdonald, et al). Also in Copenhagen I watched the world cup at the same time as a friend in LA where we texted each other on the relative merits of the game. Best use of communications technology in a long while, I reckon. I did it in Moscow and Scotland too. Also I saw the Christina Aguilera video on telly for Ain’t No Other Man and think it’s a genius single. Forever I will associate CPH with Xtina now. Pop music is the best thing in the world (ex-girlfriends, ex-wife, please don’t take offense);
Moscow - it was much more fun than I thought it would be. Last time I was there in 1994 it was hellish, this time it was like working in any European city. The show was in a theatre that had a giant (read 10 feet tall) bust of Lenin upstage behind the curtain. I think our Russian hosts were a little disappointed in us though, whenever they took us out I got the feeling they were expecting us to act wacky and drink lots of vodka and ask for hookers. We did none of the above but ended up watching the football at the aftershow party. It was strange, as though we’d kind of killed the party everyone had been expecting. And you could so tell people were waiting for it…I think they were let down we didn’t behave reprehensibly, there were lots of prostitutes in the hotel bar—unless it’s a custom for single Russian women to sit in bars reading newspapers at 2AM? Apparently it costs US$300 for a shag. Some of the women were so beautiful I wouldn’t have the nerve to try to talk to them if I saw them out in a bar somewhere. The horror of their job seemed evident when I saw a procession of fat businessmen approach them. These guys were so out of shape they must find it hard to jerk-off and yet here they are, renting beautiful women. I couldn’t help but wonder what went through both their minds. I went to see Lenin’s Mausoleum just outside the Kremlin--the line was an hour long. One Italian tourist and his three friends tried to cut the line because (from what I could understand) they had to leave at noon for their flight. The Russian official monitoring the head of the line called his colleague over who took the Italian aside. The Italian went through his whole spiel again and the 2nd Russian took him away from the other Italians and asked--I imagine--for some kind of ‘contribution’. As I passed the Italian looked genuinely shocked. His aghast expression said; ‘To think that you have to bribe to cut the line at Lenin’s tomb!’ Welcome to Russia, comrade. Lenin is dressed in a dark suit, and one hand was curled into a half-fist as a result of his stroke. The charcoal grey marble walls with red accents that lined the stairs down into the tomb was some of the best architecture I saw in Moscow. You have to keep walking past the body, you can’t stop--otherwise the soldiers guarding the corpse snap their fingers to usher you out. It takes maybe two minutes to pass by after an hour or so in line. I think they’re moving him soon, back to his hometown. One thing was still the same in Moscow, everyone tried it on for a tip or for some kind of pay-off. One of the local crew broke the window in a door during load-out at the venue and they were trying to blame our security to get a pay-off. Last time I was there I would have taken this more seriously (however, we did throw furniture out of an 18th floor window that time), this time I just told people to Fuck off and that seemed to work, here's a picture Jamie took in Red Square outside of the Kremlin - it's a strange place to be. I'm sure some bloke from the rag-end of Russia would feel the same in Times Square;
Oxegen Festival in Ireland and our boss guitar tech' Brian gets injured by some falling truss that was blown over in the wind—he’s hospitalized and so I look after the guitars for the gig. No one else on the crew has a clue how the guitar pedals are wired so we all of us kind of make it up and when the band go on (in front of 70000 kids) all we know is that their guitars technically make a noise and are in tune. It’s weird doing someone else’s job at a show—I quite liked it for a day. You know when roadies come out before the band go on and check the guitars? I had to do that and it’s great playing a guitar really fucking loud on a huge stage--even for a minute. Anyone who says different is a liar. Once we knew our tech' was okay the biggest bummer for me was the loss of my very expensive flashlight. It was like a light sabre and it (obviously) made me feel like a man. There, I said it.
Scotland – my same friend in LA is texting me scores while I’m at the side of stage and I’m relaying them to the band to relay to the 75000+ crowd. Removed as it is I'm glad to be hanging out with my friend via text, which sounds a bit strange now that I've typed it out;
Amsterdam – Jesus Christ. The original corporate alternative lifestyle. While it’s a great idea to have a place where people can do as they wish, it’s like the Libertine capital is overrun with philistines. Smoked out, drunk English, American and French tourists stumbling around. What’s the point? If you’re going to get that fucked-up you can do it at home with Thunderbird wine. It would save you the air-fare. I like that the Dutch have their lifestyle (although, as the original hippie nation they prove a point by being arrogant and elitist about it. Never trust a hippy. Ever. For any reason. They’re all smug fuckers who are dishonest about having an agenda—hippies, that is, not the Dutch. Having said that I’d be a bit pissy if I’d ceded Manhattan for Dutch Guyana…although to be fair it was probably one of those English swizzes, the kind that bagged us Hong Kong too. It would be enought o give anyone a chip on their shoulder. Yes, yes, keep yer hair on-the British are next. In twenty years the British Empire will seem as fanciful as Portugal's does now. At least Portugal gets some sun). When you get away from the monged-out tourists Amsterdam is beautiful and genteel and a great place to spend time. I think they should widen the red-light area a little and only allow tourists to visit there unless they have special culture visas. That way they can stumble and leer their way around to their hearts content without making the place ugly for everyone else…then the red-light section would be like Vegas, which would be apt. There’s no Starbucks in Amsterdam—do you think it’s because they worry about their corporate image? For some reason that made me happy. At some point, some knobby PR twonk has doubtless struggled with how to make a coffeeshop viable in Amsterdam without selling weed or without tarnishing the Starbucks corporate image. Oh, and I saw a guy wandering along with the back of his jeans so shredded he might not have been wearing any (his white keks were plain to see, though). He wore glasses and looked like an accountant from the front (maybe he was) and I wondered why he was trying sooooo hard to be so gay. I mean, fair enough, if willies is what you like then may you get all that you need, but to insist that everyone address that aspect of you before everything else seems ridiculous. If I were to be that hetro, I’d quite rightly be taken for a loop on the M25 in the back of a van and be beaten until I got a grip by my friends, or at least I should be. To me it seems a strange part of gay culture whereby it’s okay to be overtly gay, as if anyone’s supposed to give a fuck. Is it a reaction to years of repression? To me it just looks like another way little boys run around holding their willies out for everyone to see. We all of us do, one way or another. We want everyone to be as impressed by them as we are.
Or is that just me?
Speaking of which, we’ve just got to Austria and it looks just like the Sound Of Music. I’m off for a quick sing-song. “How do you solve a problem like Mari-ah.”
Just like Dave says in Cat People.
The tour’s going well but it’s relentless. Ultimately, for me, the hardest thing about tours is not that there’s a lot of travel or that there’s a lot to do; but that there’s a lot of travel and a lot to do for a long time--day in, day out (Look--more Dave!). And there’s no getting off. The past few weeks have been particularly grueling as we came out of a 3-month US tour into five weeks of festivals. The festivals are all like single shows rather than a cohesive string of dates (like a tour); consequently all the planning for the festival dates is very very bespoke, time consuming and full of duplicated fact-finding and detailing. As we don’t stop moving for five weeks there’s no real time to catch one’s breath. Still, it beats working for a living and I’ve no time for anyone whining about working too hard in the music business, so it would be poor form if I were to start. But that's why I’ve not been blogging…tour malaise.
A lot has happened over the past month, so much so that even the events of last week feel a long way away. Some selected highlights are:
Cat Power’s dancing during her appearance on Later with Jools Holland and the fact that she was having a crafty fag in the studio when the cameras panned around, cupping it in her hand like some kid behind the bike sheds at school (once taping starts no one is allowed to leave the studio and all the bands stay on set). That earned a collective “ooh, she’s so cute,” from all the assembled road-crews who all smoothed-out their Radiohead tour tee-shirts and wiped the crumbs of rider from their chins before smiling at her doe-eyed all through her performance--me included;
The sauna in the hotel in the small town of Jönköping, Sweden where we stayed when playing at the Hultsfred Festival. Jönköping is a tiny town and there was a little bit of culture shock when arriving from New York but the hotel had a sauna on the top floor with the view of the lake—it didn’t get dark until around 11:30PM and it started getting light at 2AM so it was easy to get confused, especially when schwitzing in a sauna. Saunas and steam rooms are excellent. Trust me, if you’re not middle class and don’t ponce around in these places already then get yourself in one and sweat the prole out of you…;
Zurich and that lake—gorgeous, clean, Swiss. ‘Nuff said;
Wireless Festival in Hyde Park – comedy backstage village – does someone give out uniforms for bands? Black! It's all gone black! John Major's young Conservatives go indie! Jack White was a geezer but really everyone else, ”must try harder.” Regressive and bland. And if anyone says, “but it’s all about the music” then get off a stage in front of thousands of people you drab numpty. Christ, so many black jeans, so little personality. At least it reminded me I’m a Mod at heart;
Berlin – there was a beach on the river behind the venue, completely man-made and completely genius and completely full of gorgeous Germans of both sexes. Danke schön, baby Jesus. For the first time ever I saw the crew all want to take some exercise and go swimming. Not me, of course. I only went there when I had to to remind people to return to work. Honest, I did. It would be easy to leave your heart in Berlin. I always do—have done for years;
Copenhagen—our hotel was on the beautiful, calm quayside. The water was blue, like liquid sapphire. I wanted to leap into it. I went out walking past the moored boats and the Little Mermaid statue (which was once beheaded by vandals). One yacht had a mini helicopter parked on the stern. I want one of them! In fact, I’d like to have one of them so I could crash it into an island. That would be rich, wouldn’t it? Crashing yachts and helicopters into islands and walking away like they were rental scooters. (btw: check out Yacht Rock on Channel101.com. The real story of Kenny Loggins, Hall and Oates, Michael Macdonald, et al). Also in Copenhagen I watched the world cup at the same time as a friend in LA where we texted each other on the relative merits of the game. Best use of communications technology in a long while, I reckon. I did it in Moscow and Scotland too. Also I saw the Christina Aguilera video on telly for Ain’t No Other Man and think it’s a genius single. Forever I will associate CPH with Xtina now. Pop music is the best thing in the world (ex-girlfriends, ex-wife, please don’t take offense);
Moscow - it was much more fun than I thought it would be. Last time I was there in 1994 it was hellish, this time it was like working in any European city. The show was in a theatre that had a giant (read 10 feet tall) bust of Lenin upstage behind the curtain. I think our Russian hosts were a little disappointed in us though, whenever they took us out I got the feeling they were expecting us to act wacky and drink lots of vodka and ask for hookers. We did none of the above but ended up watching the football at the aftershow party. It was strange, as though we’d kind of killed the party everyone had been expecting. And you could so tell people were waiting for it…I think they were let down we didn’t behave reprehensibly, there were lots of prostitutes in the hotel bar—unless it’s a custom for single Russian women to sit in bars reading newspapers at 2AM? Apparently it costs US$300 for a shag. Some of the women were so beautiful I wouldn’t have the nerve to try to talk to them if I saw them out in a bar somewhere. The horror of their job seemed evident when I saw a procession of fat businessmen approach them. These guys were so out of shape they must find it hard to jerk-off and yet here they are, renting beautiful women. I couldn’t help but wonder what went through both their minds. I went to see Lenin’s Mausoleum just outside the Kremlin--the line was an hour long. One Italian tourist and his three friends tried to cut the line because (from what I could understand) they had to leave at noon for their flight. The Russian official monitoring the head of the line called his colleague over who took the Italian aside. The Italian went through his whole spiel again and the 2nd Russian took him away from the other Italians and asked--I imagine--for some kind of ‘contribution’. As I passed the Italian looked genuinely shocked. His aghast expression said; ‘To think that you have to bribe to cut the line at Lenin’s tomb!’ Welcome to Russia, comrade. Lenin is dressed in a dark suit, and one hand was curled into a half-fist as a result of his stroke. The charcoal grey marble walls with red accents that lined the stairs down into the tomb was some of the best architecture I saw in Moscow. You have to keep walking past the body, you can’t stop--otherwise the soldiers guarding the corpse snap their fingers to usher you out. It takes maybe two minutes to pass by after an hour or so in line. I think they’re moving him soon, back to his hometown. One thing was still the same in Moscow, everyone tried it on for a tip or for some kind of pay-off. One of the local crew broke the window in a door during load-out at the venue and they were trying to blame our security to get a pay-off. Last time I was there I would have taken this more seriously (however, we did throw furniture out of an 18th floor window that time), this time I just told people to Fuck off and that seemed to work, here's a picture Jamie took in Red Square outside of the Kremlin - it's a strange place to be. I'm sure some bloke from the rag-end of Russia would feel the same in Times Square;
Oxegen Festival in Ireland and our boss guitar tech' Brian gets injured by some falling truss that was blown over in the wind—he’s hospitalized and so I look after the guitars for the gig. No one else on the crew has a clue how the guitar pedals are wired so we all of us kind of make it up and when the band go on (in front of 70000 kids) all we know is that their guitars technically make a noise and are in tune. It’s weird doing someone else’s job at a show—I quite liked it for a day. You know when roadies come out before the band go on and check the guitars? I had to do that and it’s great playing a guitar really fucking loud on a huge stage--even for a minute. Anyone who says different is a liar. Once we knew our tech' was okay the biggest bummer for me was the loss of my very expensive flashlight. It was like a light sabre and it (obviously) made me feel like a man. There, I said it.
Scotland – my same friend in LA is texting me scores while I’m at the side of stage and I’m relaying them to the band to relay to the 75000+ crowd. Removed as it is I'm glad to be hanging out with my friend via text, which sounds a bit strange now that I've typed it out;
Amsterdam – Jesus Christ. The original corporate alternative lifestyle. While it’s a great idea to have a place where people can do as they wish, it’s like the Libertine capital is overrun with philistines. Smoked out, drunk English, American and French tourists stumbling around. What’s the point? If you’re going to get that fucked-up you can do it at home with Thunderbird wine. It would save you the air-fare. I like that the Dutch have their lifestyle (although, as the original hippie nation they prove a point by being arrogant and elitist about it. Never trust a hippy. Ever. For any reason. They’re all smug fuckers who are dishonest about having an agenda—hippies, that is, not the Dutch. Having said that I’d be a bit pissy if I’d ceded Manhattan for Dutch Guyana…although to be fair it was probably one of those English swizzes, the kind that bagged us Hong Kong too. It would be enought o give anyone a chip on their shoulder. Yes, yes, keep yer hair on-the British are next. In twenty years the British Empire will seem as fanciful as Portugal's does now. At least Portugal gets some sun). When you get away from the monged-out tourists Amsterdam is beautiful and genteel and a great place to spend time. I think they should widen the red-light area a little and only allow tourists to visit there unless they have special culture visas. That way they can stumble and leer their way around to their hearts content without making the place ugly for everyone else…then the red-light section would be like Vegas, which would be apt. There’s no Starbucks in Amsterdam—do you think it’s because they worry about their corporate image? For some reason that made me happy. At some point, some knobby PR twonk has doubtless struggled with how to make a coffeeshop viable in Amsterdam without selling weed or without tarnishing the Starbucks corporate image. Oh, and I saw a guy wandering along with the back of his jeans so shredded he might not have been wearing any (his white keks were plain to see, though). He wore glasses and looked like an accountant from the front (maybe he was) and I wondered why he was trying sooooo hard to be so gay. I mean, fair enough, if willies is what you like then may you get all that you need, but to insist that everyone address that aspect of you before everything else seems ridiculous. If I were to be that hetro, I’d quite rightly be taken for a loop on the M25 in the back of a van and be beaten until I got a grip by my friends, or at least I should be. To me it seems a strange part of gay culture whereby it’s okay to be overtly gay, as if anyone’s supposed to give a fuck. Is it a reaction to years of repression? To me it just looks like another way little boys run around holding their willies out for everyone to see. We all of us do, one way or another. We want everyone to be as impressed by them as we are.
Or is that just me?
Speaking of which, we’ve just got to Austria and it looks just like the Sound Of Music. I’m off for a quick sing-song. “How do you solve a problem like Mari-ah.”
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