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.”