Rock and Roll Tourist E-Book

Graham Forbes

• Herausgeber: McNidder and Grace
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 411

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

After his much acclaimed book Rock and Roll Mountains, Graham Forbes returns with Rock and Roll Tourist. A combination of Billy Connolly meets Bill Bryson, Rock and Roll Tourist is a hugely entertaining mix of travel, rock music and humour. Rock and Roll Tourist is a travel book with a difference. Graham Forbes takes us on a roller-coaster ride around the UK, Europe and the USA. The book features Franz Ferdinand, Rod Stewart, Hayseed Dixie, Anthrax, BB King, Incredible String Band, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others. It is a very funny, occasionally disturbing, sometimes moving book.

Leseprobe

Rock and Roll Tourist

Graham Forbes

Thanks

For Alan and Graham. My Boys

This is where I get to thank all the people who have helped. In many books, these lists are like telephone directories and extremely boring for anyone else to read. I suspect they are designed that way to make the book seem far more important than it really is.

So I’ll just give a quick but very grateful editorial nod to Alan Forbes, David Fletcher, Andrew Peden Smith, Alice Stoakley, Ryan Praefke and Tom Lamb.

A wee biography

At the beginning of books there’s always a wee biography of the author. They are presented in a way that gives the impression someone else has written it. In fact they are usually always written by the authors, and they sieze the opportunity to say wonderful things about themselves that no one else would. So I won’t try to kid anyone that I didn’t write the following myself …

When I was young I dreamed of playing football for Partick Thistle. But I was hopeless. Fortunately when I was 13 I heard the Stones, bought an electric guitar for £7 and have been playing in bands ever since. I will play with anyone, any time, anywhere, from a bus shelter to a festival. Except jazz (far too many weird chords), or 1980’s music – I hate all that popping, pinging, slapping, arty-farty bass nonsense. Or let’s say hypothetically, if it involves travelling to Brazil with a famous punk rock band to play three gigs because the singer’s young boyfriend just happens to live there and I’d have had to pay the hotel myself because he had booked the band into a backstreet brothel to save money. But that aside, I love touring and being on stage, especially if there are plenty of people and there’s free food afterwards …

When I’m not off somewhere, I live some of the time in Glasgow, where everyone drives faster than me, and some of the time in Florida, where everyone drives slower. Although not attaining the academic qualifications necessary to attend classes, I have been an active member of Glasgow University gym for many years, but have inexplicably not yet been awarded an honorary degree. I hope that Northumbria University Press,* who have published the fine work of literature you are holding in your hands, will soon remedy this sad oversight.

*Now McNidder & Grace

Introduction

Having just finished that young whippersnapper Alex James’s excellent memoir ABitofaBlur, Graham Forbes’s RockandRollTourist seemed to me less … well, cheesy.

Former Blur bassist Alex James, like Graham, has given up mood-enhancing substances and, largely, the rock and roll lifestyle, in favour of becoming a tweedy poster boy for the bucolic Cotswold landed gentry. Alex has his own farm and he makes his own cheese, which is allegedly very good indeed.

Graham, on the other hand, is older than Alex and has not, as Mr James has, reputedly spent £1m on cocaine and ancillary stimulants. He has, however, spent quite a lot of time obtaining prescriptions for dubious pills which, thankfully, he has now flushed down the toilet of experience. He’s a better skier and rock climber than Alex, lives in Glasgow and the USA, still plays bass, and manages his son’s band Darkwater.

A host of weird and wonderful characters pop up here, the true wild men of rock, like the Irish show band member who was an obsessive masturbator, by no means all musicians or camp followers. There is some wonderful descriptive writing, and a great piece about, of all things, rock and roll transportation, in the form of the legendary Edwin Shirley Trucking company.

And I mustn’t forget such insights as the influence of Scottish pipe band drumming on modern funk, the way that Clive Palmer (of the Incredible String Band) smells, and Very Bad Things That Can Happen in Mallorca.

This is a very funny, occasionally disturbing, sometimes moving book. It’s a middle-aged man’s meditation on what rock means for him, and in the end, on what it’s like to pass the baton on to the next generation. I heartily recommend it.

Tom Morton, BBC Scotland

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

A wee biography

Introduction

1 Tampa Kiss and Aerosmith

2 Barcelona Incredible String Band

3 Palma Incredible String Band

4 Glasgow U2

5 Ljubljana Bootleg Beatles

6 Amsterdam Jerry Lee Lewis

7 Glasgow Chuck Berry

8 Stirling Wet Wet Wet

9 Galway Amos Garrett

10 Oxford Anthrax

11 Brussels Anthrax

12 Wrexham Hayseed Dixie

13 Hamburg Eminem

14 Edinburgh Antonio Forcione

15 Reykjavik Franz Ferdinand

16 Sarasota BB King

17 Memphis Elvis Presley

18 Nashville Grand Ole Opry

19 St Petersburg Devon Allman and Dickey Betts

20 Orlando Little Feat

21 Miami Bang Music Festival

22 New York City Average White Band

23 London Edwin Shirley Trucking Company

24 Antwerp Rod Stewart

25 Bedford Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band

26 King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut The Hedrons

27 Newcastle Darkwater

28 UK Tour Darkwater

By the way …

By the Same Author

Copyright

1

TAMPA

Kiss and Aerosmith

I BLAME Kiss for what happened. Nobody should play as loud as they do. Anyone who has seen a heavy metal band knows Kiss; masters of excess, just look at bass player Gene Simmons with his monstrous lashing tongue. I mean where did he get that? From the first moment he saw it in the mirror he must have known there could only be one path, he had been placed on Planet Earth to be a rock star. It’s like it was ripped from a horny bull and transplanted straight into his gob. When he wiggles it at the girls, it drips and dangles and sways below his chin in away that gets them panting, or at least he seems to think so. He leers as he flicks the tip up and down… it’s a long, long way from the days when cuddly, grinning pop groups used to dress up in smart matching suits and shampoo their hair before every gig so that it was nice and soft and bouncy and the most daring thing they did was wink or shout ‘ooo’ into the mikes.

Then there’s the circus make-up plastered all over their faces, their stage clothes like Batman and Robin on acid, their huge clumping high-heeled boots, and just in case their zillion watts of amplification haven’t bludgeoned us into quivering submission, they end every show with massive explosions and pyrotechnics designed to deafen us completely. If you like rock music just slightly quieter than an Apollo launch, then Gene’s your man. It’s brilliant.

I had recently sold my business, nothing glamorous, just a removal and storage company, and after the 25-year slog it had taken to get to the Thank God cheque I was finally taking a long vacation in Florida, on a beautiful island called Longboat Key. It was great relaxing after all the stress of running a company in Glasgow, constantly fighting off gangsters and extortionists – the Inland Revenue in Scotland doesn’t fanny about – but sometimes it’s good to drag yourself away from the beach to make sure your heart is still pumping.

So I went to Tampa to see Kiss.

The morning of the gig, I woke with a sore neck. I’d had bother with it before, but put this down to playing too many pub gigs with the weight of a heavy bass guitar hanging from my shoulders. I had been doing a lot of rock climbing, which didn’t exactly help either, but I loved clambering up jagged cliffs in the Scottish Highlands. And I loved to ski whenever I could, even when a deranged, inbred little turd of a drag-lift operator amused himself by running it too fast over a lethal bump he had built, drooling and chortling as he watched bones cracking when everyone hurtled into the air then crashed onto the concrete-hard Aberdeenshire ice.

When I woke that day with the golden Florida sunshine streaming into my room, I was puzzled because I hadn’t been doing anything more strenuous than snoozing by the pool or walking on the beach watching for little groups of dolphins splashing in the calm water of the Gulf of Mexico. But my neck really hurt. Although I was due to fly back to Scotland in a few days, I decided to go to a local doctor; something was definitely wrong. I thought they’d send me for an X-ray or something, but the woman who saw me briefly touched my back then cheerily diagnosed a muscle spasm. She told me a few pills would have me right as rain in no time and gave me a prescription. Oh, and she had a sample of something that was good; I could have that free. Take one of these last thing at night and the next thing I’d know would be the birds singing at dawn. That sounded just the job. She was very nice and I felt much better. You see, I told myself, nothing wrong at all.

I’d promised to go with my son, Graham, to the Kiss gig and we drove up to the hotel we’d booked so we wouldn’t have to join the freeway crawl after the show. They were sharing the bill with Aerosmith at the St Pete’s Times Forum, an oval, glass and steel stadium as tall as a 15-storey skyscraper, gleaming in the sun at the edge of Tampa Bay. It’s quite a sight.

American rock concerts are great, especially in Florida. As you walk to the gig, the air is warm and balmy, everyone seems in a good mood, there’s always a friendly carnival atmosphere. The local rock radio station was broadcasting live, with the Sunshine Coast’s most beautiful girls throwing tee shirts, stickers and CDs to the crowd. At the side of the broad plaza in front of the entrance, a Led Zep tribute band was playing ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Stairway’. At big gigs in Glasgow, you often have to wade through staggering armies of shell-suited yobs pissing in the street and swilling from Buckfast bottles – you don’t want to mess with Daniel O’Donnell’s fans – but here everyone was relaxed and smiling.

Inside, the Forum was buzzing, 20,000 people, like a huge rowdy party with an endless supply of fast food. I followed Graham to our seats, glancing into the corporate suites at lanky Orlando Magic basketball players wearing gold chains and chunky Rolex’s, and wee fat politicians wallowing in champagne and giggling blonde cheerleaders.

The warm-up band were on stage, a Lousiana-based bottleneck-guitar group playing thick, gutsy blues songs about waking in the morning and picking cotton, the old black P90 guitar pickups on their beat-up Gibsons growling and wailing in the hot arena. People wandered around, found their seats, sat down for a few minutes then rushed to the concession stands to gather buckets of popcorn, gallons of beer, pails of fizzing cola, juicy burgers, peanuts, pretzels and plump hot dogs smothered with mustard and ketchup.

After a short break and microphone tests by skinny, hollow-eyed roadies with braided, waist-long hair, 1 – 2, CHECK! 1 – 2, there was a massive burst of white lights and the explosion of glitter, make-up, platform boots and lashing tongues that we know and love as Kiss charged on stage. Bloodyhell,they’redeafening! I couldn’t understand why the people way down in the front rows weren’t keeling over; the flesh on their faces was pinned back as if they were staring into a Stealth bomber’s jets. Each pounding riff seemed to unleash more pain in my neck until I began to think Gene Simmons had a vendetta against me. I closed my eyes as his thundering bass sent shuddering low-frequency shock waves though the building. The metal seats were vibrating so much I felt like I was strapped to a clattering roller coaster hurtling over vertical drops. Then the band punched out their signature hit, ‘Iwannarockandrollallnight,andpar-tayev-eryday’, amid a blitzkrieg of flares, fireworks, sparks and more noise than I have ever heard before in an enclosed space.

Normally I would have loved Aerosmith. The first time I saw them was in Central Park when they were young, wild and just hitting the big time. They’ve grown up now and are super-slick, but it was good to see Steve Tyler still pouting and mincing around in his skin-tight pants, waving his silk scarves, Boston’s version of Mick Jagger. Joe Perry was at his side, playing the familiar riffs and solos – some guitar players have a natural stage presence that seems to reach out and fill a hall, and the crowd can feel it. They were great, but the pain in my neck was getting worse. I swallowed another pill. It didn’t work. I kept shuffling around, standing up, sitting down, folding my arms, holding up my chin; nothing made any difference.

After almost five hours, the gig ended like an indoor Pompeii with more eruptions of fireworks. Great,temporaryblindnesstoo. Outside, the streets were packed with people making their way to nearby bars and car parks. We couldn’t find a taxi and it took us almost an hour to walk back to the Holiday Inn. My neck felt like it was in a clamp. I didn’t want to tell Graham how much I was hurting and he gave me puzzled looks when I kept stopping for a rest and looking in shop windows. I’d never shown any interest before in mops, buckets and drain cleaners. As soon as we reached our room I took the knock-out pill I’d been given, lay on my bed and … Ah … that’sbetter.

The next day Graham drove me back to Longboat Key, the first time he’d driven in America. It’s much easier than in Scotland; the roads are wider and the traffic coasts along rather than charging like an invading army. We waited until late morning when the freeway was quiet and then drove to the Sunshine Skyway, a five-mile bridge that spans Tampa Bay. I sat back, rubbing my neck, trying to relax and enjoy looking at the sparkling water as the radio played ‘Sweet Home Alabama’, AC/DC and Zeppelin. FM radio in America always seems clearer than in the UK; I don’t know why, but I always seem to hear more stuff going on in these songs.

When we got back to the house I took another pill and fell asleep. I woke around two in the morning, like most men my age. My mouth felt like sandpaper so I reached out and picked up a glass of water from the nightstand. It fell out of my hand; I often drop things, so I didn’t think much about it. A pee, another pill and I was warm and snug again in Valium Valley.

Next morning the pain was worse. I lay on the floor for a long time, the only way I could get comfortable, and stared mindlessly at Judge Judy and fat rednecks fighting on the Jerry Springer Show. When I wandered to the kitchen to make coffee, I vaguely noticed that I couldn’t lift the kettle with my left hand. Then I put my arm in the air and it fell back down. I couldn’t hold it up. That’sodd. Sometimes I’m a bit slow on the uptake, but I realised that this might not be a good thing and decided to go back to the local surgery. When I told the assistant what was happening she quickly called the doctor.

He looked at me, frowned, and said that it was either a stroke or a herniated disc. Not good. I needed an MRI scan right away. The local hospital could do it. He checked his watch. Frowned. It’saftersix.ThisisFridaynightsotheunitmightbeclosed. He said I should go to the casualty department and let them know what was happening, they might manage something. Graham drove me to the Memorial Hospital, a sparkling new building that looks like a posh hotel, just a little down Highway 41 opposite the Pizza Hut and Blockbuster video store that we often used.

Many wealthy people have retired to Sarasota and the investment in health care has been exceptional; the hospital has one of the best neurosurgical units in America. Within 20 minutes I was on my back, being pushed head first into the narrow tunnel of an MRI machine. Like most people, I hated the thought of being stuck in a narrow metal tube but I knew I better not whinge, I was very lucky that they were seeing me so quickly. I told myself to relax: it’sjustlikelyingonasunbed. I had to lie still; if I moved they would have to start again. After about 30 minutes, the loud humming noise of the scanner fell silent, the bright light switched off and I was pulled back out.

Soon afterwards a young, very helpful neurosurgeon arrived. Ah,you’reScottishIhavegrandparentswhoareScotch. He showed me the MRI pictures. He pointed to my spine. A disc in my neck had popped out and was cutting in to my spinal cord. I’mafraidyouneedimmediatesurgery. If I was not operated on right away my left arm would be permanently paralysed – it was halfway there already. At worst, I might have to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair, unable to move anything but my head.

Well,there’sathing.

He was very reassuring. He told me he’d do a bone graft and bolt two vertebrae together – yes,theseonesthere – with a metal plate and five screws. I asked how long it would be before I could climb and ski again. He smiled sympathetically. That might take a while. Maybe next year I’d be able to ski, although I’d have to be careful. No jumping off cliffs or anything. That sounded hopeful, I’ve never wanted to jump off cliffs anyway, although I’ve fallen off a few. Don’tworry – theoperationhasagoodchanceofasuccessfuloutcome. What does that mean? A good chance? He told me that they would get at my spine from the front by making as small a cut in my throat as possible. Eh,excuseme,butwhen you’reusingthewordsscalpelandthroatthere’snosuchthingassmall.

I glanced at Graham and could see nervousness in his eyes. He looked at me, nodded, then told the surgeon to go ahead, it had to be done. I was wheeled to a bed in a private room, which was very nice of them, pumped full of morphine, which was even nicer, and settled into that half-asleep, dream-like state, where you have a dumb smile and wish there was some Rolling Stones music to listen to.

Graham went back to our house and spent the night trawling the Internet to make sure there was no alternative to surgery. In Britain we have the idea that American hospitals are only interested in money but I can’t remember being asked if I could pay the bill, which they said they would send to me eventually. They were very relaxed; didn’t ask for a credit card, or to see my passport. I could have taken the surgery and run … well, sort of. They just smiled and told me they’d get me fixed up real quick: Hey,don’tworryaboutit.

I won’t twitter on about the operation, I’ll save that for the day when I’m propped up in a chair in the residents’ lounge of a home for the bewildered and I’ve run out of farts. When I got out of hospital the next week, I had to stay in Florida on my back and watching more daytime TV before I could travel. Those two weeks just flew by.

Back in Glasgow, I found a good physiotherapist, a large German lady. Apart from the usual muscle pounding she gave me lots of acupuncture, although the sharp little needles made my legs jerk like a fairground puppet. Every day, I took a stroll up the small hill in the grounds of Jordanhill College, which gave a good view towards the Highlands. I could see snow on the mountains and longed to get back out skiing or climbing – I had been very fit and wasn’t used to sitting around. As soon as I could, I began going to Glasgow University gym; gentle cycling on the exercise bikes while wearing my surgical collar, then swimming 10, 15 and finally building up to 20 lengths of the pool.

One day I noticed that I was really happy when two o’clock came round, then six was another highlight, but I felt sure that was because I’d eat something nice. And 10 o’clock just couldn’t roll along fast enough. I gathered up the bottles of pills I’d brought back from America, read the labels and decided to have a look on the Internet and see what it was I was taking.

It was a drug called Percocet and there was plenty of information on the websites. It is a powerful painkiller, an opiate that is more addictive than heroin. All sorts of people are hooked on it, from Hollywood stars to trailer-park rednecks, who call it hillbilly heroin. It’s one of the favourite prescription drugs that New York stockbrokers swallow at night to chill out after a hard day frantically running around waving bits of paper. Apparently the street price can be as high as $85 a pill. The time for doe-eyed addiction could be as little as 10 days and at most three weeks.

I had been swallowing them for almost three months.

The scary thing about Percocet is that it makes you feel so content; it doesn’t leave you wallowing about feeling stoned, you have a warm sense of well-being and calm. It might cross your mind that you were becoming a wee bit too fond of them, but you feel so good it doesn’t worry you.

If I wanted to work I could concentrate on one thing at a time, a new sensation for me. So I wrote my first book. If I wanted to sit around listening to music I became totally lost in it – even jazz sounded great. I never felt out of control – I could drive my car, pick up a movie and a mouth-watering pizza. When I met friends, I seemed to crack an endless stream of jokes and clever remarks – they’d never seen me glow like this. One of them looked at me with a concerned expression. ‘Be careful. The drug companies haven’t spent all those billions of dollars on research for nothing.’ I had become like an evangelist. I told anyone who would listen how wonderful ‘perkies’ made me feel.

I knew I had to quit, but my neck still hurt like hell. I’d also been give diazepam, to stop muscle spasms, and needed to get rid of them too – so I had some fun days ahead of me. I visited my GP and asked for a weaker painkiller, oxycodone, which she gave me reluctantly because it also is addictive, and I weaned myself off Percocet using that, then switched to co-codamol and finally to Solpadeine, a UK non-prescription painkiller containing codeine, which apparently some people get hooked on, presumably why it is sold in crate-size value packs.

It wasn’t easy, a lot like stopping smoking, but more dramatic. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, tingling, soaked in sweat, hallucinating, gibbering, all that stuff. I’d get up, take a pill and play about on the Internet, firing emails off to friends, arranging to meet them next day, then completely forget to go. I’d manage a couple of nights without taking anything, then, feeling lousy through lack of sleep, would take a Percocet or a diazepam, then feel guilty and doped-up all next day.

I hated not being able to go on skiing and climbing trips, I even missed the fun of getting there. I enjoy finding my way around airports, trying to sneak into the VIP lounges, stretching back in an extra-legroom seat, looking out the window as the plane takes off and soars above the city, watching countries slip away, entering different time zones, that feeling of freedom of simply going somewhere else.

Then I had an idea. Musicians travel more miles than airline pilots, they’re always on the move. I’ve been a musician all my life and loved touring, especially when I was young and playing with the Incredible String Band. I love the humour of musicians; I love the stories, the tales of being on the road, the things that happen in any working band. But most of all, it’s the people you meet, the characters. In a surge of enthusiasm I realised that people fly all over the world to wander around dusty museums, eat fancy food or flop on beaches; why not travel to interesting places to see some really good bands?

2

BARCELONA

Incredible String Band

LED Zeppelin knew how to have a good time. When they went on tour they piled into a sumptuous private jet that had plenty of room for wild and merry parties. That way of avoiding check-in queues at airports all over America did not excuse them from breaking the unblinking law that could have ended the careers of so many rock bands – transporting enthusiastic teenage girls across a state line. It just made it easier. When the Incredible String Band toured Spain in May 2005, the airline they used was the less glamorous, but vastly cheaper Ryanair. You’d really be going some to have a bacchanalian orgy on one of those flights.

I was feeling a lot better and my first book was about to be published – yes! I was looking forward to that, but was in the mood for a wee jaunt so I called Mike Heron to see what he was up to. I had played with Mike in the Incredible String Band until the group split up in New York in 1974. Mike had recently relaunched the band and they were heading to Spain to do a few acoustic gigs. Their manager, Mark Astey, emailed me details of the flights and hotels so that I would find myself in more or less the same time and space continuum, not something to be readily assumed in the case of the Incredible String Band. And so I diligently sat down with a supply of strong coffee for a long session on the Internet.

I know it’s fashionable to make sarcastic remarks about the irritations of online booking – the demands for more information; the mandatory fields that must be completed; those red, angry asterisks like boils on the screen, unexpectedlog-outs;illegaloperations and all that guff – but it’s great to be able to book a flight at two in the morning, even if you log on in the middle of the night in the hope that the website somehow becomes less pernickety, a sure sign of losing the plot.

At last I found myself with the booking references that would allow me to link up with the band. No tickets to lose, it’s all done by numbers these days, which suits me very well since I can write them on my arm and, unless I am very unlucky, I won’t leave that in the taxi to the airport.

After a quick flight from Glasgow, I arrived at East Midlands airport bright and early and headed straight for the coffee shop where I met up with Mark and the four band members: Mike, Clive Palmer, who helped form the band 40 years ago in Edinburgh; long-time session musician Lawson Dando from Wales; and Fluff, as she is known, a classically trained multi-instrumentalist who is, at 29, younger than some of the clothes the rest of the group were wearing.

Touring bands usually attract stares in airports and the Incredible String Band, as you might expect, draw more than most. Dando, as everyone calls him, was dressed in his usual black robes, an embroidered maroon and gold Tibetan waistcoat with the sweet scent of patchouli, and a purple fez perched on his head. With tiny glasses balanced on his nose, and his long, greying hair in a ponytail, he looks like a kindly antiquarian bookseller.

Mike was wearing his favourite blue denim shirt, jeans, soft leather shoes and a sleeveless fleece jacket, a proven safe bet: cool when unzipped, but snug in cold climates, such as when the band had played in Iceland, a country that loves esoteric music. Sticking out of his pocket was a well-worn notebook full of photographs of anything he might need: a taxi, an airport, a telephone, a concerned and attentive-looking doctor, a pharmacy, the welcoming smile of a Chinese waiter, an Indian restaurant, and appetizing pictures of his favourite food – steak, chips, ham, eggs.

Mark was wearing sandals and, with his flowing white hair, is often called Gandalf, while Dando is happy to be known as the Hobbit. They are a merry bunch, and crack a constant stream of jokes. As soon as we finished our coffee, Mark hurried everyone to the check-in. Low-cost airlines, as they like to be known, are merciless to anyone late or with a packet of crisps more than their meagre baggage allowance. The Incredible String Band carries a lot of extra weight: guitars, keyboards, aluminium cases filled with cables, plugs, hand drums, and a few Eastern instruments, all vital to the show. Mark had to fill in a long form for each item and write out a large cheque. The reams of paperwork finally attended to, we wheeled the teetering pile to the excess baggage counter at the other side of the airport and watched it disappear on the conveyor belt. Then we joined the long line of passengers stripping off their clothes and shoes as they waited to be searched, groped and X-rayed for explosive devices.

It is puzzling to look in the glass cases showing prohibited items. Razors and nail files, obviously. Swiss Army knives and other sharp items need to be confiscated, especially from anyone with wild, darting eyes, sweating profusely and muttering prayers to their ancestors. But I can’t imagine that any pilot would hand over the plane to a kid waving a Jedi Light Sabre or Star Trek pistol not even the ones with realistic bleeping noises.

As we approached the metal detectors, Mike held up the old canvas bag he was carrying and whispered, ‘Shit, I’ve got some dodgy stuff in here. Are they searching everyone?’

I felt my scalp tingle. What the hell did he have? Surely he hadn’t brought mood-mellowing substances on an international flight? I have a pal who plays in a world-famous band that always carries a stash of hash in their amplifiers. They reckon the risk of getting caught is far less than that of being robbed by gun-toting drug dealers in some of the countries they play.

I glanced at Mike. Whatever he had, there was still time to get rid of it. ‘What have you got in there?’

‘Oh, nothing serious, just wire cutters, a file, a knife. I need them for changing strings.’

‘Mike, they don’t even let you take a cup of coffee through. Look at them; they’re even paranoid about plastic fucking forks. When they open your bag they’ll evacuate the airport.’

‘You think so? Oh well, we’ll see.’

Two minutes later, the security staff were gathered round, rubbing their hands, keeping an alert eye on Mike as they poured the contents of his bag onto a metal table, and spread out the various lethal edges he’d packed. They stared at him as if he might be carrying a bandolier of grenades. The rest of us decided to attract as little attention to ourselves as possible and scarpered to the café.

When we reached the self-service counter, Fluff shook her head in exasperation. She always carries a roll of gaffer tape so that she can seal the locks of the guitar cases before they clatter away on the conveyor belt. She turned to Mark. ‘They’ve confiscated my bloody tape!’

‘Why?’ asked Clive. ‘What can you possibly do with that?’

‘Oh, you can tape people up with it,’ she said cheerfully. The band grinned. Yes,we see … Her cheeks turned red. ‘Oh shit … I don’t believe I just said that.’

As we waited for the outcome of Mike’s interrogation, secretly hoping they would bend him over and delve deep, we collected plates of food, carried them to a table and elbowed off the debris left by previous diners. Time for a trough. Clive set down his English breakfast platter – bacon, eggs, fried mushrooms, tomato, and a smiling sausage floating in a sea of beans and ketchup. He rolled up his sleeves, sighed contentedly, and got stuck in.

He is an odd character, and very likeable. He looks like a scarecrow; his hair is grey, long and straggly, it hasn’t been touched by a hairdresser in 20 years. When the mood takes him, he hacks a few inches off. His jeans looked like Oxfam specials, the waist was hanging over his belt, and they were rolled up at his ankles. He was wearing an old woollen jacket, bought in a Kathmandu street market, that had a strong, not unpleasant, aroma of wood smoke. I couldn’t help staring at his glasses – the lenses didn’t fit the frames; there were gaps between the glass and the rims. He took them off and showed me them. ‘The proper frames broke but I managed to wedge the lenses in these reading glasses I got in Woolworth’s for a quid. There’s gaps but I can see fine.’

On his upper gum he has one remaining tooth that shines like a fang, especially when he’s laughing, which is a lot, his eyes crinkling warmly. As he attacked the heaped plate of fried food, he caught me looking at his molar and grinned. ‘Yeah, I’ve only a few left now. When I get toothache I just bombard the fucker with paracetamol until I can work it loose enough to pull out. Saves going to the dentist. Dentists are expensive. Don’t need ’em.’

As a child he contracted polio, which left him with a bad limp. When he walks his body almost topples over, and he seems very frail, but he has a firm handshake, the strength of a farmer or builder. He lives in Brittany where he was able to buy an old crumbling cottage and repair it himself. For years before that he lived in one with a dirt floor, no water or electricity. He enjoys being self-sufficient and survived for years by busking in the nearby village and making musical instruments.

When bands are on the road they love telling tales about tours they have done. Clive is a great storyteller, he has a rich, mellow voice that soars and falls, drawing you in. A relieved Mike had been released by the bemused security staff, and he joined us with a lighter bag, and a large plate of double egg and chips. Clive was entertaining us with a story from the American tour the band had done the previous year, and the people at nearby tables were listening and smiling.

‘And our driver – don’t ask me about our fucking driver! As usual we had to do the whole fucking tour as cheap as possible, there was just no money to pay a proper driver. We had to sack the first guy the agency sent. He was nice enough but he didn’t know how to drive. The dozy pillock hadn’t a clue. He picked us up when we landed at Newark and it was supposed to be a five minute drive to the hotel. We were staying at the Holiday Inn, right beside the fucking airport, and he got lost. Took him two fucking hours to find it. Right beside the airport!’ Clive laughs, then pauses while he cuts a large piece of bacon into one-tooth bites.

‘Then he crashed three times in the first two days. Three fucking times! Said he’d never driven a van before. Don’t think he’d driven anything before. I know he was cheap but for fuck’s sake. He smashed the mirror on a police car on 42nd Street. He did a runner, lucky he didn’t get us all shot. Then he hit a parked truck. How could he not see a parked truck? The third time was at a freeway off-ramp. Bumped a car. There was no damage done, but the driver was a lawyer’s wife – she took one look at us and called in the state police. Took us two hours to sort that lot out. Nearly missed a radio show. We had to sack the stupid bastard. Useless.’

The people at the tables next to us were listening and smiling. Even though Clive swears with the speed of a submachine gun nobody seemed to notice; there’s gentle warmth in his voice. He sounds like a cockney version of Billy Connolly, who gave him an expensive banjo when Clive’s old one fell apart.

‘The next guy the agency sent was even worse. He was a fucking maniac. He thought he was going to be driving a young English rock band. He couldn’t wait to get at all the groupies. When he saw us his fucking face fell. Any groupies we get will be old-age pensioners!’

He forked in a mouthful of food and swallowed a large slurp of tea. ‘He was dangerous. Fucking insane. We’d be driving along the freeway and he’d suddenly shoot right across six lanes to get off. Right in front of huge trucks, buses, everything. I think he was half blind, he always waited until the last second. Once he left it too late and reversed all the way back up the grass verge. I finally had enough in Utah. We were driving along the side of a cliff at two in the morning and he’s doing seventy miles an hour. You couldn’t see anything, just this huge black drop below us. I put my hands round his fucking throat and told him, “You’re astupidrecklessbastard!Cutthe speed orI’llfuckingthrottleyou!” But of course he’s American and they don’t like you criticising them. So he says, “Sir,youcan’tspeaktomelikethat.” I wouldn’t take my hands off his fucking throat until he slowed right down.’

Clive pauses, builds a roll-up, and looks around for somewhere he can light up. There’s a smoking area at the other end of the departure lounge but he decides it’s too far to walk and contents himself by sucking on it.

Our flight is called and we endure the usual budget airline mêlée of passengers elbowing each other out of the way in the rush to get on the plane. The seats don’t tilt back and the pockets in the seat backs have been removed so that you can’t leave any litter. It feels like a flying youth hostel, as though you are expected to endure a little hardship and do a chore to show your gratitude for the cheap fare.

As we wait for the plane to move, Clive loudly explains to Dando how it gets off the ground. Several passengers are beginning to look worried.

‘You see, the pilot has to tilt the wings at exactly the correct angle as it roars down the runaway. A degree or two out and the fucking thing will crash and we’ll all be incinerated. There would be no escape. It’s very clever how they do it.’

We settle back for the flight to Barcelona. Mike checks over his songs in a large leather-bound book and decides what to play tonight, while Clive tells a story about rural France and a lethal mixture of home-brewed wine and magic mushrooms that the farmers enjoy at autumn picnics. Then he switches to sport, his voice booming through the cabin, laughing loudly as he names a Wimbledon champion who had to give up the game because of ‘chronic fucking haemorrhoids’. A group of schoolchildren stare at him and giggle. The two-hour flight passes in a flash.

When we land at Gerona airport, Ramon, the local concert promoter, is waiting to meet the band, smiling and shaking hands. They are relieved that he has a proper driver with him and happily pile into the minibus for the drive along the tree-lined road to Barcelona. It’s good to be back in Spain, even the motorway has a nice smell, a sort of warm, heady mixture of wild lavender and, I don’t know what it is, herbs and flowery things. It’s very pleasant; you know you are in Spain the minute you smell it, it’s like a welcoming handshake. As we coast along the autopista it’s nice to look at the shining limestone mountains – I’ve enjoyed some great rock-climbing trips there with demented pals from Glasgow. On the outskirts of Barcelona we see a massive warehouse.

‘What’s that called?’ asks Clive, squinting through his glasses as he reads the name. “Ikea”. ‘What do they sell – computers?’

We explain the concept of Ikea to him and how thousands of people congregate there at weekends.

‘I’ve never bought any furniture. The folk in the village where I live give me stuff. I did buy my bed. Got it in a jumble sale. Cost fifteen quid. It’s very old but it’s a good’un. It’s got proper springs. I can never get to sleep in hotel beds – can’t settle down into them. They’re too level, too flat.’

We check into the hotel, a time-consuming palaver involving the photocopying of passports. The gig is down a side street just a short distance away, in a beautiful old church that was converted to an arts centre many years ago. It’s easy to imagine the ghosts of flamenco dancers and gypsy guitarists playing songs of revolution to fiery-eyed crowds. Judging by the people relaxing in the café inside, I’m guessing that a lot of wacky baccy gets smoked too.

There’s a bar with nice coffee made by smiling girls wearing lip rings, Indian nose studs, belly-button piercings, colourful tattoos, tiny denim skirts, and embroidered silk tops. Ramon, Clive and Dando chain-smoke and we all drink cups of strong, creamy espresso until our bones are jangling. The guy who runs the place has been an Incredible String Band fan since he was a teenager and he asks me to sign one of the albums that I played on all those years ago. I love it.

He has laid on a special meal and Ramon shows us how to eat a Catalan favourite: grind a tomato into a chunk of bread then cover it with olive oil, or perhaps it’s the other way round. Anyway, it tastes good until I notice that half of my tomato has rotted and been chewed by insects. I suppose organic food has its downside. Clive is telling us about his travelling days many years ago when he went off for a long wander around ‘Persia’. He talks animatedly about the massive ancient Buddhist statues, the Bamian, that the Taliban destroyed when they seized Afghanistan.

Then we were off again, carried along on one of his favourite tales, his dead dog story, about when he was dossing on a boat on the Ganges. Filthy fuckingplacethat. A terrible smell had kept him awake all night. The corpse of a dog had swollen up like a beach ball and stuck to the side of the boat. Clive was on his feet, showing us how he’d tried to shift the thing with a pole but it kept swirling back.

Mike and Dando were doubled over because Clive had told the story to them in a New York radio station just moments before they played a live show being broadcast all over America. They couldn’t stop laughing. Then, while Mike was being interviewed, Clive had amused himself by absent-mindedly rubbing sandpaper over a wooden flute he was making, unaware that the sound was being picked up by the studio’s microphones. The engineers were in a panic, unable to locate the source of what sounded like white noise, and cut to an unscheduled commercial break while they investigated.

At about half past ten the band are on stage, in front of a big crowd that is wildly enthusiastic, as if welcoming old friends. The band sit in a semicircle, playing songs from their early records. In ‘Spirit Beautiful’, Mike becomes animated, as the pounding rhythm builds to a percussion-driven climax. The crowd nod their heads and pat their knees, and some clap in time to the music which sounds like a mixture of a Native American chant and a raga from ancient India. It is a strange moment, and a long way from the hot, packed streets outside where fashion-conscious clubbers are heading for the bars, beginning their typical Barcelona weekend.

Then Clive is singing alone under the stark white spotlight, a lonely figure hunched over his banjo, smoke and dust slowly curling up to the rafters. It is a slow song and the chords rattle as his voice fills the old hall; only the band know who he is singing about.

Since you went away, I hope and pray

You come back some day.

You went and I can’t sleep at night

Without you, it’s not the same.

3

PALMA

Incredible String Band

I HAD forgotten about this part of touring: getting back to the hotel at 2am, waking the yawning night porter, waiting in the street until he unlocks the door, leaning on the old wooden reception counter, worn shiny by thousands of elbows, while he finds our keys on the old-fashioned numbered hooks, creeping upstairs and somehow managing to grab some sleep – not always easy when the sound of the gig is still ringing in your ears. Mike, Fluff and Ramon decide to head off to a nearby bar for a few drinks. I have learned better; it’s an early start in the morning – Mike’s stamina is impressive.

In my touring days even the best hotels required you to adhere to their timetables. It was always well after midnight when we got back from whatever gig we had played; we were tired and hungry but the kitchens were always locked, all that was on offer was a few stale ham sandwiches and a packet of crisps. Breakfast was served only between 7.30 and 8.30 – PROMPT, as the menus stated in unambiguous bold type. We needed to sleep, but had to have a decent feed in the morning before the long drive to the next town. I always enjoyed watching the waiters’ faces when the entire band and road crew, grinning, dishevelled and, if we were lucky, with a few extra female guests, rushed in at exactly 8.29 and they had to reset a dozen places for us.

One thing we couldn’t mess about with was the departure time from the hotel. Bands employ or are assigned tour managers by their management companies to ensure that everyone ends up at the same place at the correct time, a thankless and often difficult task. I have a pal who was the tour manager for one of the most famous pop stars in the world and travelled everywhere by private jet and limousine, but he gave it all up because he was becoming a gibbering wreck trying to pander to increasingly insane demands.

Some tour managers are officious, bad-tempered buggers, others are diplomatic but efficient; all of them are harassed and use a variety of tactics to ensure the band gathers on time to make the next flight or road journey. Some gently cajole the musicians, others fine them $10 for every minute they are late. I knew a guy who worked for the Stones who abandoned one of the road crew in Budapest to teach everyone the importance of punctuality. The Incredible String Band once had a very good tour manager who quietly noted any band member who didn’t have the concept of time figured out – usually the drummer – and gave him meeting times half an hour earlier than everyone else. It was always funny to see him rush down to reception, thinking he was late and about to get chewed out, when in fact he was five minutes early. Mark has 20 years’ experience, is easygoing and pleasant and told us all to be ready and waiting at the front of the hotel no later than 8.15am. We had a flight to catch to Mallorca and he was worried how long the check-in would take with all the excess baggage.