DEEP POOL - May 2007

PHANTOM TOUR IN EUROPE

Me and Michael Cosgrave arrived at Hannover Airport to start our European tour in the afternoon of April 19th. An unusual feature of this airport is that, as soon as you clear customs, the one and only shop there is a sex shop. I can never quite believe that enough people are going to come through and think ‘oh yeah!, a sex shop – must drop in and see what they’ve got!’ to make it worthwhile to park one here, but clearly the location is a hard-headed commercial decision.
We greeted Thomas Lingstaedt, our beloved tour manager from Rostock and drove to Bremen.

BREMEN – The ring road at Bremen runs alongside a fascinating and colossal jumble of parkland, summer houses, allotments, the stadium of Werder Bremen football team, all riotously banking on to the mighty Weser River. We were negotiating this road in the rush hour when, immediately in front of us, a mother duck and seven ducklings appeared by the kerbside, the mother making a terrible fuss, demanding that we stop and let her and her brood cross the road at this point. We were dubious as to whether not it was possible for them to make it through this intense Mercedes snarl – we flashed our lights and sounded our horn to let drivers coming the other way know what was happening. Finally a driver on the other side did stop and all the ducks scooted across in front of us. It was most heart-warming but I hoped that they weren’t doing this each way every day.

The next day, in the morning, we went to a bizarre shopping mall in an enormous corrugated iron shed on the edge of this lovely city. Me and Michael have a soft spot for this location – I once had great fun here at a little Italian restaurant, joining in a waiter’s birthday party. I always go round to say hello, but now the restaurant has gone. Michael was here to buy a mobile phone for reasons I still don’t understand. However, when you buy a mobile phone in Germany, it must be registered in a German’s name, so Thomas was buying the phone on Michael’s behalf. It was probably clear to the shop assistant that this is what was happening and the process became incredibly drawn out, humourless, and with just a hint of menace, with guys disappearing for up to twenty minutes at a time to ‘check something’. Nearly an hour had passed and I was close to buying a CD of B-sides by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders in this huge electrical shop, but it was 15 euros which just seemed too much, much as I love Wane and co to the extent that recently I’ve been considering covering one of their big hits ‘Pamela Pamela’.

Eventually we were allowed to buy the phone after much form-filling and interrogation. In the UK you can just go in to Tesco’s and load up your trolley with mobile phones, next to your potatoes, toilet rolls and foie gras. But I love this country and there’s plenty about it that makes the UK look like a dismal bunch of neurotic farts.

KIEL – On the way to Kiel we passed Hamburg via the Elbe Tunnel, going under the river of that name. Later on the tour we would visit Dresden which is also on the banks of the Elbe: get out a map and see how far it is between these two cities – the UK has nothing remotely comparable to these fuck-off German rivers – if fact:

TOP FIVE GERMAN RIVERS:

Neckar
Elbe
Weser
Rhine
Donnau (Danube)

BUBBLING UNDER:
Main

In the Elbe Tunnel I started thinking about a pub in Kirkcaldy called The Elbow Room, the first place that I started playing in public on their folk nights. Calm and canny singers from that time would quietly advise and encourage – people like Josh (Messing About On The River) MacCrae, Archie Fisher, Hamish Imlach and a great black woman singer from Los Angeles called Dorris Henderson who let me accompany her one night. I’d bought her album ‘Watch The Stars’ which also featured the guitarist John Renbourn, and had learned all the songs properly, so she indulged me. She also talked to me afterwards about the blues, how to be relaxed about playing the blues, and not to pretend you were unhappy, just because you were playing the blues. ‘You can’t possibly be unhappy all the time if you’re playing the music you love - you enter the blues – it don’t enter you’. An early blessing from one who knew. Then we left the Elbe Tunnel and an hour later we were in Kiel.

It took me a long long time to get to play in Kiel in the first place: an earlier agency I was with told me there was nowhere to play and anyway Kiel was full of ‘bloodless people and sailors’ so there was no point going there. Agencies often tell you that an entire city has no interest in you when what they mean is they’ve managed to fall out with the venue which would otherwise be right for you in that city, but instead of being honest about this, they’d rather fill you with trauma about this wholesale personal failure of yours. Now Kiel is one of our happiest cities – it looks kinda Scandinavian, the people have blood, the venues are superb and the soundman we tend to use, Jay-Jay may be the best in Germany. On this occasion Jay-Jay was not doing the sound, but he took us after the show to a magnificent bar/restaurant/gallery full of art to die for. Jay-Jay is an eternal – a big wise face from two thousand years ago, with the nuanced humour of a reluctant spiritual leader.

Earlier that day me and Michael had shared a sauna at the Hotel Viking with three large older naked German ladies. They were in and out of the sauna for at least four hours - I know this because when we arrived the hotelier delicately warned us that they were in there, and we didn’t join them for quite some time. Their talk was exclusively of scandals within their extended families with many collective cheerful moans of despair about the inexorable downfall of in-laws.

VERDEN – this was a new town for us – so far the weather had been outstanding – warm and sunny, and so it stayed until Zurich. Our hotel in this small town was an unexpected delight, with dining rooms built to accord with the time of day, so that dinner was in a darkly wooden room filled with evening light – it reminded me of happy times in the Highlands of Scotland, especially the Airds Hotel in Port Appin, just north of Oban on the west coast. I was filled with a passing peace here – breakfast next morning was in a room full of morning sun – it’s crazy how few hotels build this kind of location thinking into their plans. I had decided not to drink spirits on the night of this show –the show turned out to be in a working distillery. Three things we loved about Verden – in the window of a bicycle shop was a bike called ‘Little Bastard’, next to the hotel there was a sensational falling-down barn, and leaving town we watched a hilarious jackdaw trying to work out if he could get into an open window to steal a piece of bread which was tantalisingly out of reach.

BERLIN – We adore the Goethe Hotel in Berlin – the best hotel on the tour – rooms so modernly thoughtful, each with a therapeutic shower - in the literature about these showers, the various combinations of jet strengths are explained, going from ‘licked by a happy panda’ to ‘see you in the next life – if you believe’. So modernly thoughtful that when we’re leaving Michael actually TIDIES HIS ROOM! – Michael’s rooms routinely look as if he’s been up all night drinking mango juice and dancing with Islamic terrorists, so this says a lot…

We always play at Quasimodo in Berlin. This is thoroughbred jazz club right in the centre of the city, owned by a most civilized man called Georgio. On this occasion, Georgio had recently been back to Italy and returned with some remarkable wines, which, being a gentleman he shared with us. He’d also left us warm Italian bread and olive oil, along with an amazing spread of food Italian for our arrival to soundcheck. He’s a superb avuncular conversationalist but he also leaves you alone – he’s an artist. However, I always have a sense of danger at this show and I don’t understand where it comes from: it’s no bad thing and we tend to give a great performance here to a knowledgeable and slightly wayward crowd. I have good friends in the city – Holger and Helmut, two first class broadcasters from Radio Eins, my old American amigos Wayne, John and Jesse, and last but not least the one and only Clive Product, a dear and sainted friend, and colleague within the auspices of Mad Pride.

Next day, on the way out of the city, Thomas drove past the stone memorial square for the Holocaust. I’m not even going to start to try and describe this piece of work, except to say that it is not possible to view or enter it without your mind being twisted out of shape, so much so that you can only return to an approximation of who you were before. On the outskirts of the city we stopped for gas and I ate an ice cream lollipop called ‘Bum Bum’.

HAMBURG – this great city of the Hanseatic League is the epitome of ‘butch’ – a concept I have failed to convey to any German ever. ‘Butch? What is this butch?’. A city is either butch or it is not – it can be big as fuck, real important, but still not butch.

BUTCH LEAGUE OF GERMAN CITIES/TOP TEN: (Butchest first)
Berlin
Stuttgart
Munich
Hamburg
Frankfurt
Dusseldorf
Cologne
Dortmund
Kiel
Liepzig

BUBBLING UNDER:
Hannover

These days we tend to stay in a hotel called the Hotel Pacific, which is where The Beatles stayed during their famous Hamburg sojourn. There’s a big historic music store next door full of guitars you’d love to own but would never play. A fool in the hotel reception area told me ‘Yes, this is where The Beatles bought their first guitars’. What, their VERY first guitars? I had this picture of the fab four going in the music store saying (in Liverpudlian accents of course) – ‘hey lads! – let’s buy some guitaahs and lehn how ta play an’ be a rock band y’know? Grite – yew lehn one chord, ah’ll lehn another and George, you lehn another chord – fab! – now let’s play them woan afta another – sounds ace – wairra minute, ah feel a song comin on – SHE LOVES YOU YEAH YEAH YEAH! – hey ah think it’s a hit! Ringo man – you bang the table with a spoon! Sound!! – let’s go and’ gerra record contract!!!’….

Well, that’s just about how we did it with Doll By Doll, except we were all on LSD in a farmhouse in Dorset.

We had dinner with Norbert, who owns Knust, our venue, and Colette, my esteemed record company person in Germany. Once again, a beautiful evening with folk who really understand the music business, sharing their insights with us – this can make you nervous – such clarity of comprehension about what’s going down in your industrial sector – you can take your shades off now – the future’s simply not that bright…

BONN – a city on the Rhine that I’ve never previously come to grips with – first time I was there was to pick up a national music award for my album ‘Fairytales For Hardmen’, so myself and the record company were only there for about four hours, and although honoured to be there it was real hard work. A string quartet played an arrangement of a song from Fairytales which was so abstract that I couldn’t recognize the song – ‘what’s the song?’ I whispered out of the corner of my mouth to Volker, knowing I would be expected to comment on it after the performance to the entire assembled great and good of the German musical establishment.

‘Don’t know’ Volker whispered back. Memories are made of such moments.

Next time I played Bonn was for a TV show – our soundcheck was the last of the checks and was simply terrible. In these situations what happens is – the problem lies with the PA equipment that is being used and is NOTHING TO DO WITH US ONSTAGE, but everyone stands around giving the band heavier and heavier looks as the problem goes on, as if we’re causing the problem. ‘You must finish very soon’ someone eventually says. ‘Nothing to do with us’ we say, pointing at the sound technicians. It makes no difference – somehow it’s still our fault, and it really brings you down, and all just before you’ve got to do a serious TV show….

This time all was well – the sound was outstanding, outside the club, Harmonie, there was a big beer garden full of our concertgoers having a laugh over dinner – later they had another laugh at Michael’s expense when, onstage, he banged his head on a microphone (made an excellent DOMM!! sound) whilst trying to fix a faulty keyboard.

In the morning I went for a long walk through the city, past a small dead mouse near the station, past the alcoholic station people, an impressive squareful of them, through the medieval streets, and suddenly I was on the bank of the one and only river Rhine – barges the length of a football pitch, so big they have their own car park at the front, complete with ticket warden, surged in both directions, low sun-hazy hills on the other side, the river bending into a shimmering infinity in 86 degree heat.

Two hours later we had a debate outside our hotel – shall we have lunch at the remarkable modern museum café just over the road, or shall we drive for an hour to Oberhausen and have lunch there? Well, the café here looks great, but hey, let’s obey our wanderlust and take our chances. Two hours later, in 90 degree heat we stood in front of a donor kebab van on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Oberhausen, unable even to talk to each other because of the solid grinding roar of the main road opposite. You have to laugh about these things – you have to, but we didn’t.

OBERHAUSEN – An hotel of great eccentricity, a bit like a ‘people’s palace’ John Prescott might build if he entered into an enduring homosexual relationship with Saddam Hussein – another lovely dinner (sorry about all the ‘lovely dinners’) in warm sunshine, this time with Chris Jaeker, my wonderful, life-saving German agent. A great show with great sound, but afterwards I was disturbed by a geezer from the audience I’d mentally marked out as being a very interesting bloke, who queued for twenty minutes just to tell me what a shit show it had been. I asked him what was shit about it, but he just got all enigmatic in a kind of ‘you know perfectly well’ sort of way. I politely let him know this wasn’t good enough and that I needed to understand what he thought was so wrong.

‘Well, maybe it’s only this place’ he said miserably, letting me know this wasn’t what was on his mind at all, staring around the venue like it was a crematorium. Thanks pal – at least you’ve brought me down to earth, ‘cos obviously I don’t spend enough time there as it is…

DEN BOSCH – A long drive to an unknown Dutch city – I always think I’ve got the hang of the Netherlands, then when I see it again – architecturally it’s so particular, and very – foreign. The Hotel Terminus turned about to be a masterpiece of illusion – you enter a beautiful bar, I mean, a beautiful bar – not swanky, oh no, not swanky, but with an old-style Dutch wooden charm that makes you just want to get out a good book and sit with a strong coffee and a calvados –all afternoon. Then we were shown upstairs to our rooms. Our rooms were up three or four of the steepest staircases ever built, so that with guitars, keyboard equipment and heavy bags we needed three trips each just to get stuff into the rooms. The rooms were like individual saunas in the torrential afternoon heat – if you opened the window the noise from the underpass was like Bagdad on a very bad day indeed, but if you shut the window the sauna returned. I got an all over body rash from the sheets and cut my hand on a jagged piece of metal that was part of the door handle. There was a sink too high to piss into and one towel the size of a hotel dining room napkin. Over three floors there was one toilet for twelve rooms. This was dominated by a gang of Liverpudlian prostitutes standing around eternally in their underwear, totally unconcerned, except when you asked them if they could let you use the toilet. It turned out you couldn’t as they were there first. In my room there was a locked adjoining door with a piece of toilet paper rammed into the keyhole, so nobody could see into the other room. When I came back from the show that night the toilet paper had been pushed into my room from the other side. On my wall there was a line drawing of a sad kind of clown, under which someone had written ‘fun sucks’.

The show itself was tremendous – breakfast next day was a carton of orange juice and some loaves of bread still in their plastic wrapping, plus an instant coffee making machine. There was a guest book filled with comments like ‘Your hotel has been the highlight of our trip to Holland – unforgettable – we will definitely be back’, and ‘thanks for the special breakfast’ – this with a smiley face next to it. There were also comments from American bands, mainly from Seattle, with names like ‘The Grey Mind Riders’ who genuinely seemed to like the hotel – ‘Yay – groovy place –wish we could have stayed longer’.

AMSTERDAM – an officious young man at reception at the Tulip Hotel (check-in 3pm) wanted to see our passports ‘now’ presumably as opposed to ‘in a few minutes’.

‘I don’t have to show my passport as I have diplomatic immunity’ I said.

‘Can I see proof of that?’ he requested without looking at me.

‘As I have diplomatic immunity I don’t have to prove that I do have it’.
‘You can’t stay here unless you can prove it – are you a diplomat? – you don’t look like one’.

No I’m not a diplomat – Bill Clinton personally gave me diplomatic immunity for life’.

‘Then you definitely can’t stay here – no friend of Bill Clinton’s is staying at THIS hotel’.

‘Did I say Bill Clinton? – I meant Delbert McClinton, the fantastic American country and western singer’.

That’s different – I’m a big fan of Delbert’s – go in peace brother, but I’ll still need to see your passport’.

The bill at Paradiso, possibly Europe’s greatest music venue, included Joanna Newsom and Jason Ringenberg. Joanna cancelled with a sore throat – I’d been looking forward to seeing her – another great show for us, and I finally established an audience in this extreme city. Last time I played here was in a band with Glen Matlock and the other Doll By Doll guys, called Concrete Bulletproof Invisible. That was a long time ago and we were awful, playing in a public park to a confused indifferent audience (we made them that way). We were only saved when a toddler got on stage and befriended me, so I left the other guys doing extended instrumental workouts while I milked this unexpected offering from god by being all smiley with the nipper and melting a few hearts. God…

HANNOVER – a long long drive and now the strain was really telling. We were met at the hotel by Deborah Greenwood who had come out to sing at this one show, at Henry’s Blues Garage. Henry is a charming half-mad blues rocker who likes bands that fame forgot, like Savoy Brown, Climax Chicago – the dressing room is adorned with big posters of acts like Spooky Tooth and Eric Burdon. Henry and his family are deeply loveable – Henry always jokes that there is hashish in the cake that awaits you in the dressing room – the venue is full of sawn-off American cars – it’s a bit like how the Hard Rock Café might look if you were three years old. A long-time supporter and friend of mine, also an invincible music broadcaster called Uli Kniep came to the show with his Hollywood style drop-dead gorgeous wife. Folk like Uli tell me stuff that I need to hear – the way they see things – it keeps your imagination from drying up.

Outside the venue after the show, a wispy white haired guy called Klaus talked to me briefly. As I looked into his eyes, something I’ve needed to know all my life fell into place and I gave him a big cuddle. I don’t know what the thing is, but when I stretch my hand out quickly at night toward the starry sky, I can see its shape spinning away from me to a place of greater safety.

DRESDEN – Another long drive to a special city. Dresden was having a major street party all over town, and we were playing in a fabulous old church, in fact the stage was the altar, or the other way round. A strange modern hotel in a huge old townhouse: we all had a similar experience when we entered our rooms: by now we were dog tired – I couldn’t find the lavvie in my room – I kept opening cupboards, but no loo. I eventually accepted that there was no loo in the room, which seemed most strange as the hotel was unquestionably an en suite kind of hotel. I went out into the corridor shuffling around looking for the loo that must be on my floor - nothing –then I noticed a door with the same room number as my room - the toilet was a lock-up that only I could use - it was a first for all of us.

We soundchecked and Andreas the promoter led us out to take us to eat. We walked and walked, then went up a half-destroyed block of classic modern East German flats from perhaps the Sixties – asbestos territory sort of thing. In a hideous room which Michael correctly observed looked like the kind of place that heroin might be dealt from, it transpired there was nothing left to eat. A sulky hip chick agreed to go and get us a bratwurst – not what we wanted to eat at all. Although it was a warm late afternoon we were crouched at a bench outside out of the sun freezing our balls off. After an hour it became clear that the chick was never coming back with food we didn’t want to eat. Over the edge of the terrace we could see happy crowds eating an infinite variety of well made hot market food. A geezer in white dreadlocks came over and asked us what the fuck we were doing there – like anyone would decide to come to this godforsaken shithole out of choice, there to sit doing absolutely fuck-all.

We left and walked down to the river Elbe from where, on the bridge, we could admire the Opera House and some of the world’s loveliest palatial architecture, bathed in streaming crimson–gold sun. At the end of the show, Michael and me walked through the crowd playing the Bonnie Earl O’ Moray on guitar and penny whistle. It was an idea I got from once seeing Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble at Salisbury Cathedral performing ‘Officium’. It was a magic moment, and we agreed to go back next year and do a full length similar performance without PA. I enjoyed watching how much Michael loves this city – he didn’t particularly explain why and I didn’t particularly ask.

OFFENBERG – A six hour drive and a misunderstanding meant that instead of staying at the Hotel Sonne in town, we were staying at a modern Hotel Mercure on an industrial estate. I was responsible for the fuck-up and so was dreading the Mercure being awful. It turned out to be a scream, and also had a big rooftop pool and sauna. This part of Germany is called California because of its climate, and lolling in the pool on a Sunday afternoon surrounded by wooded hills, there was a feeling like when we played Napa Valley a few years back.

Eating dinner outside in the ancient town centre backstreets, served by brilliant cheeky youngish women, there were street scenes which reminded me of Greece and Mallorca – an old man with his grandson, idly talking to a younger man who lounged in a pick-up truck, young girls with rosary beads walking past quickly and whispering furiously.

ERFURT – Long drive to Erfurt, capital of Thuringia, and a day off at the InterCity Hotel. As German cities go, Erfurt is peaceable and laid back. As we yawned and pulled our bags out of the tour bus we noticed a car coming towards us at great speed. It then slewed to a halt and a young guy jumped straight into the open window and the car sped off.

‘Fuck, that was risky’ said Michael. I could only agree and we were just saying to each other I wonder what that was all about when a full-scale proper riot broke out in the square in front of the station, the square on which our hotel formed one entire side.

This was a no-messing riot with riot police, rocks being thrown, people shouting manically into loudhailers, helicopters blatting overhead and people kicking the living shit out of each other. Thomas explained that it was traditional on Mayday for Socialists and Nazis to have a battle and not to worry. We weren’t worried – just amazed.

Later I was waiting in the modern hotel bar for the guys to join me so we could go for an Indian Curry on our night off. The barman was an old, formally handsome bloke with the most careworn demeanour I’d come across in a long time. On the walls there were signed photos of fellow travellers who had stayed at the hotel on the terrifying highway of Showtime – Suzi Quatro, Roger Chapman, Michael Levy, Charlie Drake, plus a worrying Polaroid of Robbie Williams, clearly out of his head with his trousers down and a Kermit soft toy clenched between his buttocks. It was signed ‘I appear to have a toy frog up me arse – Robbie’ in green biro. Nina Simone sang ‘Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood’.

HALLE – A city I used to malign as being one of the worst places on the planet – a long time ago I was too tired to continue touring, but that often happens, and I lost my ability to understand that everything was all right, it was just me, and I had, over the years, developed a horror folk memory of the town and the show.

Our hotel, again, was deeply unusual –it had a theme which seemed to be theatrical, but I couldn’t work it out. It also had a wonderful sauna – I try to tour saunas – it doesn’t always work out like that. After my sauna, I opened my hotel window and sat sunbathing as I changed my guitar strings. With the late afternoon light streaming in I began to feel like a figure from an Edward Hopper painting, with the same concomitant loneliness. The heat was like how heat is described in the books of Julian Green – more of an omen than an effect.

The show was at a great venue called Objekt 5, and we were supported by an excellent youngish Canadian called Shannon Lyon. We were initially disappointed that Shannon was not a girl, but he turned out to be a lovely guitar player with a yearning voice like a young Townes Van Zant – and that’s no putdown I can assure you.

STUTTGART – Another shitlong drive – unpleasant because Thomas had to really let rip and drive faster than anybody is gonna feel good about except arseholes, and even then, this sort of driving is okay for two hours, but six?

What a city this is – it exudes power purpose and passion. It feels very south – it’s built on dramatic hills – it’s the home of Mercedes Benz and for years I was told nobody wanted me to play there. Turns out that that’s not true and now we play Laboratorium which we sell out easily. A quietly passionate crowd and we are slightly hysterical and de-mob happy – yes, tomorrow we’ve got Zurich, but that’s the last show, and this our last night in Germany.

Before the show I go to the bar next door and meet the wild-eyed owners, Ramon (Spanish) and Gregorio (Italian). They are playing loud music that is so strange I can’t even ask what it is. We become friends for life in ten minutes, and they’re in tears when we leave the venue after the show.

Next morning, for the first time it looks like it might rain, but in a watery sun kind of way. Thomas and I do our tour financial settlement in the agreeably gloomy breakfast room, and we go to Stuttgart airport to do some money changing.

ZURICH – nearly raining - another misunderstood city – they call it ‘downtown Switzerland’ – you’d like it – it has a chapel with windows by Marc Chagall – the city is relaxed, with a fantastic café life, the venue we’re playing, El Lokal is completely excellent – I’d go there all the time if I lived there. Viktor, the owner is another of my favourite people – he’s always giving me Swiss whisky, knives and absinthe – presumably in case, after the show, I come over all Scots and want to get shitfaced and stab some bastard – he knows me so well.

There is a hotel fuck-up and they only have one room with three beds. It’s not acceptable so we make the owner find us somewhere else. Somewhere else is further out and we like it, but it’s the last straw and we’re now too tired to speak in sentences. However, onstage, we really let fly – it’s the last night, the sound is good – I want it to be louder, Viktor wants it to be quieter, Stephen the American soundman suggests a compromise and it stays the same. This is all acted out in front of the crowd who are suitably amused. I’m deeply touched by how much the audience gives us, admittedly in a restrained Swiss kind of way, but it’s there and Michael and I drive on hard through the last few songs, taking risks, saying things we shouldn’t, and knowing that we’re privileged people, trying to do some kind of good work without ever talking about it in that kind of way, and feeling the feeling that you sometimes get on stage that, no matter how fleetingly, we have a place in the terrible cosmic order.

jl