ONE OF THE nicest things about my job is that I get to go to the most amazing places around the world. I’ve written about my international travels before (if you’ve forgotten the ISBN for Grumpy Old Rock Star when you go to the bookshop, just ask them to search for ‘Wakeman+Rick+Grumpy’) but I have to mention Costa Rica, which I’ve visited three times now. I just love going there: the people there are great and it’s a beautiful country.
The very first time I went was with my five-piece rock band to play a big show at a festival. We arrived ahead of our equipment and had three days off while all the gear cleared Customs. The first two days were bliss. We were in a really nice hotel with a swimming pool and various little scenic walks in the gardens; the crew caught up on sleep, everyone ate loads and generally relaxed and caught their breath, a rare treat for any touring musician. Then, on the final day off, my son Adam – who was in his early twenties at the time and playing keyboards alongside me in the band – said, ‘Hey, listen up, I’ve got a day trip all arranged for tomorrow.’
‘What?’ There was a collective groan from the various much older musicians as Adam explained more.
‘I’ve organised a coach trip to go all round Costa Rica. It’s a brilliant itinerary – we leave at seven tomorrow morning.’
‘What?!’
‘Oh, come on, we have to leave early, it’s the only way we’ll fit everything in. I’ve arranged it now, it’s all booked, it’ll be a laugh.’
I laughed.
‘Dad’ll pay for it’
I stopped laughing.
‘Well, in that case,’ said Tony Fernandez our drummer, ‘tell us what the itinerary is then.’
‘Well, we stop first at someone’s home and have a traditional Costa Rican breakfast as their guests . . .’
There was a bit of a groan. This was already sounding like El Cheapo Charabanc Outing par excellance!
‘. . . then we head off to the butterfly farm . . .’
‘Whoa! Stop right there! A butterfly farm? Adam, this is a rock ’n’ roll band!’
‘Trust me, Dad, it’ll be great. Because after that we go and see this waterfall, which is amazing, it basically just gushes out of the cliff face. Then we go and climb up this volcano, then there’s a boat trip down a jungle river to spot poisonous frogs, and then you can go horse riding up the mountains if we have time . . .’
By now all the other guys were saying it could be a bit of a crack, so we all agreed to go. Despite my initial reservations, I was actually really impressed that Adam had gone to such effort so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll pick up everyone’s bill, my treat.’
At 7 a.m. the next morning, an ancient twelve-seater bus turned up at the hotel and this motley collection of world-weary rock ’n’ rollers climbed aboard, along with numerous crates of alcoholic beverages for the afternoon.
I have to say, we were all rather excited despite the early start – and so to celebrate, some of the band started drinking as soon as the bus pulled off.
Actually, they all started drinking except for the only teetotaller on board.
Me.
Anyway, we were having a great time straight away. The driver was a nice guy and the day ahead felt really exciting so we all congratulated Adam on his superb organisation.
First off we went to this rather large private house where they’d prepared us a traditional breakfast outside on a terrace. It was fantastic. Next stop was the butterfly farm. Now if you had said to me before then that at any point in my life I would have been remotely fascinated by a butterfly farm, I’d have laughed my head off. As it happened, we were there for well over an hour – it was brilliant. It was this giant marquee, like an enormous circus tent with a climate-controlled atmosphere and full of the most weird and wonderful butterflies. The band was captivated, against all the odds, and spent ages in there, particularly dwelling on the world’s largest butterfly which was just colossal. However, the band’s favourite was the butterfly that took a year to come out of its chrysalis but only lived for twelve hours. That struck a particular chord with the extreme rock ’n’ rollers among us!
By now we were having a great time; the next stop was to see this waterfall but Adam warned us that there was quite a precarious drive to get there. The Costa Rican driver explained that the roads were quite rickety but that it should be okay and we would stop to take photographs of the waterfall.
‘We will take the photos once we cross the Religious Bridge,’ he said.
I didn’t like the sound of that one bit.
‘What do you mean, the Religious Bridge? Is that something to do with a nearby monastery or something?’ I asked.
‘Oh, no, sorry, it isn’t,’ he replied.
‘Then why is it called the Religious Bridge?’ I queried, rather disconcerted.
‘You will find out soon enough – relax, relax, all will be okay.’
We started driving down this increasingly steep slope, slipping and sliding down this incredibly narrow road, then we turned a corner and the road fell even more sharply towards what looked like the world’s deepest ravine.
Stretching across the ravine, about eight hundred feet above the rocky floor, was a bridge. It had no sides, despite being barely wider than our bus. Worse still, the bridge started on a sharp bend, so we’d have to carry on down this hill and then at the very last minute turn sharp right, hope the wheels gripped the pot-hole ridden road, and get across somehow to the other side.
We all seemed to realise this at the same time.
‘He’s going to stop,’ said Lee Pomeroy.
‘Of course he is,’ said Tony Fernandez.
‘He isn’t,’ said Adam.
All eyes averted back to the front to look out of the windscreen at this tiny concrete bridge with no sides that stretched over the ravine.
I felt it was my duty to say something.
‘Jesus Christ,’ I said.
The driver half turned his head toward me.
‘. . . and that’s why it’s called the religious bridge,’ he said chuckling away.
Once we’d traversed the Religious Bridge and our heart rates and blood pressure had come down from the ceiling, and underwear checked for accidents, I said, ‘Are there any more Religious Bridges?’
‘No, that was the only one. And don’t worry, only a few vehicles have ever gone over the edge.’
We didn’t ask the driver any more questions after that. Next up was the dormant volcano, which was absolutely stunning. The crater was full of blue liquid sulphur and I have never seen a blue colour like it in my life. The whole spectacle was jaw-dropping.
Then we went off on a boat down this river, a fantastic trip where we saw all sorts of animals including these little tree frogs that looked harmless but were in fact incredibly poisonous. A couple of the guys went off and did horse riding and then we all met up again for this fabulous meal to close the day. Then it was time to head home.
Now, by this stage several of the band were pretty legless. Also, we’d been eating some fairly varied and unusual food all day. So let’s just say there was an increasingly unpleasant aroma filling up the bus. By now it was pitch-dark and the Costa Rican roads were so precarious in places that we had to crawl along. I’m telling you, never mind the frogs, the band had some severe poisonous weapons of their own: it was flatulence of the very highest calibre.
Which would have been bad enough but for the fact that all the windows on the bus were fixed. They didn’t open. This was due to the heat and it was best to use the bus’s rather old, but fully functioning air-conditioning system.
It was a system designed to deal with intense heat. I doubt there was anything in the manual that even mentioned odour.
Some of the wind noises the chaps produced were unreal. And I’m no mean slouch myself when it comes to rear performance. It was superb. I know some people (who really must lead a very boring life) don’t find flatulence funny, but to me and the band it was very amusing. It’s very British, it’s a fact of life: farts are hilarious.
However, if you are a tired Costa Rican bus driver on tiny wages, sitting on a dark and dangerous pot-hole ridden road, trying to get home to your kids and wife while ten hairy, drunk British rock monsters attempt to gas themselves to death with anal abuse, then I guess for him . . . it’s probably not that funny.
To make matters worse, our fabulous bass player Lee Pomeroy suffered abysmally from phenomenal bouts of wind at the best of times and so with the addition of the local alcohol, the fright of the Religious Bridge plus the unusual food, Lee had now gone on to achieve new heights.
Or depths, depending on your sense of smell.
Suddenly Lee grimaced.
It captured all our immediate attention.
We suspected what might follow and it surpassed all our wildest dreams . . . sorry, nightmares.
Long, loud and frightening was the way that Tony Fernandez described it in the bar later to some people he’d just met. It had shaken Tony to the core, well, all of us really.
The stench was instantly and repulsively sickening – I thought he might even have died – and in such an enclosed space it was just appalling. Regardless of the nauseating effect it was having on us all, we were just rolling round with laughter but the Benny Hill, British-seaside toilet humour was completely lost on the poor Costa Rican driver, who was becoming increasingly enraged at the foul-smelling haze filling his vehicle.
It was at precisely this moment, (one-and-a-half minutes after Lee’s eruption to be exact) that, just over three miles from the hotel, right in the middle of nowhere, he slammed on his brakes and opened the side door. Good thinking, I thought, he’s opening the door and releasing all these gases for the final run home.
‘Get out! All of you, get out now!’
A few of us stifled a laugh but he was deadly serious so we climbed out and let a few bonus efforts off as we did so. Get it all outside, he was obviously thinking, another good idea.
Then the bus driver jumped back in his bus on his own, slammed the door shut and drove off.
It was a long, tiring three-mile walk back to the hotel. Suddenly Lee Pomeroy’s legendary farting ability didn’t seem so funny any more. He kept apologising all the way home but to be fair his smell was merely the final straw – we’d all contributed our own particular fragrance to the coach outing.
I have to say though, even as we fell into our beds exhausted and drunk, with the still-lingering whiff of Lee’s world shattering Lionel1 still lingering on our clothes, it had surely become a contender for one of the most rock ’n’ roll outings of all time.
This wasn’t the first or last time I misjudged or accidentally overstepped the mark in foreign climes. If you are familiar with the phrase, ‘Bruddy hell, he done it again!’ from my first book of grumpy tales, then you will know that whenever I travel to foreign climes I will always try to speak a little of the native tongue to my audiences. Even if it’s just, ‘Güten Morgen, Berlin!’ or something like that. ‘Güten Tag,’ I suppose, for a gig, but you know what I mean. It’s about making an effort.
One easy way of doing this is to announce the forthcoming songs in the native language; there’s always a promoter or PR person around who will write down a simple sentence to say ‘This next song is called . . .’ in Hungarian or whatever.
Which is all fairly straightforward provided you’re not playing a gig in Japan. I don’t speak a single word of Japanese, and the alphabet may as well be Egyptian hieroglyphics for all they mean to me. My old friend Mr Udo was escorting me to the venue on this particular night and I asked him to teach me a few words. He tried his best, he really did, but it was just so hard to mimic. In the end, we decided to have a few idiot boards down the front of the stage near the monitors, for me to read off when the moment came. Mr Udo introduced me to one of his Japanese guys called George who was really rather excited at the challenge of writing down these simple sentences on idiot boards for me.
‘So, what you wanna say, Lick?’
We worked it all out and to get around the strange alphabet we even had the brainwave to write it all out phonetically.
Sounds like a plan.
It should have worked well, it really should.
George wrote the boards out beautifully. They were all in exact order and he placed them perfectly by the monitors, as agreed. So we were all set.
I knew the Japanese audience would be very appreciative of my efforts and things had gone swimmingly well in-between the pieces when I said simple phrases such as ‘Thank You. We will now play . . .’ but I was actually really excited at the end the show when I was going to say the big goodbyes and thank yous. There was a capacity crowd of five thousand people, and so after the echo of the last chord of the last piece was dying away I walked up to the microphone and started reading the final board. In my mind I was saying: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been really nice to be here and I very much look forward to coming back very soon.
‘Size-en-restshoo knee o-ki moo-neno on-nanoko ga-ite, ore wa kanoj-yo no sono moonay to tawa-moo-retay.’
I thought I’d nailed it. I was sure I’d read the phonetics perfectly.
However, the stony silence from the five thousand shocked Japanese faces looking up at me suggested that it might not have all gone to plan.
I thought perhaps my pronunciation hadn’t been clear enough, so I said it again.
‘Size-en-restshoo knee o-ki moo-neno on-nanoko ga-ite, ore wa kanoj-yo no sono moonay to tawa-moo-retay.’
More silence. A few muffled, embarrassed coughs and the odd laugh. I think I saw one girl faint.
Eventually, after about a minute, we walked off stage to subdued applause.
At the side of the stage was standing a very shocked Mr Udo.
‘You velly naughty boy, Lick, velly naughty!’ he said.
‘Why? The show was great! I know my Japanese farewell wasn’t really very understandable, but apart from that it was a great gig.’
‘Lick, your Japanese farewell was velly, velly understandable,’ said Mr Udo.
‘So what was the problem, then?’ I asked, confused.
‘Lick, you velly naughty to say what you did.’
‘Listen Mr Udo, I only said “Ladies and gentlemen, it’s been really nice to be here and I very much look forward to coming back very soon”.’
‘You not say that.’
‘Well, that’s what I asked George to write down.’
Mr Udo screamed to someone to find George.
George arrived looking very sheepish.
They spoke for a minute in Japanese. Well, Mr Udo did most of the talking. He was not a happy Mr Udo that was obvious.
‘What did I say then, Mr Udo?’
Mr Udo turned to face me. ‘You say, “There is girl in front row with wonderful big tits and I would love to play with them.’’’
To which George added, stifling a big grin . . . ‘And you say it twice!’
When I was a heavy drinker, I naturally loved going Down Under to tour. The Australians love their drink and I did too – it’s a drinking man’s country really, barbecues and beer and all that. I was signed to A&M down there via a label called Festival Records. The A&R man assigned to me was a lovely fellow and we got on famously. For reasons that will become blatantly obvious as the story unfolds, I won’t use his real name, but simply call him Bruce instead!
On one particular tour in the mid-1970s, on our arrival at the airport Bruce was there waiting for us, looking somewhat shell-shocked. He shook our hands and then said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Rick, it’s really awful . . .’
What on earth’s the matter? It can’t be that bad surely?
‘There’s a brewery strike on and all the pubs are dry.’
Oh, good God, it’s a disaster.
‘Is this for real?’ I said, deeply disturbed. ‘We are here for two weeks! Surely we can get beer from somewhere?’
He explained that there was some black-market booze and that he’d planned ahead of the strike and bulk-purchased a reasonable stash. I say reasonable, that would be for a normal band, for us it was about two hours’ supply. But we were impressed by his preparation, nonetheless. I hastened an emergency meeting with my manager Brian ‘Deal-a-Day’ Lane.
‘Brian, we can’t have this! It’s a total catastrophe. Two weeks without beer – this is unacceptable. What can we do?’ We all racked our brains but the strict controls on illicit booze was making life very hard. Brian then made a suggestion that only a rock ’n’ roll manager would ever think of.
‘Buy the brewery, Rick,’ he said.
Genius! Buy the brewery, hopefully end the strike but if not just get in there and drink ourselves senseless. How could it fail?
We immediately opened up negotiations with my lawyer down there to make inroads into buying the brewery – lock, stock and, most importantly, barrel. At the same time ending the strike and in one foul swoop becoming an Australian hero and drink for nothing for the rest of my life. To be honest, I didn’t much care about the first one, but drinking for nothing for the rest of my life . . . well, I still salivate at the thought.
Now the truth is that negotiations never really started as it would have taken weeks to even get to the table to open discussions, but ‘Deal-a-Day’ Lane was well aware of that and did the next best thing. He phoned all the major newspapers, television and radio stations and within an hour or so the hotel was besieged with cameras, reporters and photographers.
The next morning, emblazoned across the front page of the main newspaper was the headline ‘Rick Wakeman to Buy Brewery!’ with the sub-line saying ‘Could the strike be ended by a Rock Star?’ Overnight I sort of became a national hero amongst the male drinking fraternity of Australia . . . Well, that is, all of Australia actually.
I never did buy the brewery, or even get close to it. Two days later, the unions and management got back talking together and the strike was ended. I’d like to think that in some small way we’d acted as mediators to bring the two warring parties together and preserve a good Aussie way of life. Incidentally, the rumour mill chose to completely ignore the fact that I hadn’t actually ever bought the brewery so whenever I return to Oz someone will always say, ‘Hey Rick, mate, do you still own XXXX?’
Bruce was a great guy but our visits to his country invariably caused him considerable marital strife. His wife was very controlling and always liked him back indoors for 6 p.m. for his tea, not out partying with a bunch of lawless drinking rockers from England. One afternoon we invited him out on a bender but first he took me to one side.
‘Rick, my wife doesn’t mind me going to your concerts, she’s just about used to that because she knows it’s my job. But if I just go out on the piss with you I’m in deep trouble.’
‘Oh, I see, well, I don’t want to cause you any problems, never mind.’
‘The problem is, Rick, the record company have said I am not to let you out of my sight.’
By 1 a.m. that night, he wasn’t entirely conscious when we carefully propped him up against his front door onto his doorstep, but I suspect he was perfectly able to hear his enraged wife screaming at him when she found him later.
About 4 p.m. there was some timid knocking at my hotel room door. Gingerly I got out of bed and looked through the peephole in the door.
I saw Bruce. His face looked all bloated like a goldfish bowl.
I opened the door and immediately realised that it wasn’t the peephole that made his face look like a bloated goldfish bowl, his face actually did look like a bloated goldfish bowl.
‘Can I sleep on your floor please? She’s thrown me out.’
He then emptied the contents of his stomach on the rug just inside the door.
Two days later, we had a meeting with him and beforehand he said, ‘I’ve been told that if I ever come back home in that state again, the marriage is over. So I’m having a barbecue on Saturday at my home and you can all come – then at least I will know where you are and what you are up to. I am the man of the house, so if I want to invite you I will.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘She also said that if I invite you to the house the marriage could well be over.’
We all felt sorry for him so we took his wife some chocolates and flowers and vowed to be on our best behaviour. We arrived there and she was obviously not pleased to see us at all. I always remember his house because it backed onto the airport and he had the barbecue in the backyard. His missus said she didn’t like flowers and didn’t eat chocolate so that was a bit of a poor start. So we ate all their food, got thoroughly pissed and then left.
Back in those days, I used to wear all these flowing capes on stage (what am I saying . . . I still do!). My wardrobe case was due in Oz the very next morning but for some reason it got held up in Customs. I was really worried because I suppose these capes have become very much a trademark and I really didn’t want to have to perform without being dressed appropriately.
I phoned Bruce in a bit of a panic.
‘I need to buy a cape.’
‘Rick, you won’t get one in Australia just like that. It’s not possible – no one wears capes.’
‘I do.’
‘Yes, I know you do, Rick, but as a general rule Australians don’t wear capes.’ He drove round and picked me up and we went straight to a shopping mall. We looked for hours but to no avail and eventually had to leave as the shops were shutting. Still no cape.
Then, as we walked back towards the car, we passed a weddingdress shop. There in the front window was a glorious long white dress with the most spectacular bridal train. ‘A cape!’
‘That looks nothing like a cape, Rick – it’s a bridal train.’
‘Close enough.’
The shop was closed. Disaster.
We found a phone box and called the telephone number on the shop sign and spoke to the owner. Even though the shop was closed, the owner knew that this gown was on sale for several thousand dollars so thankfully he drove straight to the shop and let us in.
‘It’s a beautiful dress, sir. Would your fiancée like to come in and try it on?’ said the very accommodating shop owner.
‘It’s not for his fiancée,’ said Bruce. ‘It’s for him.’
On the day of the show, we sliced a few rips into the gown and messed with the train a bit so that it made a passable cape and outfit but I’ve seen pictures of the show and, to be honest, I look like a six-foot-plus rock ’n’ roller wearing an ill-fitting wedding dress.
After the big show we took Bruce out for a ‘quick half’to thank him. The quick half turned in to a couple of gallons and we didn’t get him back onto his doorstep until around 3 a.m. and he was not conscious at all. We headed back to the hotel and I was just settling into bed when there was a knock at the door of my room. I got up and opened the door to find Bruce standing there, just like before, still paralytic, barely able to stand up.
He spoke.
‘My marriage is over, it is your bloody fault, and I have got nowhere else to stay.’ With that he walked into my room, was sick in roughly the same spot as before and collapsed on the sofa where he fell asleep and started to snore incredibly loudly.
Many years later, I bumped into Bruce on yet another tour of Australia. He was no longer in the record business and, just as he’d said, his marriage had ended that night. I apologised profusely and said we hadn’t not intended to cause any trouble.
‘Don’t worry, Rick, it was the best thing anyone ever did for me. Until the marriage finished that night I didn’t realise how miserable I was! I live with a twenty-seven-year-old nymphomaniac now.’
I now consider myself to be a highly successful marriage guidance counsellor.
The mid-1980s was not a good time to be in a prog-rock band. It was about the very last thing that anyone wanted to hear. Punk had taken over everything for a few years, but nearly a decade later things weren’t much better. Attendances were poor, there were promoters who would disappear without paying you – it was all very demoralising. In 1985 we’d just done a dreadful tour in America and next up was another trek round Australia. The US had been a disaster – people assume that every tour you do is fantastic but this had been bloody awful. To make matters worse, I was very ill with alcoholic hepatitis, but as yet, didn’t know it.
We arrived Down Under and everything was going wrong. Literally, everything that could go wrong did. Looking back, we shouldn’t really have been out on the road, everything was conspiring against us; mind you, I’ve always said that I’d rather be out on tour than sitting at home so I determined to make the best of it.
One particular show was booked miles from the nearest major town at one of the RSL clubs, which are scattered all over Australia. They are fabulous places and I am led to believe they were originally built as ex-servicemen’s clubs. They are nothing like the British Legion clubs in the UK as most of them are huge and have great performance areas for all sorts of entertainment, sometimes holding a couple of thousand people or more. They have restaurants, cafés, snooker rooms and dozens of slot machines – known as pokies. Great places, and we loved playing them.
We pulled up at this one club after a two hundred-mile drive and the crew started unloading our gear. We were particularly excited as this was the only show of the entire tour that had sold out, so it was a rare beacon of success in an otherwise endless series of disappointments. Then I noticed a guy looking intently over at us. Eventually he walked across and spoke.
‘You’re Rick Wakeman, aren’t you?’
‘Indeed. And you are?’
‘I’m the manager of the club, g’day. What are you doing here today, Rick?’
‘Well, I know we’re a little early for the show tonight but we’re all travelling together and so we always arrive with the gear, which the crew are unloading as we speak—’
‘Er, Rick, the show isn’t tonight, mate.’
‘What?’
‘Your show’s next week.’
‘No, it can’t be – I’ve got the contract here,’ I said. I grabbed my case and pulled out the contract from the agent which said quite clearly that the show was that evening.
‘Let me see that, please,’ said the manager. He read the date and said, ‘Oh, bugger me. You’re right, Rick, it does say tonight on the contract. Something’s gone amiss somewhere down the line.’
Great.
‘Shame, Rick, cos it’s sold out, you know . . .’
‘Yes, we’d heard.’
‘Well, look, there is no other show on tonight, so if you want paying, I suppose you’ll have to honour the contract and do the show.’
‘But will anyone even know that we are here tonight?’
‘Not really, Rick, no. They’ll all come next week.’
‘And what will you say when two thousand people turn up next week and I’m halfway round Australia playing somewhere else?’
‘Good point, Rick.’
‘Can you let people know that it’s on tonight instead?’
‘No chance, Rick. We’re miles from anywhere – we don’t have a local radio station or anything. There’ll be a few in here playing the pokies but that’ll be about it.’
We had a band conflab and decided to perform regardless. We were, after all, stuck in the middle of nowhere and none of us ever won on the pokies anyway and we were all enthusiastic, but crap at snooker!
The manager was really pleased.
‘Great, Rick. I’ll try to round up a few members of staff to come in early but, to be honest, your type of music isn’t really that popular round these parts.’
‘Cheers.’
To the manager’s credit, the dressing room was good and he even put a few nibbles and some cans in there for us. Then our introductory music started and our tour manager told us to get ready by the side of the stage. The intro music reached its crescendo which was our cue to walk on stage to lots of welcoming applause and cheering. We found ourselves doing our normal instinctive waving to the masses, only on this occasion there weren’t any masses. On this occasion we walked out on stage to 1997 empty seats and just three people (if I recall correctly they weren’t even sitting together!). Our audience was made up of three members of staff who’d been strong-armed into coming into the auditorium by the manager . . .
We played the first half of the show as best we could and then went off for the fifteen-minute interval. When we came back on, two of our audience had left and there was just one person remaining, sitting somewhere near the back. I seem to recall his name was Nathan. I remember this because we asked him if he had a request. He did, and it is not printable.
There was no encore.
You might think that a crowd of three would be my smallest audience ever, but you’d be mistaken. I can beat that – I’ve played to two. I was living on the Isle of Man at the time and my PA and secretary, Candy, phoned me up and said, ‘Rick, I’ve got a weird one for you.’
‘Surely not – go on,’ I said, thinking, When is it ever NOT weird?
‘A man has just phoned and said he wants to book you and The English Rock Ensemble for a corporate gig.’
Great! I thought. Corporate gigs can be good fun and usually pretty lucrative. ‘How many people and where?’
‘Just him. Oh, and his wife.’
‘What?’
‘Apparently,’ Candy explained, ‘he’s never missed a single tour of yours in thirty years but the last time you went out he was abroad on business and couldn’t get back in time. He was devastated so he said he wants to book you to play an identical show for him and his wife.’
‘You’re kidding! Does he know how much that will cost?’
The cost of a show was huge but over the course of a tour the expenses could be spread out over many gigs and numerous streams of income. For just a one-off show, it was ludicrous.
‘Candy, that’s going to be the wrong end of forty grand . . .’
‘I know, Rick, I told him . . .’
‘And . . .?’
‘He wants to book the show. He wants to do it in a hotel – he’s got some huge hotel in Manchester booked that has a big ballroom. I know you are thinking that your gear will fill up the ballroom but we don’t need much room for the audience as there will only be him and his wife.’
‘Look,’ I said to Candy, ‘phone him up and say I’m very flattered that he likes my music so much, but I can’t charge him over forty grand for one gig. I’d love to meet him and he can come to any show on my next tour as my personal guest and we’ll go and have a bite to eat afterwards.’
The next day the phone rang and it was Candy.
‘Rick, he says he wants you to play the show. He knows the cost and he doesn’t mind.’
This was just surreal but I couldn’t actually see any reason why we shouldn’t play the show. When I told the band they thought I was winding them up. But once I’d explained that I was deadly serious, they thought it was hilarious and as they were being paid their usual rates they didn’t really care.
When the day of the show arrived, we rolled into Manchester and the crew had already set up the equipment, PA system and lights in this very splendid ballroom. It was exactly what we had used on the tour. We’d played to three thousand-capacity venues with this rig: it was serious stuff. It was pretty tight for space and right down at the front there was just enough room for two lone chairs. It was a full-on show set up, no expense spared, squashed into this room with a pair of chairs – one of the weirdest sights I’ve ever come across.
We were introduced to this guy and his wife and they were lovely people, very genuine. He just wanted us to play the exact show that he’d missed. We started playing and he was whooping and hollering, even though there were just the two of them watching, although I got the impression his wife was only there for moral support. The fact that she was reading a book throughout was a bit of a giveaway. He, however, was totally into it. We got to the slot for the interval and went off for fifteen minutes, and he duly left the room for a toilet break. Then we came back and there he was sitting next to his wife, waiting for the second half. We played the rest of the show and he clapped and cheered throughout. It was all very surreal but kind of fun.
After we finished the last piece, we all walked to the front of the stage and bowed. He clapped and cheered. His wife turned another page.
We walked out the side doors and he carried on cheering and clapping, and so we went back on and did an encore.
Back down the front again, more bowing, more cheering from our lone audience member and we went through the side doors for the final time, or so we thought.
Whilst we stood outside the doors in the corridor still trying to come to terms with what had just happened, our benefactor came through the doors. I turned to greet him, fully expecting him to be all full of praise, to be honest. But instead he said, ‘Rick, that was brilliant but I understand that at the Sheffield show, which is the one I would have come to if I’d been in the country, you did two encores . . . so could you give me some sort of idea please as to how much longer I have to cheer and holler in there before you come back on?’
He got real value for his money. We did three encores!
I might have inadvertently ended the odd marriage (other people’s, that is), but I’ve also seen a fair few ‘rock-solid’ partnerships over the years. Being in the music biz they’re not always exactly conventional, though.
In my early days of doing sessions in the mid-to-late 1960s, every musician worth his salt desperately wanted to get on what was called a ‘Fixer’s List’. As a musician you had to be able to sight-read music to a very high standard as well as being extremely accomplished on your chosen instrument and also able to play many differing styles of music.
Fixers booked musicians for recording sessions. When a record company or producer wanted to make a record with session musicians, they’d phone a fixer and say, ‘I want a guitar player, bass, drummer and two trumpets’ or whatever it was they required, and the fixer would book those musicians who would then turn up at the studio on the day in question.
So from a professional musician’s point of view, if you got on a top fixer’s list you could be working non-stop at top rates. There were three top fixers around at the time and I was doing sessions for all of them, but one fixer in particular gave me most of my work. He’s no longer with us sadly, and so as not to embarrass his family, I’ll give him a new name . . . Dave Moggie will suffice, I think.
The problem for me back then was most players on any of the fixers’ lists were very experienced, at least in their thirties and often forties and fifties. I was only in my late teens. So the odds were stacked against me as regards getting on a fixer’s list, let alone fitting in.
I was fortunate that I was getting a few sessions direct from artists or independent producers and I was keen to work hard and learn from these guys. I began to earn myself a decent reputation.
A few producers who’d used me said they’d mention my name to various fixers if they heard they were looking for new talent. I was still living with my parents at the time and one day I came home and Mum said, ‘Richard, we’ve had a phone call from a Mr Dave Moggie and he said to tell you he’s got a session for you.’
I vividly remember tingling all over. This was a massive break. Mum had very carefully written down all the details. The session was at Advision Studios in London and was for a top producer. The session was with a big orchestra and I was to play the piano. The session was booked from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. the following Thursday.
‘I don’t know where that is, Mum,’ I said.
She smiled and just like a true mum said, ‘I thought not, so I’ve looked it up in the phone book for you already. It’s in New Bond Street.’
Mum had said to make sure I was on time – well, I arrived in New Bond Street two hours early, at 8 a.m.! There was no way I was going to miss this opportunity – it really could be the making of my career. I went and had a coffee at a small café near Bond Street station and sat around for what seemed like an eternity, but when I looked at my watch, it was only 8.30. Time was going so slow. I killed a bit more time then at about nine o’clock I couldn’t wait any longer so I walked to the number in New Bond Street that Mum had written down.
When I got there it was a building site.
Literally. A hole in the ground.
My first thought was that someone was playing a cruel trick on me, so I phoned Mum. Fortunately she had Dave Moggie’s home telephone number. Obviously I didn’t have a mobile phone (they hadn’t been invented) so Mum said she’d call him for me, explain the error and for me to call her back in fifteen minutes from the same payphone to find out what he’d said.
At 9.15 I phoned Mum back and she said that Dave had already left for the session but his wife Harriet was trying to get hold of him at the studio for me and get the correct address. I called Mum back again at 9.30 and then 9.45 but there was still no news or an alternative address. Finally, at 10.30 – when I was already thirty minutes late – Harriet phoned Mum and I got to the bottom of it.
Advision Studios had moved a year earlier and the new phone book with their correct address had not yet been sent out. The studio had moved to Gosfield Street but I didn’t have a clue where that was. I was now nearly in tears – this was my big break evaporating in front of me. I was already forty-five minutes late for the session, so I ran up to Oxford Street and found a policeman, who luckily knew where Gosfield Street was.
I ran the fastest I’ve ever ran. I ran through the reception doors at about 11.15 and went straight through to the studio. There, in front of me, frowning and less than impressed, was the conductor and musical director standing at his rostrum in front of a forty-piece orchestra filled with some of the most accomplished session players in the world. All looking at this long-haired, out-of-breath novice who was well over an hour late.
I’d never actually met Dave Moggie before. He stood up and introduced himself (he was also a musician and part of the orchestra) and asked me to come to the control room while the rest of the orchestra took a tea break.
‘Rick, one of the most important elements of session work is punctuality. When you only have three hours to record three pieces, you can’t just turn up when you feel like it.’ I tried to tell him the story behind my late arrival and how I’d actually arrived two hours early, but you could tell he was (justifiably) sceptical. Mainly because he said, ‘Whatever your excuse is, it’s not good enough. Enjoy the session today because it will be the last one you do for me.’
I was literally in tears.
After he’d left, I found out that my lateness had been particularly problematic as many of the pieces started on the piano, so they’d not been able to record anything. Anyway, the orchestra returned from their tea break and the musical director brought everybody to order and said something like, ‘I apologise for the delay in starting, everybody, but we’ll do what we can in the short space of time left in this session.’ I felt myself squirming in my seat at the piano as I felt forty-plus pairs of eyes glaring at me.
I’m not sure whether adrenalin kicked in or whether my concentration was elevated to a new height, but the first two pieces were recorded on the first take. I guess I was also so far gone in terms of disappointment and dejection that I just relaxed and played the music.
The irony was that at 12.45, fifteen minutes before the session was due to finish, we had all the music in the can and we all left the studio early. I caught the train home, my tail between my legs.
When I got back to my parents’, my mum said Dave Moggie had been on the telephone and had left a message for me.
‘What’s he saying? He can’t tell me off any more – he’s already done that and he’s already said he’ll never use me again, so there’s really no need to phone up and—’
‘Richard, my dear, the very nice Mr Moggie said he’d got home, heard from Harriet about all your efforts to find him and how you’d been two hours early, and realised that you’d told him the truth.’
‘Well, that’s good but it’s not really going to help me, is it?’
‘I think it is, Richard: he has just booked you for another six sessions.’
I worked for Dave Moggie non-stop for four years after that, sometimes doing as many as fifteen sessions a week.
Dave Moggie is sadly no longer with us. What a character he was. I really loved that man. He played such a massive part in my musical career and life. He always used to pay everyone on the dot at the end of the session, but when you got your cheque it was always a month post-dated.
If Dave couldn’t make the session, or if he had more than one on at the same time in different studios, he’d get Barry Morgan to pick the cheques up from his home to hand out. Barry was one of the great session drummers of all time, a giant of the business.
I was living in a little terraced house in West Harrow when one day I got a phone call from Dave. ‘Rick, Barry can’t pick up the cheques this morning for the session at Trident Studios, can you be the courier today for me and come round and collect everyone’s cheques?’ He explained where he lived and I said I’d go straight over. He had a big, beautiful house in Middlesex, but that wasn’t where he was sending me. He gave me directions to a maisonette in a north London suburb.
The previous day I’d been rehearsing with a great guitarist friend of mine called Mike Egan, and as we were both on the morning session at Trident, he had stayed at my house so we could travel up for the session together.
No such thing as sat-nav back then, but the trusty A–Z got us there by 8 a.m. and we parked up outside three quite posh maisonette buildings which were evenly placed on a large expanse of lawn.
We got out and there was Dave Moggie mowing the lawn.
Nothing unusual about that, I hear you say, but Dave was doing his morning chore whilst just wearing a long, baggy pair of underpants. He said, ‘All right, chaps, go upstairs and have a coffee. Harriet is in the kitchen – I’ll be up in a minute and give you the cheques to take.’
Mike and I looked at each either and climbed the narrow staircase to the first-floor maisonette where Harriet stood behind a breakfast bar making coffee.
Nothing unusual about that, I hear you say, but Harriet was doing her morning chore whilst wearing even less than her husband was downstairs in the garden. To put it bluntly, she was bollock naked.
‘Hello, boys. Coffee or tea?’
Mike whispered to me in his soft Scottish lilt, ‘Sod the coffee, let’s get out of here.’
‘We’ve got to pick up the cheques,’ I pointed out, also under my breath.
Harriet poured the coffee.
‘Milk,’ she enquired.
‘Oh God, surely not,’ Mike muttered under his breath.
We drank the coffee black.
Harriet then brought us some biscuits, quite happily wandering around in the nude in front of us as if it was perfectly normal. Then Dave came up and, without any comment or acknowledgement that his naked wife was in a room with two other men, he said, ‘I see you’ve got coffee, boys. You want toast?’
‘Er, no, thanks, we’d better get off actually, Dave, if we could just grab those cheques,’ I said, all the time trying to keep my eyes firmly on the ceiling.
‘Of course, here you go, they are all ready for you,’ said Dave. ‘Harriet, where’s my hat and coat?’
She told him they were by the door and so he followed us down the stairs of this maisonette, we assumed to follow us out. However, when we got down by the door we saw that there was a milkman’s Express Dairy coat and hat on the coat hook. Dave put them both on, again without any explanation whatsoever, and said, ‘Nice to see you, chaps.’ And then followed us out of the door.
Totally bemused, we didn’t know what to expect next and so we set off slowly toward my parked car. Unable to curb our inquisitiveness we gingerly looked around to see what Dave was doing.
He was standing on the door step of his own maisonette with the door slightly ajar.
We heard Harriet shout down, ‘Who is it?’
Dave pushed the door more fully open put one foot inside and shouted up the stairs. ‘It’s the milkman, love. I’ve come for my money.’
Harriet’s voice floated back down the stairs. ‘Oh dear,’ she said, ‘I haven’t got the money to pay you . . .’
‘In that case, I’m coming right up,’ said Dave and disappeared through his own front door and shot up the staircase.
We drove in silence for a while. ‘Did I just see what I think I saw?’ asked Mike, nervously.
‘You did, mate, and no one should ever know about it. Not until I write my book anyway! This is strictly between you and me,’ I replied.
‘Agreed.’
We parked up in Soho and walked round into St Anne’s Court which is just off of Wardour Street. Barry Morgan had just arrived too.
‘Sorry I couldn’t get over to Dave’s to pick up the cheques,’ he said. ‘I’m grateful to you guys for coming to the rescue. By the way, what did you get this morning? The milkman?’
What alternatives to the milkman there were I never found out, as I never picked up the cheques again.
[1 Lionel . . . Lionel Bart. Cockney rhyming slang.]