Grumpy Old Rock Star: and Other Wondrous Stories (11 page)

Not one.

The shows were already booked.

So I decided to go without insurance.

We made an agreement with the promoters that before each show I would have an ECG and if that said my ticker wasn’t
about to implode, then we’d do the gig. It was a long tour and it was quite some logistical achievement to get an ECG before every show but somehow we did it. I learned not to have one too soon after landing in a plane, as that can affect your heart rate hugely. Tricks of the trade, eh?!

I also learned that my heart rate and ECG reading seemed to improve vastly depending on how many free tickets to the show I handed the hospital staff. I was doing really good business at the time with two Top 5 albums, so tickets were pretty scarce. I’d go in for an ECG and they’d come in, start wiring me up and – you could almost time them – they’d say, ‘Rick, you don’t, by any chance, sorry to ask, have any tickets for tonight?’

‘Yes, of course . . .’ and then they’d do the ECG.

Which, if I failed, would mean the cancellation of the show that they’d just been given free backstage passes for.

Not the most objective of medical advice.

Night after night, according to the paperwork, I was one of the fittest, healthiest men on earth.

HERR SCHMIDT’S FISHING TRIP

I tell you one thing that’s a pain in the backside when you are a touring musician. Bloody visas. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had visas go adrift or arrive late. The problem nearly sent me to a Siberian labour camp once, as you know, but that wasn’t the last time I had troubles.

Take Paraguay in 1980. I was living in the south of France at the time – I didn’t really want to live there but my missus did, so that was where I lived. I was booked on a tour of Brazil but there was a problem with my visa.

Oddly, there was a rule about the ‘featured artist’ which stated that only the main performer needed a visa, while his supporting band didn’t. So my band could travel there without a hitch, but I was stranded. At the time I had a tour manager called Barry the Perv. Most of the band used to buy
Autotrader
to read on the various bus and plane journeys but Barry would always turn up with a copy of
Underwear Unlimited
or some other seedy little top-shelf mag. And he used to sweat quite profusely.

I tell you what, though: apart from being a sweaty perv, he was a great tour manager and a very funny guy.

So I get this phone call from Barry the Perv. He explained that Joan Baez had recently been in Brazil and at her opening press conference had laid on some fairly heavy political criticism of the government. The authorities did not take to this lightly and had subsequently stopped her from playing the shows.

‘So why is this a problem for me, Barry?’

‘Because they’ve stopped issuing visas to visiting featured artists until further notice, Rick.’

Great.

‘But it’s all right, Rick,’ continued Barry the Perv, ‘I’ve spoken to the promoter and the right backhanders are being dropped in all the right places. I can’t get a visa before you go, but you can get to Rio posing as a tourist, and then we can go from there.’

Sounded like a plan.

I arrived in Rio and waltzed through passport control and customs. I was very well known in Brazil at the time and probably the only ones unaware that I was there for a tour were those in cemeteries.

‘Are you just holidaying, sir?’ etc., etc. ‘Yes, yes . . .’ and I was through. Barry had already arrived so we scooted off to the hotel to meet the promoter. When we got there, the promoter walked into the room and said, ‘Right, welcome to Brazil, Mr Wakeman. Now you’ve got to go to Paraguay.’

‘What? Right now? Why?’

‘No, relax . . . in the morning. To get your work visa. They are not issuing them here, as you know, but we have arranged a backdated one to be issued in Paraguay. You will be met at Asunción airport – here are your tickets, here is an envelope,’ he explained. ‘Hand this envelope to the man at the visa office in Asunción.’

‘I’m not handing over any envelope,’ I interjected, ‘to anyone in Paraguay without knowing what’s in it.’

‘There’s five $20 bills, Rick. Barry will go with you, he must travel too.’

So we were all set – all we had to do was travel under the false pretence of being tourists to a country with a collapsing economy and a legacy of SS- and Nazi-sympathising, where we would hand over an envelope to a complete stranger in exchange for what I was now beginning to realise was probably not the most ‘legitimate’ work visa.

Barry had started sweating (without the use of one of his many magazines).

When we landed at the airport in Paraguay I was surprised to be met by quite an entourage, including a television crew. I was not surprised to find that the man in charge was German. He was old and appeared to have a leg missing. Much later, I found out he was a former Second World War pilot. So off to a flying start, then – if you’ll excuse the pun.

No ‘Welcome to Paraguay’ this time. The boss man just briskly shook our hands and said, ‘Please come viz me.’ The entourage – all with strong German accents – led us to a large blacked-out Mercedes, opened the doors and we climbed in. The car then glided out of the airport – no customs this time – and into the streets.

I was sitting there with Barry the Perv, taking this all in while looking out of the window at the passing scenery. There were hundreds of normal houses but then every few miles you’d see a huge mansion with a big driveway and the occasional swastika on the gate.

‘I don’t like this, Rick, I don’t like this at all,’ said Barry, sweating.

‘Look, just keep calm, we’re here now. If you want to get paid for the show, the show has to happen and for the show to happen we have to do this. It’ll be all right.’

We arrived at a hotel and were given separate rooms. Another man with a German accent came into my room and said, ‘You may phone for ze room service. There is not ze room service at zis hotel, but for you two, zey will bring ze food. You can go to ze bar but do not leave ze hotel.’

At that exact moment, Barry the Perv bounced into the room and shouted, ‘Rick, I’m trying to phone England and I can’t get a sodding outside telephone line . . .’

Ze German looked at Barry and then at me, one single precise eyebrow raised.

‘You’re not helping matters here, Barry,’ I pointed out.

We were politely informed that we were not allowed to make any phone calls either.

‘Ve vill pick you up in ze morning. I repeat, do not leave ze hotel.’

Once again I was waiting for Harry Palmer to walk into the room.

He didn’t, nor did Michael Caine.

I had Barry the Perv.

We went to the bar and sank more than a few drinks. The Germans were actually very nice folk, likewise the people of Paraguay. (I have a theory that if you are in a band and a drinker, people are more accommodating; if you are known as a druggie band, people can be a lot less tolerant, as many of my peers found out.)

The next morning, the Germans arrived as agreed. We got back in the Merc and drove off to a town just outside Asunción. It seemed quite a small place, so I was sure that we’d soon see an embassy or official-looking building looming large around a corner.

Then the car started to slow down.

And stopped outside a newsagent.

‘What are we doing here?’ I asked, thinking that someone needed a paper.

‘Up zeez stairs, zis is ze Brazilian embassy.’

Above a bloody sweet shop.

‘You vill meet zis man, he is a Brazilian, he vill sort out ze visa.’

I dutifully climbed these rickety stairs to this tiny room above the sweet shop, a million miles from Mervyn Conn’s solid oak
staircase in the West End. At the end of the landing was a small room, just big enough for about four people to fit in, with a glass partition in the facing wall much like the ones you get at a doctor’s reception. A woman opened the glass sliding panel, said, ‘Yes, take a seat,’ then went out of view and appeared from behind a door, beckoning me through. Inside this room there were six wooden chairs and little else.

We sat down and waited.

Barry was sweating. A
lot.
He was getting very paranoid.

‘We are going to get killed, Rick,’ he was saying. I noticed he wasn’t browsing through a mag from his extensive porn collection now. ‘We’re never going to be seen again, Rick,’ he continued.

‘Barry, if you don’t bloody well shut up, I’ll make sure
you
’re never going to be seen again.’

We were told to go back through the door where we would be dealt with by – and I am not making this up – a Herr Schmidt. The glass sliding panel opened again and the lady asked us exactly what we were there for.

‘I am here to see Herr Schmidt about a visa.’

She said, ‘Vait here,’ and closed the partition. A minute later, she opened it again and said, ‘He has gone fishing.’

This was nuts.

I explained that we had flown all the way from Brazil and had been brought here and that it would all be sorted. No one had mentioned ‘ze fishing’.

She didn’t move an inch.

Then I remembered the envelope in my pocket, so I pulled that out and said, ‘Oh yes, I was asked to give this to you.’ Without speaking, she turned and went back into the room. A minute or so passed and then she returned.

‘Herr Schmidt has come back from ze fishing. Your passport please . . .’

Ten minutes later she returned and handed me my passport back, as well as a sealed envelope.

‘Ze visa, goodbye.’

With Barry leading the way, we walked fairly briskly down the stairs, through the sweet shop, out into the street and got in the waiting Mercedes. I ripped open the envelope with my passport in it.

Now, a Brazilian government visa is actually quite snazzy, it’s stamped very boldly and is actually quite splendid to look at.

Unlike what I was looking at in my passport.

The ‘visa’ I had been given appeared to be a wax crayon drawing by a five-year-old. The only thing missing was a picture of a house with smoke coming out of the chimney.

‘Oh, shit!’

Anyway, we got back to the airport ready to use this crayon drawing to get me back into Brazil. But when we looked up at the departures board, there wasn’t a single flight to Rio. I pointed this out to our one-legged German friend who was seeing us off, but he just said, ‘You just go through, ze flight to Rio vill be there.’

Completely out of the blue, as we walked through the (nonexistent) customs, One Leg said, ‘I vould like you to come und play in our country one day.’ Then he said, ‘I hope you have found your trip here to be satisfactory.’ Then he left, without another word. (I did actually return to play in Paraguay a few years later and loved it. The Paraguayan people are very special, as indeed are all South and Central American people that I’ve met. I just love visiting that part of the world.)

We went through to Departures and were met by a couple of men in official-looking uniforms who took us through a walkway and onto a Boeing 707 which, apparently, was flying to Rio after all. By the time we’d settled into our first-class seats Barry was sweating profusely again but we were both hugely relieved. There wasn’t anyone else in first class but that wasn’t unusual in South America.
The flight took off and after the seat-belt signs were turned off Barry the Perv went through the curtain to go to the gents. He came back only a few seconds later, as white as my friend Igor in Moscow had been.

‘What’s up, Barry?’

‘Rick, there’s no one else on this plane. We are the only two passengers . . .’

‘Are you sure . . . ?’ I got up and looked through the dividing curtains and, sure enough, we were the only two passengers on this massive Boeing.

‘I don’t like this, Rick, I don’t like this at all,’ said Barry, now making squelching noises every time he moved as he had sweated so much. ‘We are going to get killed, Rick, we’re never going to be seen again, Rick . . .’

‘Oh, shut up, Barry, don’t start that again, or else there’ll only be one passenger on this bloody plane . . . it’s probably the promoter, they’ve probably laid it on for us to get it all sorted . . .’

‘What? A sodding 707?’ pointed out Barry, justifiably.

Well, believe it or not, we flew straight to Rio and landed safely, without a hitch and with a fair few welcome drinks sunk. We disembarked and headed off to Arrivals. With my wax crayon visa drawing.

‘Can’t we just say we are on holiday, Rick?’

‘Barry, not this close to the shows, it was in the papers yesterday with my photograph and we’ve sold 10,000 tickets, I can hardly say I’ve come for bird-spotting.’

When the customs officer opened up my passport to look at the work ‘visa’, I swear to God he just laughed out loud. So funny was it that he called over his two friends who in turn burst out giggling. They were literally pissing themselves laughing. By this point, Barry the Perv was just a human sweat bead. I thought he was going to explode and – I have to be honest – I also thought I was looking at a long stretch in a
Brazilian prison now, rather than a Siberian labour camp. Either way, I was stuffed.

Then, suddenly, with their laughs still subsiding, they stamped my passport and said, ‘Go on through, have a great concert. Welcome to Brazil.’

THE VICTOR, THE CONSUL AND THE ROLLER

I love cars. I’ve had a few in my time. As I mentioned, I had twenty-two at one time (although admittedly they were part of an exotic car-hire company that I owned called the Fragile Carriage Company) and I think I’ve been through about 200 altogether. It was a love affair that started when I was very young.

Let me take you back to my very first car, a beautiful Ford Anglia. I was only seventeen when I bought it and I thought I was the King of the Road. The car was a necessity because of all the equipment I had to cart around and my dad couldn’t keep on acting as an unpaid roadie. So as soon as I passed my test, I decided to get a car.