Grumpy Old Rock Star: and Other Wondrous Stories (23 page)

One particular night in America, Funky Fat Fred seemed to have had a change of luck. We were at a club in the basement of the hotel we were staying at in Chicago and the whole band was in a mischievous mood. The bouncers told Hodgy (my tuned percussionist) off for not dressing formally enough, ordering him to ‘Come back when you are wearing a tie,’ which he did. Except that was all he was wearing, stark bollock naked except for this little grey tie. Some people found that quite funny; the bouncers didn’t, as I remember.

The police were very good about it.

Anyway, we’d all come back from the show and there was no sign of Fred. Someone asked me to give him a knock on the way past his room and check he was all right – like Chris Squire, he could fall asleep at any given moment. So I knocked on his hotel room door and noticed it was slightly ajar. I walked in quietly and there, lying on the bed completely naked, was a gorgeous-looking blonde. Quite stunning! Fred was there too, and they were obviously ‘together’.

I’ve got to be honest, I did make a very quick count: two arms, two legs, two ears, two eyes, single nose, no beard . . . all seemed present and correct with this blonde beauty. It seems harsh, but with Fred’s women you did have to do the odd limb count.

‘Oh, sorry, Fred, just checking you’re OK,’ I apologised.

‘All right, Rick,’ said Fred, nonchalantly. ‘We’re good, thanks. This is Sue by the way.’

I smiled in her direction, and she smiled back at me.

Another surprise: she appeared to have her own teeth as well!

‘I’ll see you downstairs in a little while.’

Shocked, I walked back down to the club where the band were propping themselves up with several glasses of alcoholic beverages. (Have you noticed how bands never sit at tables, they always sit up at the bar?) Anyway, I joined the guys and one of them said, ‘You all right, Rick? You look like you’ve had a shock.’

‘I’m fine, thanks, but not as fine as Fred. He’s only got himself an absolute stunner in his room: blonde, slim and, last I saw, naked.’

‘Really?’ came the sceptical reply. ‘Has she got any limbs missing?’

‘All present and correct, I counted ’em myself.’

‘Really? You sure? Two noses?’

‘No.’

‘Six fingers on each hand?’

‘No.’

‘Four tits and six nipples?’

‘No, honestly, she was gorgeous, and they’re coming down in a minute so you’ll see for yourself.’

Sure enough, about ten minutes later, Fred walks in the bar with this Amazonian blonde, tall, leggy, elegant and very beautiful. The band’s jaws dropped. You could see them all counting,
Two arms, two legs, two
 . . .

Fred knew what we were thinking and he’d got the biggest grin across his face. He brought this girl over and introduced her to us all and we said hello to her.

She looked back at us and very gently said, ‘It’th luthvely thoo thee you all.’

As cool as you like, Fred leaned over in front of her and said, ‘Cleft palate.’

Fred may have been a crap tour manager but he was just wonderful, absolutely wonderful. He’s still knocking about somewhere, he’s like the Del Boy Trotter of Buckinghamshire. I loved him to bits.

Anyway, back to Brazil: Fred was with me on this flight down to Rio to ‘chaperone’ me. We were flying Varig Airlines and were sitting in first class and, naturally, we both sank a few on the way there. As we came in to land, Fred went a bit quiet. I looked out the window and said, ‘Fred, something’s going on here . . .’

There were thousands of people at the airport, on parapets, the various terminal building roofs, the runway, the parking lots, everywhere. The best way I could describe it is like the pictures I saw of when the Beatles first arrived in New York.

‘I know, Rick. Football, I suspect – they love their football down here. It must be the national team arriving.’

Wrong.

The intercom on the plane crackled to life. ‘Would all passengers please remain in their seats until Mr Wakeman has safely disembarked the aeroplane.’

The stewardess came over to our seats and told us that special arrangements had been made for our safety and would we please accompany her to the front exit door of the plane?

When they opened the doors, there was pandemonium. Later reports put the crowd at 100,000 people. There was a parade of sleek black limos right next to the side of the plane, each with two or three besuited security men in dark glasses standing by an open door, a veritable cavalcade waiting for Funky Fat Fred and myself.

We were guided into the nearest limo and as soon as we got in a security man asked us for our passports and papers. We didn’t go anywhere near customs or passport control this time,
but instead were whisked straight out of a side exit to the airport and headed off to Rio. Even more insanely, when we got close to Copacabana Beach the streets were lined with even more people, shouting, holding up my records, waving banners and flags. It was pure madness. I will own up to loving every minute of it. I mean, who wouldn’t?

It turned out that El Globo, the media company backing the whole venture, had a virtual monopoly on the newspapers and radio and TV, and so had been plugging the events almost ceaselessly for weeks. I also learned that they’d invited other big bands from Europe to play there, but no one would go. So it was one of the most anticipated music shows in Brazil for years. Then someone showed me the equivalent of the
Melody Maker
charts and my records were at numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. The biggest and best symphony orchestra and choir had been confirmed for the show as well, so this was going to be about as big as it got.

As we drove through the city I enquired about the indoor venue we’d be playing and what it was like, if the capacity was known and so on.

‘It’s at least 35,000 at each show each night, Rick. You are playing two shows a night for six days. They all sold out months ago.’

OK, so now I knew that we did have a following in Brazil.

We pulled up at the hotel and there was an armed guard waiting to escort us from the limo into the foyer, again for safety reasons. When we got to our rooms there was an armed guard posted outside each door and we were not allowed to leave under any circumstances. Although I’ve played in some fairly popular bands, I’ve never really considered myself a pop star and I certainly haven’t felt my life has been impeded in the way that big pop stars experience such things. But in Brazil I could understand some of these problems. As you know from my antics in Poland and Moscow I’m pretty adept at slinking off, but in Brazil I just couldn’t go anywhere without being escorted or without detailed
military planning. My minders had their reasons, though, as I would later find out. If I wanted to go to the pool, they would say, ‘When, exactly? And for how long? And who is going with you? And who might meet up with you while you are there?’ They even cleared certain areas of the pool. And when they asked us these questions, it always sounded so comical when I’d reply, ‘Well, I might meet Deal-a-Day or Funky Fat Fred, if he isn’t too pissed.’

Let’s take a quick diversion to the pool before I continue my tale. It was like a United Nations mission just getting to a sunlounger. Finally, on one afternoon I made it to the pool and was very much enjoying relaxing in the sun and sampling the local alcohol.

Suddenly this very English voice says to me, ‘Hello, Rick, how’s London?’

It was Ronnie Biggs.

There, in a nutshell, is one of the very odd aspects of being a public face, of so-called celebrity – or perhaps notoriety, I should say in my case. People who are complete strangers know you and, if they are equally high-profile, you know them. Yet actually you don’t know each other at all, you are indeed complete strangers. It’s a forced intimacy that is really quite odd. Sometimes if it’s a fellow musician or, in my younger days, a very beautiful actress, then it’s very handy. But when it’s Ronnie Biggs, it’s really rather peculiar.

‘Hello, Ronnie,’ I said jovially.

‘How you doing? Can I join you for a beer?’

This trip was rapidly becoming something like a surreal dream. There I was, sitting by a pool in Brazil, visibly armed security guards watching my every move, supping on a beer with Ronnie Biggs, Great Train Robber and escaped prisoner! We talked about jolly old England, football, the government, all sorts. Then I said, ‘Do you miss England, Ronnie?’

Just as the words left my beer-drenched lips, an absolutely
stunning Brazilian woman sauntered past us wearing a thong bikini and with her bosom heaving and glinting in the heat of the glorious sun.

I looked at Ronnie, Ronnie looked at me, we both looked at the girl and he said, ‘Yeah! Of course!’

We chatted some more and he revealed that he was really looking forward to the shows. I said if there was anything I could do to help re tickets etc. to let me know. Ronnie smiled and said, ‘Well, actually, Ricky, I have got a few friends it would be nice to look after . . .’ and as he spoke he pointed at some other sunloungers which were occupied by some ‘friends’. All English, mostly Londoners and obviously not on holiday. I burst out laughing, and so did all the guys.

Over the next few days, we chatted regularly. He spoke about music, sport, even the Great Train Robbery on occasion. He was a very articulate man and very interesting and it was fascinating talking to him. It reminded me of a bygone age when entertainers, police and criminals all dovetailed together. It still goes on to a certain extent, of course it does, but back then there was a certain interlinked dynamic between the underworld, the showbiz world and the legal world.

Anyway, one day Ronnie asked me if I would do him a favour. He’d recently divorced from his wife and she was now living in Australia. Ronnie asked if it was possible that the next time I played Down Under I could deliver her one of my albums. I said, ‘Of course!’ And some months later, I did exactly that . . .

The funny thing was that the police and Special Branch must have been watching at some point, because a few days after I landed back in Blighty I got a visit. Two men asked me what I was doing in Australia and when I said ‘on tour’ they replied, ‘And did you give anything to anybody?’ That was when I cottoned on that they had obviously been conducting surveillance on Ronnie’s wife.

I said, ‘I’m a musician. I was fourteen when the Great Train Robbery took place – do you think I took a day off school to help them out and hid the money in my satchel or something?’ To be fair, they laughed. They asked me why I had been seen meeting Ronnie Biggs’s ex-wife.

‘Because I’d been asked to deliver a copy of
The Six Wives of Henry VIII
in person.’

They laughed some more and left.

Back in my suite at the top of the Rio hotel, there were so many rooms it was hilarious. It was bigger than my house . . . which was pretty big itself. It was absolutely barking, it truly felt like a Beatles experience.

When it came to the shows we had to be smuggled out, do the soundcheck under tight security and then be smuggled back to the hotel. The orchestra down in Brazil was absolutely sublime. One of the great things about that mini-tour is that we still hold all of the indoor records for those places. We were doing 35,000 a night but that level of capacity was clearly so dangerous that, fairly soon afterwards, limits were put on of around 18,000. So no one can ever come close to our crowd figures!

The unattached members of the band were also having a whale of a time, and found themselves ‘attached’ very quickly and very easily. I distinctly remember opening a linen cupboard in the hotel only to find one of the band in flagrante with a Brazilian woman I’d never seen before. And all he said, as cool as you like, was, ‘I’m looking for a clean towel, Rick, and this kind young chambermaid is helping me.’

‘Well, she won’t find a towel where she’s looking,’ I said.

During the course of those few days, I absolutely fell in love with Brazil and its people. They were so warm – they didn’t always have much but they couldn’t give you enough. They smiled and they loved music. Most restaurants had tambourines or small
instruments on the tables and when the house band started playing everybody just joined in. They don’t walk anywhere, they just seem to dance. The food was fantastic, the people were just so happy and they were so pleased that we were down there. We were having the most wonderful time.

But just when we thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, we had a message one day saying that a very important ‘someone’ had come to see me. Security came up to my room and I was escorted in silence in a private elevator downstairs. I was taken to a small room and when I walked in, there, sitting in front of me, was one of the most famous Brazilian international superstar footballers of all time, Rivelino.

I didn’t know what to say, I was so shocked. The Brazilians are all football nuts so it was a great privilege to even meet him. The whole of Copacabana Beach was filled with goal posts and I saw some of the greatest football in my life played on that sand. If there was a spare bit of ground they’d be kicking around a ball . . . or dancing, or singing or playing.

He’d brought a translator with him and through this man he said he’d heard I liked football. I told him, ‘Very much so.’

‘I hear you have a football team with your band and your people,’ he enquired.

‘Well, we do have a kick-about now and then, for fun, yes.’

‘Well, would you like to play a game while you are staying with us here in Brazil?’

‘Yes, that would be fantastic!’

At this point I was thinking we might sneak out into the hotel car park and have a ten-minute knockabout.

‘I will arrange it all,’ he said, via this translator. ‘We will contact all the press and work with the stadium to organise the match . . .’

OK, so this wasn’t going to be in the car park outside, then . . .

‘. . . And I will get a team from the press together for the match at Fluminense Stadium.’