Queen Unseen (12 page)

Some of the female fans we met had a charming habit of leaving you with a novel memento (apart from an STD) in the form of their school badge. These metal lapel badges were beautifully crafted items, some in the shape of a heart with Mount Fuji lightly embossed, and on the reverse some etched Japanese characters. Head girl? Certainly top of her class!

The band and the crew generally stayed in different hotels. Japanese hotel rooms, like the Japanese, were compact and often there would not even be enough space to leave your suitcase open. I hasten to add that the band did not stay in rooms like these. Many crew hotel rooms had plastic bathrooms, where everything was moulded into one piece: toilet, bath and basin, and there were illustrated diagrams of
‘stick men’ to show the Japanese how to use a western toilet as traditional ‘squatters’ – a hole in the ground – were the Japanese standard.

Staying and travelling separately in Japan, we consequently saw very little of Fred, Brian, Roger and big member John apart from shows, although we did catch the occasional glimpse of our employers at parties or in nightclubs.

During a Japanese tour, there were usually several stays in Tokyo and I sometimes stayed over with big member John in the spare room of his suite in the New Otani Hotel or Keio (KY) Plaza in Shinjuku, when we got in late from clubbing.

The clubs in Tokyo were great; we could go there and be treated well in spite of being young men behaving badly. The band were lauded at The Lexington Queen in Ropongi, a swish place frequented by western fashion models, but crew activities were mainly at Byblos in Akasaka, which was a disco laid out over several floors, with a DJ in a ‘space pod’, which travelled in a perspex tube between the various levels. Visiting bands and their crews were given licence to be as lively and boisterous as we liked – but without being physically destructive or violent. It was always in the back of your mind that every Japanese bouncer is probably some kind of martial arts expert.

Big member John, who was the only member of Queen I have ever seen being truly active on a dance floor, would love to ‘pop up and bop in Byblos’. That’s some tongue twister – particularly after the passing of a sake bowl the size of a UFO. A rhythm player with real rhythm, that’s big member John. Upon entering Byblos, tickets were issued for your (watered-down) drinks; ‘Delightful King’ for guys, 
‘Beautiful Lady’ for girls. Weekends were ‘Delightful Saturday’ night in Byblos. The club had a raised VIP section; a round table with curved bench seats around it. One evening, a famous Japanese actor came in flaunting some porcelain-skinned girl on his arm. He slid into the VIP area, where he ordered champagne – horrifically expensive in Japan. Unbeknown to the actor, the drum roadie from another rock band, feeling the effects of his excessive evening, had crawled under the seating for a recuperative sleep. The Japanese celebrity was served his bubbly in a stylish silver champagne bucket and was popping the cork when, suddenly, this dishevelled figure crawls out from his hole and, putting both hands on the edge of the round table, throws up into the champagne bucket. He then crawled back under the bench and went to sleep. The stunned actor and his girl understandably decided to leave.

Through my Japanese girlfriend, I once met a Japanese gangster in a Tokyo nightclub. He owned it – and several more. We got talking via my interpreter, and he told me that he hated Americans but loved and admired the English, because of our culture, proud military heritage and respect for our royal family…

‘Hello, old chap – Peter Hince, the second Earl of Hammersmith and Fulham – so charmed to meet you.’

We got free booze, free food, a key ring and a free lift home. Japan seemed to be full of clubs and bars – and none very discreet, as they boldly flaunted neon signs outside. This magnificent, cultured country held ribald amusement for young men out for a good time back in the days before political correctness. So the way in which the Japanese 
interpreted English was always a source of great fun, as in the names of some of the clubs: Image Lash, Club, Goose, Refreshment House, Club Open, Club Brain, and, though I never encountered it, no doubt there was a Club Foot. A young Japanese sported a T-shirt with a slogan that read ‘Let’s go drive – New York – Los Angeles – okay?’

However, there were so many other wonderful diversions in Japan that did not include taking the piss, clubbing, sex and alcohol, so with plenty of free time we tried to visit shrines, temples and palaces and, becoming ever braver, trying the local cuisine.

The delicacy in Sapporo of having tiny, live baby eels in your beer is not my idea of fun, but the Japanese bodyguards revelled in crunching the heads before swallowing. Brian May was so horrified by this that he released his eels back into the adjacent ornamental stream.

I was personally horrified by some Japanese ‘seafood’ in Osaka, where I witnessed an enormous whale being towed up a canal by barge. On top on the whale were several Japanese workers hacking at the corpse with axes.

Japanese nights brought the streets and seafood to life in neon-clad automatons, as giant crabs snapped their rotating pincers overhead, alongside fluorescent pink, smiling and singing shrimp. In vast hangar-like amusement arcades and Pechinko Halls, rows of people sat transfixed at machines, as thousands of metal balls rattled through channels and holes – occasionally vomiting out into the
win
tray. No apparent skill was required. Weird. Then I saw the Mole Bashing Machine! This mechanical
amusement
involved hitting the heads of plastic, replica moles with a mallet, as they 
randomly popped up from their holes – a direct hit causing a squeak of pain and points on the board. Good therapy for getting your frustrations out.

Japanese cities also featured thousands of vending machines that perked up at night, in order to sustain the inhabitants with everything from beer and sake to toothbrushes and used schoolgirls’ (white) underwear. These vividly illuminated machines became an amusing diversion as I staggered back to my hotel. The two drinks I just
had
to try from these machines were ‘Tasty Drink’ (no explanation, just a Tasty Drink) and ‘Pocari Sweat’! I’ve no idea what a Pocari is – let alone if it perspires. This was supplemented by ‘Diet Pocari Sweat’. Both were sweet sports-style drinks and actually not too bad with vodka – when there’s nothing else. Even in our advanced state of drunkenness, we avoided the strange dried seafood snacks on offer from the machines. Desiccated squid wotsits? With ice cream? One popular Japanese dish we enjoyed was
Shabu-Shabu
: meat and vegetables cooked in boiling water inside a traditional pot. But it was the name that struck a nerve in the crew’s funny bone. ‘Shabu-Shabu’ was used as a phrase of greeting or reaction, accompanied by a rapid twisting and shaking of the hand in the air as the arm moved in and out from the body – a Masonic roadie handshake.

We didn’t understand Japanese but, when we spoke quickly in tour buzz words or roadie slang, our parlance could not be understood by anybody whether in Japan or New Jersey.

Twentieth-century commercial icons sat alongside the 
traditional symbols and customs of Japan, one of these being the Bath House. Bathing may be an ancient and regular ritual in Japan but is not
quite
so regular with ancient British road crews. The full Bath House treatment was arranged for the entire entourage after a 1979 gig in Hakata, and the particular place chosen by the promoter had the novel name of The Hole In One Club. The Japanese have an obsessive passion for golf, and inside the club were 18 ‘holes’, small wood-fronted cabins that looked like the entrance to a sauna. The hallways were covered in green plastic fake grass and the numbers of the ‘holes’ printed on triangular golf flags that could be turned to show the room was occupied. On the ground floor was a sparse
dentist-style
waiting room where we perched nervously before being summoned upstairs.

This was a totally new experience for me, having previously relied purely on my ‘charm’ to pull women – of my choice. I now felt the dread akin to having root canal treatment. I needn’t have worried. My ‘caddy’ took me and my driving woods to Hole Eight, where the tiny room was split into two sections, a dry part, with a small single bed, mirrors, compact fridge with cool drinks and a dresser that had bottles of whisky and glasses full of cigarettes on offer. The raised section was the wet area with a deep bath, tiled floor with drainage grilles, a wooden ‘U’-shaped stool and a
serious
high-pressure hose. With interchangeable nozzles. My hostess spoke no English at all and yet communication was quite clear as she bathed my body completely.

She then dried me down and got me sitting on the novel little wooden stool, where she started the ‘treatment’. It still brings 
tears to my eyes. Tears of joy. She continued alternating between this ‘treatment’ and dumping me back in the bath, to which she added fragrant oils and beautiful rose heads. My oriental scrubber meticulously washed my hair and even brushed my teeth, before unrolling a thin rubber mat, similar to one used for aerobics, and spreading on to it warm oil, honey – and me. Then back in the bath! I think I played a par four. When I was squeaky clean, I sailed downstairs to a room of broad smiling faces. I had apparently missed out on an
in-house
speciality, including menthol, but I didn’t care. I was feeling as cool, calm and collected as I ever had. And certainly the cleanest.

Reports filtered through a few years later that the place had burned down – maybe it was all that attrition and friction?

After the end of the ’82 Japanese tour, which finished at the Seibu Lions baseball stadium in Tokyo, the gear was trucked to the docks south of the city, for customs clearance and loading into sea containers for the ten weeks’ shipping back to the port of Felixstowe in England.

Three representatives, one from each department – Queen’s gear, sound and lights – left the Akasaka dormitory hotel in the very early morning with Mako our interpreter, to guide us to the commercial port of Sakuragich. We arrived to find the gear already unloaded and spread around a bonded warehouse in this vast complex. Allowing unsupervised handling of the gear was never a concern in Japan, as the labour teams were meticulous in their treatment of equipment. Our promoter’s
rep and appointed customs agent were in attendance, nodding and bowing, with the promise that Japanese customs officers would arrive soon.

While waiting, we took an unscheduled wander around the dock area to the dismay of our disciplined Japanese colleagues. Big international ports intrigued me; they were truly fascinating places with vessels from all over the world. Splayed against the concrete dock were goods and produce from exotic corners of our planet: weird-shaped fruits of arresting colour in wooden crates and high-tech electronics passing through in the other direction were reflected in row upon military row of shiny new compact cars bound for commercial invasion across the Pacific. In the near distance was the centrepiece – an enormous Russian ship with a gold hammer and sickle emblem against a red background, standing proud on its black funnel, as it caught the autumn sun. I had never been to Russia or seen anything quite so Russian (apart from the gallons of vodka we consumed) and was intrigued to see something real from behind the Iron Curtain. The customs officers duly arrived and without any delay or inspection stamped the carnet and paperwork for Queen’s gear first. As I loaded the sea container, the highly efficient local crew blocked the wheels of the flight cases to the wooden floor and battened everything securely down, to protect against the onslaught of both the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean crossings.

Having finished my packing and other responsibilities, I suggested I return immediately to Tokyo, in order to catch the JAL night flight to London. Mako our interpreter said I could get a taxi at the main gates to take me to the station 
for a train to Tokyo. She would write all instructions for me in both Japanese and English so I would not get lost or confused. When we had first arrived at the port, our taxi had taken us in through the gates to the warehouse where our gear was lying. Now, though, we had no quick way of getting back to the entrance, which was not even visible beyond the hundreds of warehouses and cranes. Mako, in efficient Japanese manner, rallied the dockworkers, and finally they produced an ancient ‘sit up and beg’ lady’s bicycle. Mako was the perfect business host and insisted that I ride the bicycle and she would walk beside. Being the perfect English gentleman, I couldn’t accept. Mako being the perfect Japanese host insisted. Eventually, we compromised by taking it in turns for a short time but it was not very efficient; so I put Mako on the saddle and stood up on the pedals and propelled us forwards. It was hardly reminiscent of the romantic scene in
Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid
as we skewed and rattled past gawping and grinning dockworkers on our journey to the gates. It was all great fun and we reached our destination intact and both fell off the bike laughing. Mako, trying to stifle emotion behind her hands, pointed me towards a waiting taxi.

I said my goodbyes, but as I walked past the gatehouse the security guards leaped out to urgently halt me. Mako immediately skipped over to intervene, and eventually after a lot of oriental protocol it was explained to me that the guards thought I had jumped ship and was a deserter from the Russian vessel. I couldn’t stop laughing at this, but they didn’t – and demanded my passport. I didn’t have it. Then Mako improvised, apparently telling them I was in the music 
business by the way she was miming playing lead guitar. I then remembered a laminated backstage pass in my jacket pocket. So, I offered this, and Mako took it and presented it to them as if it were some ancient talisman.

It worked a treat and I was given a double security guard bow before heading on my way with the white-gloved taxi driver to the station.

Arriving back at the hotel, I confirmed the flight and packed my bags with newly acquired Japanese swag of electronics, kimonos, woodblock prints and a collection of plastic food used as displays in restaurant windows. A cab took me to the far Narita airport and, as I was checking in, I spotted Fred and Phoebe, his personal assistant, with their posse of martial arts bodyguards. I went over to Fred’s troupe and was invited to join them in the first-class lounge (I was travelling roadie class). Fred adored so many things about Japan and had stayed on to do some shopping – not for a new Sony TV or Nikon camera but antiques and art. He was a man of superb taste (with the exception of one or two of his stage and video costumes) and had a fabulous art collection of the highest quality at his Kensington home. The JAL flight to London was via Anchorage, Alaska, where the plane landed for refuelling. Apart from the distant snowy mountains through the windows, the only thing to see in the transit lounge was a small basic bar and a ferocious -looking, stuffed giant polar bear standing upright in a glass case.