Rock and Hard Places (2 page)

If this book is about any one thing—which, just so we’re clear on this, it very definitely isn’t—it’s about moments like that, when music steps beyond its boundaries of verse and chorus and becomes a soundtrack or accompaniment to something somewhat larger than itself.

 

THIS IS THE second introduction I’ve written for this book. I wrote the first a little over a decade ago, when a slightly different version of
Rock and Hard Places
was published in the United Kingdom to widespread indifference (it was, however, a minor if weirdly enduring cult hit in Eastern Europe and the Balkans, from where I still receive emails about it with baffling regularity; I can only conclude that the entire print run was mistakenly loaded onto a barge bound down the Danube, where it ran aground and was subsequently looted by delirious locals in some sort of
Whiskey Galore
scenario). Having just re-read said introduction for the first time in nearly that long, I’ve decided to lose almost all of it except the headline.

It’s not that I believe the original introduction is bad, exactly. Indeed, for something composed in a hungover fog in a hotel room in Boston—where I was, at the time, on tour with The Cardigans—it’s reasonably coherent, and contains what I still think is quite a good joke about orangutans. It’s just that ten years is a long time, in which much has happened, both to the world in general and to the journalist meandering about in it. The difference between the world this book was first published in, and the world this book is being re-published in, is neatly illustrated by the blurb which appeared on the cover of the first edition—and which, for reasons which will become clear presently, does not appear on the cover of this one. It was contributed by the very great P.J. O’Rourke, who very kindly appended his name to an observation that the writing about rock music and various screwed-up locations contained herein was “as spectacular as a Taliban attack on Lollapalooza—which come to think of it, isn’t a bad idea.” Which is to say that, back in 1999, the idea of a gaggle of religious cranks based
in Afghanistan threatening the destruction of an American institution seemed so preposterous as to be the stuff of throwaway whimsy.

All the pieces in this book were first commissioned as journalism by various publications (except the last one—incredibly, nobody wanted to spend money on an account of taking a country band on tour in Albania. And they wonder why nobody’s buying newspapers anymore). The versions of them collected herein are, however, longer than those which were originally printed, which is to say I’ve put back in all the jokes, digressions, tangents and a crashingly self-indulgent flourishes which are invariably—and usually quite rightly—the first things to perish when an editor swishes his machete at one’s copy. As will be noted by the dozens of owners of the initial pressing of
Rock and Hard Places
, as they while away long winter evenings by comparing that with this, some old stories have been jettisoned in favour of some newer ones. The older ones appear, despite the occasionally retrospectively horrified urges of the author, unaltered from last time out—except for a few excisions of trivial and now irrelevant references to contemporary phenomena, which really didn’t merit the explanatory footnotes that leaving them in would have necessitated. The new ones don’t have quite so many trivial and irrelevant references to contemporary phenomena: let it not be said that I’ve learnt nothing these last ten years. And all the stories have introductions composed especially for this volume, seeking to place them in their proper context, wrap up what happened next, and/or basically explain to the reader what the heck the author thought he was doing at the time.

Rock and Hard Places
is not intended to be a serious, or even a frivolous, portrait of our times (my other book,
I Wouldn’t Start From Here
is, however, and remains freely available) or of anything else. The stories gathered here have nothing much to do with each other except that I wrote them, so taken as a whole, this tome doesn’t really demonstrate much besides the sorts of things that can happen when someone decides to be a rock journalist, and then a travel writer, and then a foreign correspondent and, finally, a country singer. I have gleaned some insights along the way, however. Young men carry electric guitars and rifles with the same insouciant swagger, both implements prized as they are by vindictive and resentful males for the instant, if often ill-deserved, gravitas they confer. In countries at war, the food
is invariably worse than in countries at peace, but the coffee is always better. The more alcohol a people drink, the worse they look, except in Iceland. The major difference between America and the rest of the world is that America is unconcerned about becoming Americanised. Finally and most importantly, travelling yields no answers, but it does, if you keep your eyes and ears open, occasionally give you ideas for better questions.

 

 

 

A
LMOST ALL TOUR features in all almost all music journals are frauds perpetrated against the reader. The wretched reality masked by the “On the road with . . .” headline is almost invariably as follows. The journalist is flown somewhere at the grudging expense of the band’s record company. Arrangements are made for said hack to attend two—perhaps, if they’re incredibly lucky, three—consecutive shows of the tour in question, ideally in towns not too inconveniently and expensively far apart. A formal interview will be scheduled in a dead hour one afternoon along the way, after lunch and before soundcheck, so that sufficient quotes to fill the writer’s word count may be prised from the half-asleep singer. An invitation may also be extended to one or more after-show parties. In the event that the band actually deign to turn up at one of these wing-dings, the ranking of the journalist in their order of priorities may be precisely calculated by counting how many famous people, influential music industry panjandrums, and attractive young women are also in the room (one swiftly learns to avoid the rookie error of pitching for the gigs in big, glamorous cities: the solidarity fostered by adverse circumstances, and the absence of anything else to do, ensures that you’ll generally get far more out of any given band when they’re marooned in some misbegotten midwestern swamp than you will when they’re larging it in Los Angeles or New York). After all of which the journalist will transcribe his tape,
decipher whatever notes he might have scrawled, meditate briefly upon the relative nature of truth, and compose a few thousand words subtly conveying the impression that he had bonded with the group in question to the extent that they had all but asked him to join.

The story that follows, originally written as a cover feature for Melody Maker, was an exception to the above rules—as are, in general, all the tour stories gathered in this book (the ones about underwhelming encounters with Belgian art rock ensembles, and waiting three days in Seattle’s Four Seasons hotel for a fifteen-minute interview with a band whose management were suffering terrifying delusions of majesty, are being saved for a subsequent, woefully inferior and utterly shameless cash-in volume). It isn’t a definitive portrait of the subjects. Indeed, it would be ridiculous to have entertained any pretensions of that sort—how firm a grip on the essence of your being would someone have who’d just hung around and watched you at work for a few days? It is, however, a reasonable summation of what sticks in the memory after a few days on tour: the fleeting impressions, of unfamiliar places and people, smudged at the edges by drink, jetlag and exhaustion, haphazardly focused by the oncoming deadline.

“IT’S A VERY good idea,” nods Thom Yorke. “It’s not the idea I’m arguing with. The idea, in itself, is fine.”

Thom, sunglassed and shrouded in an enormous fake black fur coat, is sitting on a luggage trolley in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Hartford, Connecticut. He has just stumbled off the tour bus after a long drive from Philadelphia. Behind him, a bow-tied porter hovers vaguely, as if unsure whether to heave this bedraggled apparition into the street, or ask him which room he’d liked to be wheeled to. Crouched on the floor in front of Thom, Radiohead’s bassplayer, Colin Greenwood, is earnestly outlining his plans.

“My question,” continues Thom, at pains to sound reasonable, “is where the fucking hell we’re going to find five hundred fucking ping-pong balls at short notice in this fucking place on a Sunday afternoon.”

A pensive silence ensues. Thom has a fair point. I’d hardly been able to find a cold beer in Hartford at eleven o’clock last night.

“We’ll just have to think of something else,” says Thom, and chews on a thumbnail.

 

AN HOUR LATER, with everyone washed, changed and infused with caffeine, we pile into a minibus to the venue, and Colin explains a few things. Tonight, Radiohead will play the last of their shows as the support act on R.E.M.’s “Monster” tour. They have been warned to expect some sort of practical joke by way of farewell. Clearly believing that revenge is a dish best served pre-cooked, Radiohead (Thom, Colin, drummer Phil Selway, guitarists Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood—from whom, presumably, Thom stole the “h”) have been plotting their retribution in advance.

“Mike Mills,” says Colin, “told us not to wear anything we want to wear again.”

“Paint,” speculates Thom, gloomily. “It’ll be paint. Or custard pies. Oh, God.”

“So the idea with the ping-pong balls,” continues Colin, “was that we’d get the roadies up in the lighting gantries above the stage to drop them on R.E.M. during the last song.”

A contemplative hush settles as we drive through Hartford. If you’ve never driven through Hartford, the effect can be recreated in the comfort and safety of your own home by going to sleep. I flew in from London last night with Melody Maker photographer Pat Pope and Radiohead’s press officer, Caffy St Luce. Our efforts to hit Hartford and paint the town red had come to nought; we couldn’t even claim to have painted the town beige. The first place we tried was a sports bar, decorated with fading hockey pennants and populated by four lone, middle-aged men staring morosely into their drinks. We asked the barman what people in Hartford did for fun. “They come here, sir,” he replied. We finished up in a deserted cocktail bar where the star turn was a drink called a Zombie. “Limit two per customer,” said the menu. I asked a waitress what happens if you drink three. “You can’t walk,” she replied.

“I wonder why people build cities in these places,” says Thom, balefully surveying the fist-chewingly unremarkable scenery. It’s a real graveyard with streetlights, this place, the kind of town where you could fire a Gatling gun down the main road without hitting anybody—and if you did, you’d be doing them a favour.

The venue for tonight’s show is the Meadows Music Theatre, a giant half-indoor, half-outdoor affair, something like Wembley Arena with a back yard. It’s early afternoon, hours before showtime, but we’ve arrived early so Radiohead can soundcheck and do some of the aimless milling about that constitutes the major part of any rock’n’roll tour. In Radiohead’s commodious dressing room, Thom draws a smiling face and the words “Thanks for having us, you’ve been brilliant, love Radiohead” on a scrap of paper and gives it to a roadie who will secrete it amid the sheets on Michael Stipe’s lyric stand. This gesture is at odds with the received wisdom on Thom Yorke, which is that he’s slightly less amenable than a cornered mongoose.

“Yeah, well,” he shrugs. “They’ve really been brilliant to us. We’re getting a whole hour to soundcheck every night, and you know how often that happens to support bands in real life.”

Gratitude notwithstanding, the other members of Radiohead have been talking, and a Plan B prank has been hatched. R.E.M.’s stage set is an extravagant homage to Alexander Calder that includes a backdrop of enormous red lampshades, swinging from the stage roof. The idea now is that as R.E.M. close their show with “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” the lampshades will be joined in flight by all five members of Radiohead, suspended from harnesses. Colin, Jonny, Phil and Ed look well pleased with this scheme. Thom looks rather less so.

“It’ll never work,” he says.

Radiohead go off to do their soundcheck, which I watch from the hill at the back of the empty arena. Between songs, Ed plays snatches of “Radio Free Europe,” R.E.M.’s first single. I’ve often thought that it’d be a great gag for a support act to close their set by playing the headliner’s biggest hit, but I suspect Radiohead want to be invited back one day.

Back in the dressing room, Radiohead are informed that the harness jape is off—R.E.M.’s tour manager isn’t having it. Someone else says, probably quite rightly, that Radiohead’s insurers would pop a rivet if one of their clients got injured in a mid-air collision with a giant item of lounge furniture.

Phil brings one of the big red props into the dressing room for further discussion.