I went through passport control with Huey Lewis.
That's the headline. But allow me to back up a bit.
Ever since I accidentally achieved Premier status in United Airline's frequent flier program, I've made an effort to fly 25,000 paid miles every year. From where I live now, the easiest way to do that is to fly across the country once and to Europe twice. I'd already been to France this year and flown to Boston, so I just needed one more trip to Europe when I found out about the Huey Lewis and the News (HLN) UK tour.
It always annoyed me that when I lived in Europe they didn't tour there - they came the year after. Then last summer I spent a month in Provence. Did they come to Europe then? No! They planned the trip for the next year! I decided that if they wouldn't come to me, I would have to go to them.
Actually, that's not strictly true. They live in the Bay Area (as do I currently), and Johnny Colla (guitar/saxophone) was doing solo shows practically in my backyard a few weeks ago. But that's not the point. I was due a European adventure, and this seemed like the perfect excuse to have one.
I thought I would be so clever - I booked two tickets: one from California to New Jersey, and one from New Jersey to London. I figured I'd go see the first 4 concerts and then come home to see family. The cleverness stemmed from strategically applying free tickets I'd gotten from being bumped several times last Thanksgiving. I was going to get to go to Europe for $346 roundtrip from California and didn't I feel smug.
I began my trip April 30, flying to Newark then continuing to London. My plans were to be met by Stephan, a German guy I knew slightly from HLN fan circles. We'd emailed each other a bit recently, and when I was in France we'd talked on the phone. He seemed nice, but I'd never actually met him. This didn't stop me however from taking him up on his offer to let me stay with him at his friend Andy's place outside of London, someone else I'd also never met. They agreed to meet me at Paddington Station after I landed, but Stephan thought it would be more interesting if we did not exchange pictures or descriptions in advance. Ever enthusiastic for an adventure, or not paying enough attention, I agreed to this plan. Of course, when I was at the station and unable to find them, or call them, and was having to approach all sorts of random men, "Are you looking for someone?" I discovered the plan's inherent flaw.
Eventually we found each other and we drove off to a posh hotel in London. Apparently Stephan had made arrangements to meet with Alex, another HLN fan I knew even more slightly from a HLN chat forum. I thought that Alex was staying there, which was why we were going, but it turned out that Alex was meeting with Bill Gibson (HLN drummer). This became clear when Andy and I went looking to see where Stephan had disappeared to (while we were parking the car) and Bill walked by with Alex and Stephan in tow. We all chatted for a bit, and then Stephan, Andy, and I went back to Andy's place to relax and get ready for the concert.
I am so used to never getting to listen to HLN in social situations. My long-standing interest in their music has historically been only politely tolerated by others in my family and social circle. So it was really refreshing when, back at Andy's place, Stephan blasted a HLN CD. Here I was with a complete stranger and I could listen to all the HLN I wanted. And not be the only one in the room enjoying it as much as I do.
Eventually we decided to head back into London to get ready for the concert. On the way we passed a sign for Windsor Castle and since we had time we decided to go check it out. We parked the car and then started looking for a place for lunch. We settled on a Chinese place across the street from the castle, a natural addition to our already multi-national luncheon (attended by an Englishman, a German, and an American. We all spoke English with completely different accents.) The castle was too expensive to go into, especially for just a quick look, so afterwards we wandered around the outside, took some pictures, and then went in to London.
The band was playing at Shepherd's Bush, a small theater-like place. As we were wandering around the front waiting to meet up with Alex and get our tickets, various band members started pulling up in taxis. Stephan has built and maintains web sites dedicated to Huey Lewis's old band Clover and various other Bay Area bands. When I'd seen Johnny a few days earlier at one of his solo shows I'd asked if he wanted to meet Stephan (which clearly I could arrange because I was staying with him!) He said yes and offered to arrange for us to get backstage passes. So when he pulled up in the cab it was very nice when he came up to me directly and confirmed that the passes were all set.
To understand why it was significant for me to encounter band members (so far Bill and Johnny) you need to understand my history. I have been a HLN fan in some form for nearly 20 years. I remember a gloomy day in the 4th grade, sitting in my room nursing a bad mood, when "If This Is It" came on the radio and somehow magically induced the sun to shine. Regardless of whether the music had power over the weather, it always has had power over me. I bought my first album, Sports, when I was 11 and fell in love, utterly and completely, with the music. And promptly got sucked into all the teenybopper parts of fandom as well as my intellectual appreciation collided with adolescence. I bought books and magazines and posters. All their previous music. I joined a fan club. I sweated out waiting for their new albums. I remember dialing TicketMaster desperately for their Madison Square Garden concert, the first one I ever saw, 16 years ago this May.
I was a fan, and a fan in all its silliness. (Although, as I came to find out later, I wasn't quite as silly and superficial as others were.) I was taken by the allure of their celebrity, and it didn't hurt that these are very nice-looking people. But something else shone through and I reminded myself that it was at the core of their appeal for me. These seemed like such interesting and creative people. In the snippets of interviews I would manage to get hold of I'd see clever humor and sophistication of thought. And the music itself was robust and dynamic enough to capture and hold my attention. This is not a band that is manipulated by outside producers. These are people whose art is direct self-expression. This is why, nearly 20 years later, I can remain as enthralled with their work as I ever was. As I have grown, so has the music. I am glad to have had their music in my life, and grateful to the people behind it.
So while there is tremendous substance to my admiration, there still is some silliness - that strange reflex to want to meet the band. I think about that a lot - why should I want to? Isn't the music enough? I have no lustful desires for these people, like many female fans do, but I do acknowledge having a little rush when I see them. I think for the most part it boils down to something else: that for so many years I've directed such respect for them, that as I've grown into being a whole person, perhaps I would like them to know who I am and have that respect returned. It's still fairly strange, though, because I don't need their respect - after all, they are essentially strangers to me - and they don't need to know me. On the other hand, I think they do enjoy having loyal fans, and the more competent they are, the more validating the appreciation is for them. So I tried to do my part and not be too stupid when I met them... In any case, this is why it was such a kick to have talked to Bill in the hotel and have Johnny come up to talk to me as a real person. It was nice to actually BE a real person in this environment. I much prefer it to being just a fan, somehow trapped in a permanent state of adolescence, hungry for whatever glimpses and brief interactions I can manage to get. I hate that life: it feels like a drug, something I can't get enough of, and yet it inspires a tremendous sense of self-loathing for somehow feeling like I need to live my life vicariously through others.
Clearly, the whole pretense of taking this trip toes a very fine line between adventurer and groupie. But I think I managed to keep to the mature side of the line. I traveled for myself, by myself, and I simply peppered my journey with music that makes me feel good and conversation with nice people (band members included.) They provided a great excuse to have an adventure, and though I went where they went because they were there, I made my own fun most of the time. Their being there was just an excuse for me to see so many places I'd never seen before and might otherwise not have ever gotten to. So during the times when I was interacting with them, at concerts or their periphery, I was able to do it guilt-free. I didn't have to apologize to myself for anything. It's been many years of trying to come to terms with this fan thing because clearly it contains so many justifiably mockable aspects. And I think at the end of this trip I am as comfortable with it as I could ever be. I am who I am - smart, capable, independent, intelligent. And (not to deliberately cite a HLN song), I know what I like. I like HLN. The music, the people. I'm ok with that, it's a good thing, and they can have a place in my life that complements who I am without fearing that they are somehow supplanting who I am.
But you know, sometimes you just need to revel in the silliness.
The London show was fun. I ended up almost at the very front, on the side of the stage with Stef Burns (guitarist) and Sean Hopper (keyboardist) because Stephan wanted to be able to see Sean (ex-Clover person). It was an enjoyable show although the sound where I was wasn't so great. Stef's guitar washed over me and drowned out the horn section, which was a pity because the band has such a nice blended sound.
After the show I did go backstage with Stephan and Alex and some other fans I knew a bit. And I learned something interesting about myself. Normally I am very shy and I can easily become unnerved in situations where I feel humbled in some way by the people I am around (like celebrities). This is not a useful attribute for my eventual career as a lawyer. But I realized it was much easier for me to be assertive when I was speaking up for someone else. Whereas I was very timid about going up to people and starting a conversation on my own behalf, I was comfortable with going up to them to introduce them to Stephan or Alex. One of the reasons I did this trip was to have some time to be introspective and pull myself together before going off to law school, so I was quite pleased to have learned this about myself so early in the trip.
Backstage I talked to Johnny and Bill a bit, Huey ever so briefly, and Sean. I'd really only talked to Sean once before and he is extremely interesting. Very intellectual. However, my encounter on this day brought up a possible danger with hanging out with the band: what if the more I get to know them, I find out I don't like them? Then what? Can my respect for them endure such challenges? Should it? Where would the line be drawn, and what would I do if I really couldn't stand them? It's a moot point: I survived the trip and I still like them just fine! But the danger came up a few times, including at this junction when I talked to Sean about rent control and realized I don't agree with him at all!
I also said hello to Nick Lowe, another musician and an old friend of Huey's, whom I'd once met when I was a teenager at a free concert in Asbury Park, NJ. I thanked him for having been so gracious talking to me back them, particularly in light of me having begun the conversation by saying something so utterly dorky to him. The effect of his graciousness (and his performance) in New Jersey was that I was inspired to go out and buy all his records. I told him this backstage, hopefully in a somewhat less dorky fashion.
And that was London. We went back to Andy's place and I attempted to catch up on sleep. The next day I was originally going to stay at Andy's again to save money, but it was crowded with Stephan also there so I took the train instead to Birmingham where I stayed in a Hotel Ibis. I pronounce it "EE-bis" because that's how the French pronounce it and I first encountered the chain there, but the English and Scots call it "AYE-bis." It's an American-style hotel chain geared for business travelers. Relatively not too expensive, with the basic amenities you'd expect in an American motel. I treated it as a splurge, though, because I couldn't afford a hotel every night. I like hotels though because I can nest - I bring in food and watch TV. I liked to watch the BBC, and there also was a French channel so I got to practice my French a bit.
The next day I did something touristy: I went to Cadbury World. Ever since Mrs. Wicks, our British neighbor across the street, gave me a Cadbury Flake when I was 7 years old, I have been hooked. Cadbury World was like a chocolate Mecca, although it was actually a bit more like Hershey Park meets It's a Small World. They hand you free samples of candy bars, show you how the chocolate is made and packaged, and let you taste freshly tempered chocolate (and then dare you not to lick your lips). Stupidly, they give you the taste so close to the end that by the time they dump you out in the gift shop you aren't really interested in eating any more chocolate, it is so thick. The only thing disappointing about this day was that they offered no insight into how Flakes are actually made. Rats.
That night was the Birmingham concert. I went early to get a good spot on line. I talked with some nice friendly people. At one point some venue employees started carrying in gigantic bags of salt tablets so we started making up horrible rumors about Huey's alleged salt habit. Boredom does interesting things to the imagination. Once the doors opened I was up front, this time on Johnny's side (which I prefer). I enjoyed the show and thought it may have been better than London's, although later Sean said that there were some issues with the stage that made it difficult to play. The unusual part of the evening came during the final song, "Couple Days Off," when Johnny pointed the microphone at me in the audience to yell the chorus. When I saw him after the show I thanked him for that, joking that it was a good thing that I had recently sung karaoke so that I knew what to do with a microphone.
Backstage was a little strange; it was sort of outside the venue in an underground parking lot. What it lacked in space it made up for in carbon monoxide. At one point Sean invited me to come back to their hotel for a drink in the bar. I'd heard about fans doing that, but I never had before. So I shared a cab with JT, another fan, and went to their hotel. It was very bureaucratic - you couldn't buy drinks with cash. You had to use a special room passport, which we didn't have because we weren't staying there. Eventually the bartender gave us drinks anyway, with the idea that eventually someone else would put them on their account (turned out to be Huey) and we watched with amusement as one by one, a band member would come in, try to buy a drink, be rebuffed and have the policy diligently explained, only to have the bartender eventually relent and give them their drink anyway. It may have just been policy, but I suddenly had the sense that I was caught in the middle of a Monty Python sketch.
The whole endeavor was great fun for me and afforded me the first opportunity to ever really have a whole conversation with band members. I'm not good (and really, who is) with the quick micro-conversations you sometimes can have backstage. I turn into a blithering idiot in those. I need time to get my conversational bearings and to have the chance to bring something to the dialog. This environment allowed for that. I introduced myself to Stef and John Pierce (bass), and then had a long talk with Rob Sudduth (baritone sax) about all sorts of things, including file sharing (these days high on my list of interesting things to talk about). I talked to Bill a bit afterwards about France (after he earlier teased me about coming to England and drinking French wine), and then I went over to say goodnight to Huey.
Even though I'd met band members before over the years, I'd never really talked to Huey. Backstage he is always mobbed because even if people don't know the band, they always know who he is. So I don't even try to get embroiled. But he was with fewer people and having a proper conversation, and he invited me to join it. I got to talk about who I am and what I want to do with my life. He thought it was great. He thought my whole trip was great. I had gone up to him earlier backstage and said, "I've turned you into the Grateful Dead - I'm following you around the UK," and he thought that was the neatest thing. He tempted me to extend the trip to Ireland, which I wasn't originally going to do. And although it wasn't the longest conversation ever, I left feeling great. Happy for the occasion, happy for the conversation, and happy because I got to be me, and, being me, was appreciated by someone I admire.
It was a bit of an ordeal leaving, though. Birmingham may have been economically depressed at one point, but now it seems revitalized. Lots of new development, huge retail areas, and on a Saturday night it was buzzing as late as 3 am. Getting a cab took forever, and I'm sure I'd still be standing there had the hotel not called one for me. Driving back to my hotel people stood in the streets, oozing drunkenness, trying to hail my cab. But I got back in one piece and got to sleep sometime before 4 am. (I mention the times because lack of sleep did become a recurrent theme).
The next morning was a mess. That evening there was to be a concert in Glasgow but I was having a terrible time figuring out when the trains would be running. Morning trains that had been listed weren't actually going, and when I inquired, some of the agents just shrugged their shoulders and couldn't be bothered to figure out how to get me to Glasgow in time. The old saw, "you can't get there from here," suddenly seemed to apply to my situation. "Doesn't anyone go from Birmingham to Glasgow on Sunday?" I asked. "No," an agent replied. Eventually there was a train to Preston, and from there I changed to one to Glasgow. It only ran a teeny bit late and I got to Glasgow with about an hour to spare.
While the weather on this trip was never spectacular, it was never too bad either. Except in Glasgow where upon arrival it was raining significantly. I eventually found my way out of the station and started walking to my hostel. First I encountered a man raving on one corner. Then, across the street and around the corner from the hostel, I encountered another man completely passed out on the ground. Maybe he was dead. I have no idea. People were there, milling about, but no one seemed to be doing anything useful. I went into the hostel and immediately decided I didn't want to be there. I had been planning to spend 3 days based there but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. So I cancelled the 2 days and just booked in for the night. Which was harder than it should have been because none of the keys they gave me actually succeeded in opening the door to the room.
After someone else let me in, I quickly got ready and went to the concert. It was in the Royal Concert Hall, a far cry from the grungy club in Birmingham or ancient theater in London. It was brightly lit with shiny teak wood in the lobby and tuxedoed ushers. For some reason, with my backstage pass I also got a ticket that I didn't technically need, but since it was much better than my actual ticket I used it instead. I sat next to Marvin McFadden's (trumpet) sister and we both started getting aggravated by the lethargy of the audience. They hardly moved (until after the "Power of Love" which brought them to their feet). So we kept yelling and clapping to try to get people moving. But all we seemed to accomplish was pissing off the people in front of us. Who, when I was backstage later, I saw were Johnny's guests. Oops.
After the show the band went to Edinburgh and I returned to my hostel. Where I decided (too late) that I had matured past the point where sharing a room and a bathroom with 13 other girls held any appeal for me whatsoever. So the next day I went to Edinburgh too. And loved it. It was such an interesting city. I spent most of my time in the old city and stayed in another Ibis in the heart of it. There was no concert in Edinburgh so I didn't really go because the band was there, but I was grateful they'd planted the idea in my head because I had a much better time there than I would have had in Glasgow.
On the second day I met a couple about my age at a cybercafe, Rachel and Ryan, and we hung out for a while. We went up to the Edinburgh Castle (with the line from The Princess Bride "Have fun storming the castle!" running repeatedly through my head) where I also bumped into two members of the road crew. One was Carl, whom my sister and I had once cornered coming out of a sauna when we were staying at the same hotel in Massachusetts and hit up for backstage passes. It's embarrassing to remember having demonstrated that level of chutzpah, but at the same time it's also sort of amusing to remember the gumption of two otherwise very shy kids. And to remember how much it meant to me to get them back then. I told Huey about the encounter later, commenting, "I am much less 14 now." I said it in passing, but looking back, that was sort of the underlying point of the whole trip. This trip wouldn't have been possible, or any fun, if it were still overshadowed by all that adolescent angst.
The next day there was a show in Manchester. I got to the city and found my hostel. It was a nice hostel. The Castlefield area had been derelict for many years as industry suffered. But recently there has been a movement to preserve the architecture of the brick buildings that abound. One was refitted to be the hostel, and it sat perched between some canals. It was a really pleasant location, although a bit far from the train station. For various reasons, I decided to get dressed up for this concert. Since part of the purpose for this trip was to take inventory of myself, on a whim I decided to pack a skirt. And I wore it! (This is highly unusual because I detest skirts and have boycotted wearing them since about 1982.) I was partly inspired by something that happened in the Birmingham bar a few nights earlier. I had been talking with Bill and two other women when he got up to leave. He kissed the other two on the cheek, and waved at me! Now, if we had just been talking separately I wouldn't have cared. A friendly wave was more than adequate. It was the contrast that bothered me. Thinking that perhaps maybe my inner beauty was not making itself sufficiently apparent through the t-shirt and jeans I was wearing (as usual), I thought I'd try to let it be a little more obvious.
(Of course, it's unfair to hold this against him. I wear t-shirts and jeans all the time because I have no interest whatsoever in clothing myself more femininely. I would rather be taken as an individual and appreciated on the basis of my intellect than to be reacted to as a sexualized creature. My concern that evening, though, stemmed from a sudden fear that perhaps my choosing to present myself to the world gender-neutrally wasn't so much a choice at all but rather my only option. I wanted to feel like I at least had the possibility to be some other way, to explore what it's like to interact with the world as a grown woman and not just as a grown adult. But I can't fault Bill for not realizing I felt like being different on that one night. Especially since it's only just now that I realize it myself.)
I got to the venue early to get a good spot in line so I could be up front again. Spoke to a bunch of fans there who were very nice and held a spot for me while I was messing around trying to pick up my ticket. The venue was on the University of Manchester campus and lacked certain amenities that more normal venues have. Like a backstage area. So after the show I was lurking about when I saw Johnny who invited me to share the cab with him, Marvin, and Stef back to their hotel for drinks. On the way we had an interesting conversation about the relative merits of eating and/or dismembering slugs and snails. And octopus. Which was great, because haven't you always wanted to discuss squishy invertebrates with a famous musician?
At the bar I sat at a table with Johnny and Huey. Huey bought me a Poddington's beer, which is brewed in Manchester. I liked it. We had a pleasant, meandering conversation, and along the way I introduced myself to Ron Stallings (saxophone). I discussed pool and snooker with Johnny because he's in to it and I wanted to find out if my strategy for Cutthroat was actually legitimate. Here I encountered a problem I'm not used to dealing with: I rarely drink, so I'm not good at finding that fine line where the alcohol buzz breaks down inhibition before it also starts breaking down coherence. I have a sense I was beginning to slide into verbal ineptitude, which is kind of alarming. Like I really want to end up a blithering drunk idiot in front of Huey Lewis. Fortunately I don't think I got quite to that point, but I did make a mental note to make sure to eat something in advance of the next time I might happen to meet them at a bar.
By the time I reached Manchester I had decided to extend my trip to Ireland. I was originally going to go back to New Jersey the next day to see family, but the plans there started falling apart and I had a sense of wanting completion with the UK tour. And I'd never been to Ireland. The annoying thing was I couldn't really change my plane ticket(s). United said, "You have an 'S' class ticket. Completely unchangeable. No way, no how. You should have known [you were getting screwed] when you bought a ticket that cheap." So I had to buy a new roundtrip, although thankfully it wasn't very expensive. Just so much for having felt so clever earlier. (On the upside, this meant I got to fly back home to California direct.) In a sense, I'm a little annoyed with myself. I usually do a great job with trip logistics, balancing flexibility and cost-effectiveness. I did ok with this trip, and it all worked out fine, but it was a bit more expensive than it should have been and some of the travel details were a bit dodgy.
The next day the band went to Ireland by ferry, but I went to London after kicking around Manchester a little more. I stayed in another nice hostel in London for the night and then went to Stanstead airport to catch a Ryanair flight for Dublin. When I got to Dublin I was met at the airport by the mom of my best friend Amanda from high school. This was really neat because I'd never gotten to meet her mom before since she lives in Ireland, and, well, I don't. She brought me home for dinner and I got to spend some time with her and Amanda's uncle Peter. It was a nice evening, but it's always very strange to walk into a complete stranger's house and see pictures of someone you know.
I got up early the next morning to take a cab to the train station to go up to Belfast. I was in a good mood since it was a nice day and I'd gotten a reasonable amount of sleep. I had not brought a good map with me to find my hostel, but eventually I tracked it down (much further away from the train station than I had anticipated.) Now, granted the bed only cost 6.50 (pounds), but I don't think it was unreasonable to have expected that a place called the Linen House might actually have had clean ones. All I want from my hostel is a clean place to lie down and a safe place to put my stuff. I struck out on both counts. The linens looked sketchy, and the room didn't lock. So I ended up wandering around Belfast with everything reasonably valuable crammed into my pockets. And my mood deteriorated. Everything about Belfast seemed to get on my nerves, although the bulk of it may have centered around a rather incompetent McDonald's that I foolishly kept trying to dine at.
The venue was nice, the Waterfront. It was also very open. The exterior hallways were open all day and people were wandering all around. I ended up with a surprisingly good seat despite having bought the ticket just a few days earlier. But the crowd was lethargic once again. Although to some extent I think that's because the UK crowds are less pushy and more polite than the American ones. People wouldn't really dance until Huey explicitly asked them to. And then they obliged. But it was weird and it felt like the audience was somehow emotionally detached - people even left early! I think the band liked the venue because Bill said he thought the sound was great, but I disagree. The acoustics were very diffused and kind of sterile. The seating was such that everyone was fairly spread out so there was no sense of immediacy and the energy seemed to dissipate.
I didn't end up with a backstage pass, but there really was no backstage to speak of. Instead I went to the band's hotel bar and bought JT a drink. (Which was difficult because I couldn't pronounce the name of the beer he wanted.) I sat down at a table with Marvin and Johnny initially, but as the evening wore on I got up and talked to other people as well. It was the most fun of all the bar encounters I think because there weren't too many other people and the band was very relaxed, what with not having to be anywhere until nearly noon the next day. (I also decided it was in my interest to spend as little time as possible in my bed at the hostel!) Highlights of the evening came when I shared with Sean and Huey my French lyrical adaptation to their song, "Give Me the Keys." Huey discussed some French verb conjugations with me and commended me for my effort. I also had a nice long conversation with Bill, which was good. At one point he asked me why I'd been a fan so long and I gave him the most brief, topical answer I could: because their music consistently resonates with me. Someday maybe I'll give him the longer version.
There were some women in my hostel who had gone to the concert too. They had never seen HLN live before but someone had given them tickets so they went. They thought the band was very good, but they really weren't familiar with many of the songs. The next day, before I took my train back to Dublin, I joined them in a Black Taxi tour of the walled-off Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast. It was dramatic. Whereas the area around the Waterfront and the band's hotel was all new and recently (re)developed, these other neighborhoods reeked with death, destruction, and hatred. I had never been to a city so broken. Even Berlin was starting to get glued back together by the time I got to it.
I joined some other fans I recognized on the train back to Dublin and when we got there it was pouring. We shared a cab, and I got to my hostel just in time for the rain to stop. The hostel was fine, but the lesson learned is that if hostelling in Ireland, bring your own sheets. This sleeping directly under the duvet cover doesn't really work for me (do they ever wash these things?). The hostel was in walking distance of the venue so I rushed over to meet someone whom I was late to meet. We met, grabbed a bite, checked out the neighborhood, and had a great conversation. Then I went back to the hostel to get ready. I wore the skirt again, but this time my excuse was that I was running out of clean clothes. Got back to the venue and managed to get up front.
It may sound silly to always want to be up front. It's about the music, right, so what's there to see? Part of it is that I'm fairly short, and in general admission situations I'd rather be up front because if I'm completely surrounded by people I can't see at all and it feels claustrophobic. But also, if I'm there for a live performance, I'd like to take it all in. It's interesting to watch the band interact onstage. The downside of being up front is that the sound isn't always as good. London was a great example of this: the front rows were between the stage and the speakers, so the mixed and balanced sound coming from the speakers was aimed behind where we were standing. What we heard was the sound coming off the stage, the local amplification that the band hears while playing. I didn't enjoy this as much in London when all I heard was Stef's guitar which drowned out the horns, but I do like it on Johnny's side where I can hear the horns along with everyone else pretty well.
I also like the shows where I can be up front because, although being spread out and seated is more comfortable, the proximity of the standing-room audience helps capture the intensity of the moment. One of the reasons I love this band and am so enthused to catch all these live shows is because of the overwhelming energy to the music and their performance. It's not to say that they can't inundate the cavernous spaces of the seated venues with the strength of their sound. They can, they do, and they did even in Glasgow and Belfast. They also did last fall at a reserved-seating venue far more conveniently located to my home... I had gone through a period a while ago where I'd sworn off going to their concerts in a very foolish fit of pique, muttering about how I was too old for this concert-going fan thing as I desperately tried to shed what I thought were the last vestiges of adolescence. For nostalgia's sake, though, a friend and I went to one of their shows last September at this place nearby. And I was floored by the experience. All that energy! I felt like the biggest idiot for having denied myself the pleasure that their music ALWAYS brings me. I decided then and there that I wouldn't let the opportunities to enjoy their shows slip away so needlessly anymore.
Dublin was the 6th and final show, and I didn't want to let it slip away either. The only problem with seeing all the other shows so close together was that I was a little preoccupied during them. It was hard to just sit back and enjoy each one without thinking about what the next would be like (and how I would be getting there!) So I made a specific effort to allow myself to get completely sucked in to this one for as long as it lasted.
It didn't last forever, but at the end there was one more opportunity to be backstage. It was sort of weird, being held in a strange bar where many people were already really, really drunk. Bill had earlier promised to buy me a Guinness when we would be in Dublin so I took him up on it. I went to thank him later and slurred, "Thanks for the Bill, Beer." Whoops. Having only had about half the pint I wasn't particularly inebriated, but it was the end of the trip and all those late nights suddenly caught up with me, turning my brain to mush. Huey was there and thanked me again for the Grateful Dead analogy and gave me a kiss (aw... maybe wearing the skirt was a good thing!)
That was the last show, the last backstage, and that would have been about it except...
I didn't get back to my hostel until after 2am and was too exhausted to pack. I set my alarm for 5:45 but woke up with a start at 6:15. I rushed to dress and pack and checkout so I could run over to another hotel to meet the other fans from the train and share their cab to the airport. I did manage to catch them, which was nice because it meant I got to the airport with a minimum amount of cost and stress. But I was way early for my Ryanair flight, which I was starting to regret booking. It had me flying back into Stanstead, while my next flight back to California a few hours later was leaving from Heathrow, all the way on the other side of London. This was dumb, dumb, dumb. I really should have looked at a map before I booked the ticket! If anything went wrong I would have missed my second flight. But my luggage arrived at Stanstead, then I caught the next train to London, connected to the Underground, changed to the Heathrow Express and got to the gate for my flight with just the right amount of time to spare. Whew. And was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the band and crew were on my plane.
In all the years I've been flying, generally on my own, I've never coincidentally ended up on the same plane as anyone I even recognized (with the one tiny exception of my step-brother who was on his way to his honeymoon. And Tom Amiano.) I had no desire to pester them for 11 hours, yet there's nothing like the warm fuzzy feeling you get from hurtling over Greenland in the same metal tube as people you know. I talked mostly with the woman next to me, who was very nice despite her propensity to spill wine on me at various points throughout the flight. And I also wasn't the only fan on the plane - the pilot was quite an Alfred Hitchcock aficionado, quizzing the passengers on which films were made in the Bay Area (I knew The Birds in Bodega Bay and Vertigo in San Francisco, but I can't remember the third one.)
Near the end of the flight people got up to stretch their legs so I had a chance to talk with band members and some of the crew and thank them for being the reason behind my fantastic trip and for their hospitality to include me in their post-concert activities. It certainly would have been a great trip even if I had only seen the concerts, and of course it would have been a great trip even without the concerts either, but being able to make the connection with them made it all that much better.
Once off the plane I bumped into Huey and chatted with him a bit as we walked to the baggage claim, hence the headline to this missive. It was so nice, so ordinary. And yet an incredibly unique and slightly absurd experience. Just like the rest of the trip. Even putting aside the celebrity factor, there was a certain cognitive dissonance stemming from being somewhere completely different (the UK) and encountering the familiar. Around me were all sorts of things different from the United States: people's accents were different, the money was different, the food was different. Yet there I was, speaking with my American accent with other people who sounded just like me! Which is not to say that I didn't immerse myself in the foreign travel experience. The UK in particular is an interesting place to travel because it seduces you into thinking it is exactly like the US, and then surprises you with all the ways it's not.
But unlike my other European travel adventures, this one had particular poignancy to me personally. In a time of great transition in my life, I went to enjoy the comfortable and familiar, yet used it as the basis to discover other things that were new (including things about myself). This trip was more than about HLN, but having that aspect in play made the experience so much more interesting. There was a balancing act inside me, from the excitement of hanging! out! with! the! band! to discovering the composure within me where I could interact with them as normal human beings. It's a curious thing, oscillating between the novelty and the nonchalance. I recognize, with my flippant headline, what others might think about the pretense for this adventure. I'm amused and delighted by it, intrigued by the novelty (and latent absurdity) of the experience. But over the course of the 12 days I had many conversations with the band and yet I'm not inclined to describe them all in minute and breathlessly excited detail, therein subscribing to the nonchalance. It's not for lack of appreciation for the time that the band spent with me but rather because it would seem inappropriate and insulting, to them and to me, to descend into the superficial marveling of a fan.
And yet I want to allow myself that irrational happiness that comes from recognizing how unique the experience was. I had a great trip band notwithstanding, but to have interacted with them after all the years of admiring them from afar was truly special indeed.
I had all my luggage with me already so while they were waiting for theirs at the carousel I said goodbye to as many band members as I could find. And floated out of the airport on my way. I was so busy basking in my satisfied bliss that I didn't even mind when my luggage was randomly checked by Customs. My friend Aaron picked me up right when I got out of the terminal (which was very nice because I'd already taken a taxi, 2 trains, a subway, and 2 planes that day and wasn't in the mood to take another train and taxi) and we drove off in sunny California and that was the end of my silliest roadtrip ever.
c. 2003 Cathy Gellis
cathyg@csua.berkeley.edu
www.csua.berkeley.edu/~cathyg
Blog: www.cathygellis.com