Touring with HAWKWIND. Post 7. BOSTON, Here we come....

I think all tours have a moment somewhere in the middle where things start to blur. The excitement of hitting the road is long gone, alcohol and drug consumption rises, band members fall out and there are some rotten gigs. And the next part of the tour began like that.

Philadelphia had been a great gig in a great venue but now we were driving back northwards to play at the SHOW PLACE in Dover, New Jersey, a small venue in a small town about 30 miles north-west of New York City. It was one of these one-storey bars with a car park surrounding it and I seem to remember topless waitresses; these days it is a topless bar. But, other than that, I can't remember a thing about the gig or the venue.

The Show Place these days.

It was about this time that questions about why we were touring became a subject of discussion. The band didn't have a new album out and the whole situation seemed to have been put together rather quickly and haphazardly. For example, the following gig was supposed to be in Belleville, Illinois, which would have been a hell of a drive westwards, and it really was not a surprise when that gig was cancelled. But, at around the same time we were told that the last 2 gigs of the tour, in Phoenix, Arizona, and New Orleans, had also been cancelled. This was because of poor ticket sales we were told but Jeff Dexter also said that the tour was running wildly over-budget and that the gigs had been cancelled because of the cost of the long distances involved. I was really disappointed because I truly had wanted to see those two cities.

Poster for the gig that never happened.

So, after this latest gig we were off to drive to Boston, a good party town we were informed by the old hands. And because of missing a gig, we were going to have an extra day there. Now, I had noticed in Dover, that we did have a small number of groupies that were following us around and we had given them the name of our hotel in Boston (another Holiday Inn) so they would be waiting for us there and tell the local girls too. The drive was different, through the forests and valleys of New England with its tidy small towns with historical backgrounds.

Now, I was driving when we hit the city and managed to get pulled across yet again by the cops, this time for illegal lane jumping. And yet again, they were friendly, forgiving me once they realised I was from faraway Europe and thus unaware of some of the rules of driving in the USA.

Yet again, I don't remember a lot about the actual gig although I think it was here that I was asked during the sound check to add my voice to the backing vocals. I sing in tune, am happier with higher notes than low ones and was willing to give it a try and I felt that my voice helped in the few places where an additional voice would enhance the song. I do remember after the gig, asking our sound man, the very superior Dennis Smith, how my backing vocals had gone. His reply was a real kick in the face as he said."I don't know, I thought it better to keep your mike turned off."

The gig venue in Boston.

However, I do remember one of the groupies I had been with before, being in our dressing room which led me to go and sit in with the support band to try and escape. I felt I was in a funny position with the band. Some of the time, Dave was being my mate and whisking me off for chats about the future or to see interesting things. Bob seemed to dislike me and was quite cold, if not rude, partly at least because he was unsure about Dave's idea of replacing Hawkwind with Sonic Assassins, an idea he felt could go wrong. And Adrian and Simon were friendly enough but at the same time could act superior and also sometimes fell out and I would be asked to pass on messages like, "Can you tell the drummer he's speeding up." Or, "Tell the bloody bass player he's off the beat'".

Coming back to Sonic Assassins, Dave phoned me in my room, I had a single room again, telling me that we had a radio interview to do together in his room. So I went along and there was this small guy with a huge tape-recorder who worked for one of Boston's biggest radio stations. Dave reminded me to emphasise Sonic Assassins through the interview which I did in so far as mentioning Harvey and Martin the bass player and drummer. But a lot of the questions I couldn't answer like, were we changing record labels, management, etc. I did my best but found it rather embarrassing.

We went out on the town. When I say we, I meant myself and some of the crew who I got on well with. Most of them had been on the Pink Floyd tour just before working with us and all had big debts to pay off due to cocaine. So they were trying to live cheaply, living off freebees and cheap alcohol rather than expensive drugs. And they'd been around and knew these city centres like the back of their hands.

Boston, the Dublin of the USA

So off we went to a great club. Loud music, lots of girls and some other English rock musicians, The Stranglers. It was interesting chatting with them. Their album, No More Heroes, was flying high in the charts all over the world but they were surviving on 25 pounds a week pay and relying on groupies to buy them drinks and other luxuries. They were a laugh but Jean-Jacques Burnel, their bassist, ended up getting us all checked out due to his lunatic and rather aggressive behaviour.

Back at the hotel, we had a night of fun and frolics with much movement from room to room all of which seemed full of sexual activity. I ended up with two rather funny sisters and Bob Calvert complained the next morning at breakfast about the noisy sex disturbing his beauty sleep in the room next door.

The next morning we were all excited at breakfast because we were finally leaving the cold weather behind to fly out to California, to the City of Angels,where we were to stay in the so-called, Riot House, the Continental Hyatt Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. How rock and roll was that!!

TO BE CONTINUED. Part 8. Riotous behaviour in the Riot House.