Supporting HAWKWIND on tour, 2006. Part 3, Under-rehearsed Debutants.

Up none to early, we loaded up my Citroen Picasso and set off to our rehearsal room on the Gloucester Road which was rather damp and dingy but fine for our purposes. We set up, plugged in and started into Autoroute, a fairly easy song about a time when I had been stopped on the motorway in France by a gendarme on a motorbike and escorted off to an ATM to pay a speeding fine of 90 euros for doing 100 mph when there was a 80 mph limit. I found my voice quite quickly and Olivier's guitar was sounding great, when bang, one loud noise from his ampli and then nothing. We tried everything we knew, which was not a lot, but it had given up the ghost. So, we loaded it back in our vehicle and set off to Old Market to take it back and get something that worked. Of course, when we got there it was lunchtime and the secondhand equipment store was shut and all we could do was go and eat some fish and chips while we waited, a treat for Oliver on his first time in the UK.
At 2:30 we finally got a reply and were told to come round the back to get in. We explained what had happened and the guy just said to dump it there and come and look at some alternatives: there were several and Olivier wanted to try them before making a decision. Eventually he found something he was happy with, we did the paperwork and set off back to our rehearsal place, getting there at gone 4 in the afternoon. We had to be out of there by 6 so we spent the rest of the afternoon playing around with the riffs of Monster Truck, an old instrumental I had written for a friend who was DJ/MC at Monster Truck events, trying to turn it into a song with the few lyrics I had for it.
We went home, ate, and while Olivier practised his guitar on headphones, I wrote the remaining lyrics for the songs we had chosen.

The next two days' rehearsals went well, we got the balance between the programmed Fantom, my synth playing and the guitar fairly well sorted and I was managing to fit the vocals to the music a lot better even though my memory was proving to be ageing trying to remember all the lyrics I had written. And, as we packed up our gear, we felt fairly confident we could get through the set without any big hiccups.
Now the first gig was in Northampton at The Deco, a hip-sounding name for what was in fact an old theatre which had had a modernisation of sorts, mainly aimed at making it multi-functional and I think it held about 900 max. We found it quite quickly, right in the centre of town and after much asking, found the way to the back of it and the backstage entrance. The Hawkwind bus was already parked there and sounds of warm-up cum soundcheck could he heard from inside. We wandered in and were confronted by Chris, Dave Brock's good lady and the band's manager. She congratulated us on finding the place, I did the introductions to Olivier and she looked around for the other band members and I had to say that we were it. She seemed very surprised and said so but I told her not to worry....we could make an awful lot of noise.
We were told to wait out the back until the stage crew told us it was time to soundcheck and that at least it would be easy us only being two. We were joined by Jason, the Hawkwind keyboard player who I didn't know. He said they were still on the drums so he had time for a ciggie and we got chatting and hit it off straightaway, him being from Honiton so just up the road from where I lived as a teenager and more recently. When he was called up he suggested we got ready to go as he was the last. And soon after, a large roadie, Mr Dibs I think, called for us to come on stage and setup quick. This was done and we were plugged in to the PA system and told to play. I explained how the bass and drums were all coming out of my Roland Fantom, along with some other odds and ends and that, as all that was already balanced, the sound on that channel was to be constant all variations coming from my live synth playing on the XP80, the guitar and my vocals. I also tried to get across how I wanted a certain amount of reverb on my voice with some echo at the end of certain phrases which would be self-evident I felt.

We both felt that the whole crew just wanted the job done so they could have a break before the gig and that nobody was really interested in what we were saying, we were just the support band. I still hadn't seen anyone I knew, particularly Dave himself. Anyhow, when we were told that was it and that we were to be on stage at 7:45, we rushed off back to the car to drive off to our pre-booked BnB to check in. We found it quite easily and it was opposite a large park that looked better than being in the streets of this quite sad-looking town which was long past its glory days as an important shoe-making centre. The landlady seemed nice, gave us our keys, explained how to get in quietly if we were late and off we went with not much time left till we would be on stage.
When we got back to the Deco, we went in the front entrance and I chatted with the Hawkwind merchandising guy who agreed to put our two items on the end of his stall, our album hastily put together and consisting of instrumental versions of some of the numbers we would be playing and a couple of other random items, one being an Obny remix of an early version of Monster Trucks and the best track, and our tour poster done, like the CD cover, by my son Sam under his business name of DoseProd - check him out: his work is really good and he's, among other things, designed many, many album covers.
Having sorted that, we asked where the band was and were directed to a very large room. Around a large table were sprawled the band tucking into various vegetarian delicacies and drinking plastic cups of wine or beer (I presumed). Dave gave me a nod and a smile as if we hadn't seen each other for a couple of weeks.....in fact we hadn't been face to face for over thirty years. I pointed to the food and we were told to tuck in, it was fine today cos there was plenty of food. And then Dave did the introductions to Richard, the drummer, Alan, the bass player and Jason, the keyboard player we had already met. Then, they went back to their conversation and we sat there eating quiche and bean salad (very good actually) until a crew member suggest we get back stage ready to go on.
As we passed in front of the bar, I grabbed a couple of GnTs, to help the nerves and glanced at the people waiting behind a cord to be let in. Backstage it seemed there was still 15 minutes to go as the doors had only just opened so we went out the back and shared a smoke I had rolled earlier. A mistake because just as the GnT (a double of course) had started to settle my nerves, they came back tenfold with the smoke. Then we were pushed on and we were into the first song.

The Hawkwind public have acquired a reputation for actually listening to the support bands, knowing they are chosen for their connections with Hawkwind, and their applause and a few shouted cheers really calmed me down. But it was someone shouting out Sonic Assassin that gave me back the on-stage confidence I knew I had acquired over the years. The fold back was working perfectly and I could hear every note and grew to love hearing my voice so loud, with great echo during Paris-Marseille, our fourth number. But it wasn't all good: there was one song that really didn't work (and that we dropped from future gigs) and we cocked up the beginning of second song Yahtzee quite badly.
However, we finished really well with Monster Trucks, even though I forgot most the words. Olivier's guitar playing was superb and ensured the song really rocked. As the song came to an end and I finally spoke to the audience, I noticed that most of Hawkwind were watching us and we got a fair amount of applause from the public for a debutant band.
And debutants we were in many senses. The last time I had played live in a band was with the Crop-dusters, Hampshires answer in Sussex's Levellers, and I had played quite a few gigs with them in good venues like the Bournemouth Academy (the night after Hawkwind), the London Venue, The Camden Underground and finishing on New Year's at the Mean Fiddler, a fantastic gig. But that was very different: I was the keyboard player and only required on half their songs and I didn't have to sing. And that was 1992-4. The last time I had played and sung and been the front man was with a group called Twice As Nice in the late eighties and to a quite small audience in a French Village Hall! And as for Olivier, although he had played a lot live, it was mainly in very small venues in France.
In fact, I spent most the rest of the evening out in the front lobby near the merchandising stand so I could see if there was any interest in our small offerings and also to see if anyone seemed to recognise me as being part of the support band. I had a couple of beers too and slipped out for a smoke. Olivier had stayed backstage to watch Hawkwind's show and, having noticed a complete indifference to our merchandise I went in and caught the last fifteen minutes of their very professional show. When the cheering stopped after the last number and the lights came on, a bloke standing next to me, turned and looked at me and said," Well, for a support act, you weren't bad."