Then, there we were, beatling up the M5 for the last time, heading for Derby Assembly Rooms and with an extra body on board. Rick was the owner of Feel The Quality Records, a small Bristol label that had put out two recordings of mine: the Lastwind Demo and This, That, The Other, 3 songs of mine with two versions of each, my mix and his. The original recording of Paris-Marseille was on this EP, sung by Laurence de Loes, Belgian father and mother from the Cote d'Ivoire, a lovely young lady with a smooth voice who played in a future version of Lastwind, providing backing vocals and percussion. Anyhow, Rick really wanted to come, to be part of the crack, to help sell some CDs and to try and get a decent live recording of our set. He's quite a quiet guy who lives on the ninth floor of a mainly Somali inhabited tower block between Stokes Croft and the Royal Bristol Infirmary, a fairly wild neighbourhood.
The drive passed without incident and we headed first for the hotel we had booked for the night: I had to drop Olivier off at Luton Airport the next day on the way back to Bristol. It was a fairly typical 2 star place with Rick's room a long way from ours but we were pleased to find out it had a bar which stayed open quite late. Then we had the usual problem of trying to find a way round the one-way system to the theatre and then a way from there round the back to the stage door. We got our gear in back stage and then moved into a dressing room with our name on the door only to be moved out by Chris who had discovered that Dave and her's room was smaller than ours. We called in at the rest of Hawkwind's dressing room and were wished good luck by Jason and Alan and got a smile from Richard.
Rick did a good job of getting to know the sound engineer and had arranged to get his recorder wired up to the desk so we should get a good recording of the live sound and the engineer promised to give us a good sound. And our sound check sounded the best yet!! Rick also got a table stand set up in the entrance hall to sell our slightly poor range of merchandise. We dashed out for some food round the square where the theatre was placed; the name was crap but the place was actually rather smart inside. There was a Nando's just along the square and we went in there but it was rammed and we were obviously going to have to wait some time so we moved on to a pub which was pretty empty and had fish and chips and mushy peas which was all rather copious and good. We got in our regulation GnT and had time for a quick spliff out the back before being called by the road crew to get on stage.
There was a big crowd waiting for us and we went down well right from the first number. I was well on top of my vocals by now and was lose enough to improvise some of the lyrics and Olivier was on top form, driving out some powerful solos. In fact, at the end of Paris-Marseille, a big rocker stood up precariously on his chair in the front row of the balcony and shouted out that the crowd ought to give more noise for the extraordinary guitarist, the best they were likely to see that year. That got a loud response of cheers and then another voice from the back of the hall shouted out that the keyboard player deserved a big cheer too. We looked at each other with big beaming smiles and really gave everything to the last two numbers, Slots and Monster Trucks which both got tremendous cheers and applause. There were some big biker girls down the front who were giving me the eye which led to me improvising the lyrics, "Don't look at me like that, You're scaring me to death," with a smile and a wink. We had done slightly longer versions of those two numbers and had therefore over-run our time or I am sure we could have done an encore, the crowd were definitely up for it and it was good to see Hawkwind and the crew joining in the applause.
But that was that. We grabbed our gear off the stage and headed out back for another smoke and then made our way out front to watch Hawkwind but were assailed by lots of people congratulating us, wanting to know where we were playing next, where they could buy our album and so on. Rick did manage to sell quite a few CDs and I was just fed up they weren't more representative of what we could do. But we had to be happy with what we had done; for a band that didn't even exist a few weeks beforehand, we had certainly pulled it off. After the gig, we went round to the Hawkwind dressing room and were treated to a glass of champagne, Dave said it was a shame we couldn't do the other gigs and even Chris congratulated us. I always got the feeling she was a bit wary of me knowing I had been friendly with Dave's first wife, Sylvie, but I might be mistaken. One thing was sure: of everyone around, I was the one who had known Dave the longest.
Jason was the person I had got on with the best and, despite having arranged to stop by his place in Honiton when I was next in the area, he died before I ever saw him again, a very sad event. Alan Davey was also very friendly and I saw him next when he had joined Hawklords. Richard, who is a very quiet and reserved person I next saw at a Hawklords gig in Frome, his neck of the woods. And Dave and Chris I saw backstage at their gig in Bristol in 2008 when Dave looked knackered and confided that he didn't think he could go on like this much longer. I lived just up the road from where the gig was and they were going to come round after the show but he was so tired they jumped in their VW camper and shot off back down to Devon.
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We went back to our hotel and ended up getting drunk with some Welsh rugby fans although what they were doing in Derby remained a mystery. We got up in time for a late breakfast and headed down to Luton to put Olivier on his plane with a fairly emotional farewell. Rick slept most of the way back, I dropped him off and got home, had a quick bite to eat and crashed for 12 hours solid.
There was an interesting end to this whole story. I was over in France for Xmas at my son's Sam's at the end of that year and went down to Avignon to record some extra vocals for the live tape of the Derby gig at Olivier's home studio. When we had finished, his wife drove us all up to Sam's for a pre-Xmas dinner......it was the 22nd of December. Sam's wife, Murielle was heavily pregnant with their second child. Us lads got well drunk and stoned and continued partying after the ladies went to bed until Murielle appeared at the top of the stairs saying her waters had broken. While Olivier's wife phoned the hospital to say they'd be arriving, I made some strong coffee and Olivier walked Sam round and round the garden. Then they set off to drive over an icy col to Valreas Hospital, a good 25 kms away. Little Elijah was born in the back of their Renault Kangoo half way to the hospital. Well done Murielle who managed that all by herself!! And it's Elijah's 10th birthday this coming Friday!!!
So that's the end of that tale. The recording we made at Derby is available for a small charge. Email me at paullastwind@yahoo.co.uk if you would like to own a copy.
Happy Christmas all and let's hope 2017 is full of more hope than 2016.
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| Elijah this year, 10 years old on Friday. |
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