Part 35: 1986
As the old year passed into the new the weather got colder. We worked on a piece of music that would become the song we call ‘The Headless clay woman’.
Sleeping regular hours had become difficult and sometimes I would light a candle and sit in the depths of the night at my window looking out into the darkness. If there was a moon I’d see the dark shapes of leafless trees around the fields and sometimes, the pale house in the middle distance. The only sound would be a moorhen clucking or those of the nocturnal winds.
The water meadow where I was digging the path along the river Avon in Stratford froze over, thawed, flooded, then froze over again so I, and my restless, unmotivated workmates would walk with our shovels and mattocks to the edge of the iced over meadow then return to our shed to make tea before turning home.
I would sit slightly apart and listen to the usual kind of lads talk of alcohol consumption and hangovers, petty crimes committed, brushes with the law and improbable accounts of sexual encounters. Occasionally, I’d exchange words with the quieter men who also preferred to take a back seat.
One was a Hells Angel from a chapter called ‘The Alcester Gypsy Warlords’, another was a young guy who had just come out of prison for attacking someone with a Stanley knife. Outsiders who kept themselves to themselves - the Hells Angel liked river fishing where he could be on his own with a packet of cigarettes and a six pack of beer, the other had fine, attractive, almost feminine features and was lost in an obsessive, ‘Clockwork Orange’ like, world of violence.
I kept my head down, but inside I was buzzing with excitement about the prospect of crossing the channel and playing in Europe. Europe… playing ‘on the continent’. Abroad. To a foreign audience.
We rehearsed our set in the cold Dairy almost every night, Justin, Steven and Nick went through the parts of ‘The headless clay woman’, the music swelling then dropping again wonderfully. But we were impatient. After we’d finished we would go to our new favourite pub, ‘The Boot’, in a village called Radford. It was an old country pub with an open fire that was frequented by quiet, old, country men or no one at all, so we were greeted as a welcome novelty. In the daytime, if we weren’t working, Justin and I made trips to Birmingham and Evesham searching for clothes in the junk and charity shops as the time to leave the country approached. Justin found a bowler hat and I got myself a dark blue, 1960’s suit to travel in.
Chris, who was by now acting as our manager as well as running Reflex Records with Joanne, hired a minibus from a garage in Malvern and on the dark, wet evening of January 21st, picked us and our equipment up from Morton Under Hill and we headed for Dover, via London, to catch a night ferry.
Predictably, the minibus broke down before we’d left the midlands on a quiet country road at the bottom of Saintbury hill in the Cotswolds, miles from anywhere. We sat in the bus in the dark waiting. Our minds turning over all the various worst case scenarios until a mechanic arrived, fixed the problem and we continued towards London.
Minou, our Balinese tour agent and manager came down from her London apartment in a tight knit, white dress, a black leather coat and a faux leopard skin hat, and got into the front seat. I was already as far in the back as possible. I decided to be on my quietest and best behaviour whenever she was in sight so as not to agitate her apparent dislike of me.
The night ferry to the Belgian port of Ostend smelt of exhaust fumes, grease and burning oil. There was a hatch selling drinks, but if there were any other facilities other than toilets, they weren’t open. It reminded me of a large, floating dole office. Apart from the iron floor, the only place one could hope to get any sleep was on rows of hard plastic chairs bolted to the floor.
I did manage to sleep for an hour or so and when I awoke, in my sleep deprived state, it appeared that all the other passengers, mainly truckers, were speaking backwards. It was, of course, Flemish or Dutch, but I could have sworn before I dropped off to sleep they were speaking English.
We docked in darkness and drove along flat, wet motorways in the rain. The mini bus was cramped and the seats appeared to be designed to prevent people going to sleep, but I was excited. We were abroad. The sky paled slightly as dawn approached and beside the motorway you could see quiet, narrow roads lined with spindly trees like giant feathers, then huge slag heaps as we neared cities or towns. The only thing that was interesting about this landscape was that it wasn’t England.
Eventually we arrived in the German town of Aachen where people were busy getting on their way to work or school. They dressed differently and looked and moved and interacted with each other in a different way…subtle, but everything was different; money, architecture, cars, shop signs, products, advertising boards, cigarette machines on the street,…German words everywhere.
Hotel Bismarck was a typical, large, German town house with rooms above a restaurant. We were greeted by a young woman who spoke good English. She treated us in a friendly, respectful way and showed us to our rooms. As would almost always be the case I shared with Nick. The room smelt clean, in fact it was immaculately clean. The door and windows opened and closed perfectly. Everything was solid and functional, the bathroom had a large, white washbasin with taps that looked exactly like what taps are supposed to look like and they worked. Hot and cold water - and the shower might have been the best shower I’d ever had. The beds were soft and the sheets and quilt were crisp and starched white. We slept.
Minou, who had had been distant but efficient up to this point, started to defrost and introduced us to the promoter of The Ritz club as if they were old friends. He was called Wolfgang Muller and he dressed and looked like a gangster from a film noir movie but was very friendly and accommodating. He had rings on his fingers and smoked a brand of cigarettes called Kent. The club looked very small, as clubs often do when empty. After sound checking we were taken to a restaurant for a meal, a good meal on plates, at a table with a table cloth.
Meanwhile, the club had opened its doors, filled to full and looked twice the size. We were all very nervous and smoked and drank like crazy - there were crates of beer for us backstage, bottles of good, German beer brewed in Aachen.
After a round or two of vodkas we squeezed onto the cramped stage and started running through our set. The reaction from the audience was very enthusiastic - then as we started playing one song, I think it was ‘There was a man of double deed’, we heard a ripple of applause… I was distracted, looked around and wondered what had happened, but when it happened again after another song it dawned on me that people actually knew our songs. When the set ended we were called back for two encores, this had never happened before either. Everything was new to us and different - and we loved it.