We spent another day and night in Aachen then left early the next morning for Switzerland. From the autobahn the German landscape looked brown and grey and wet in the winter light, vast, almost featureless stretches of open space followed by monotonous woodland.
By the time we approached the Swiss border and entered Switzerland it was dusk but the difference in the lie of the land and the culture became more and more palpable as we headed towards Fribourg with the sharp outline of mountains, black against the night sky.
It was another night off for us, but the people running the Fri-Son club there in Fribourg, where we would be playing in a couple of nights, were kindly feeding and putting us up in their accommodation. Our host, a young woman called Heleen, welcomed us into her apartment and a memorable night of great hilarity, fired by various intoxicants, followed. The most memorable moment was when Justin, wearing a feather boa he’d found somewhere, walked around the room imitating Marlene Dietrich singing ‘Falling in love again’. Continuing his act, he then strolled in and out of an accompanying room where members of ‘The Young Gods’, the very cool band who were getting front page exposure in the British press at the time, were sitting around a table. All of which seemed a perfectly natural and obvious part of an extraordinary evening for us and only fell into question the next morning.
Before going to Switzerland I imagined snow capped mountains, ancient wooden chalets perched in the foothills, steep, atmospheric, valleys with clear water rivers leading to beautiful lakes… so it came as quite a surprise when this was exactly what Switzerland did look like - only the rivers were clearer and the lakes were more blue.
After arriving in Lausanne we walked, with Minou guiding us, up the cobbled streets of the old town towards the cathedral where we were due to meet the promoter of the club ‘La Dolce Vita’ in a nearby cafe bar. The cafe was warm and old, furnished with simple wooden chairs and tables and there was a vague scent of melted cheese and wine. Marc arrived slightly late, a tall, big boned Frenchman, serious about his work and music but always ready to laugh and like everyone we met on that short tour was generous and showed a genuine interest in the band.
As we walked to the door to leave the cafe the other customers stood up and applauded us. A spontaneous and totally unexpected sign of respect for us as visiting musicians. Nothing remotely like that had ever happened to us before… and in fact never happened again… but it meant a lot to us.
We were charmed by Lausanne’s old centre where we were staying in an ancient apartment owned by the club, something like a squat but comfortable and atmospheric. In the middle of the night we were woken by a young woman in a bowler hat (not Justin’s) who bust through the door singing, then shouting furiously in French, making us think perhaps the place was on fire, before storming out into the dark streets, her yelling growing fainter and fainter as she disappeared into the night.
The following day Marc drove us to Geneva for a live interview on national Swiss-French radio. Without giving us any advanced warning we were asked to choose which records to play during the interview. Surrounded by hundreds of records, many of course by French, Swiss-French and Belgian artists, one of us, I don’t remember who, asked if they had Jaques Brel’s original version of ‘If you go away’ which we only knew from Scott Walker. The DJ and producer, expecting us to request something more current, laughed and said “what… ‘Ne me quitte pas’ ??… sure we have it somewhere”.
Listening to it in French and hearing Brel’s voice for the first time was a shock. In the years to come we would hear most of Brel’s songs and discover the fantastic, black and white film footage of him and he would become a big favourite and influence.
‘La Dolce Vita’ club in Lausanne was an inconspicuous looking building on one of the main roads leading to the city. Inside it was small and smelt, like most venues, of stale beer, cigarettes and detergent. Many celebrated bands and artists had played there - The Fall, Nico, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Primal Scream, Sonic Youth and many others. By now, any hint of uncomfortableness between Minou and ourselves had completely disappeared and we were thoroughly enjoying each other’s company and humour. She was familiar with the venue and the crew working there all remembered her. She made an impression everywhere she went and people generally liked her. We liked her too… for me, an abiding memory is of her swanning into our dressing room that night saying “would anyone like some of this cocaine cigarette”?.
This night became one of our wildest and most unrestrained. The club was packed full and the crowd seemed to love us. At a certain point, during our song ‘Wallpaper dying’ as the crowd fitfully swirled around in front of us a fight broke out. A sudden crack appeared, fists and boots swung and kicked, the atmosphere suddenly tilted cold, then the crack melded back and healed into an insane dance. This night the crowd didn’t call us back for an encore, they absolutely demanded it. Outside snow was falling.
It snowed all night and the next day we drove in deep snow to Fribourg. Minou decided that it would be more interesting and picturesque, not to take the snowploughed motorway but to drive (without winter tyres or chains) up into the higher ground following directions she made up as we went along and stopping at a roadside cafe for hot chocolate. These erratic but often rewarding decisions, which were to become a trait of hers, were no doubt driven by our obvious appreciation of foreign travel and cultural experiences, as well her own flights of fancy.
And so we came down out of the deep snow into Fribourg and to the club called the ‘Fri-son’. Heleen and friends were there to greet us and another successful concert and riotously entertaining evening followed. It snowed again, which we thought was normal in Switzerland, but actually isn’t - and it took us over an hour to dig our minibus out of the ‘Fri-son’ carpark the following morning.
Minou had arranged for us to stop for lunch in Zurich at the apartment of an artist we’d met and befriended at the ‘Dolce Vita’ gig. His name was Pier Geering, a tall, muscular, dark skinned, gruff man with a good sense of humour. Some of his latest work was hanging in the apartment; highly stylised, symbolic, life sized figures of pirates and sailors lying in their coffins, painted on fabric, which were to be hung vertically, in rows around the walls of galleries.
Stopping in Zurich resulted in a frantic eight and a half hour drive across Europe to the Belgian coast in order to catch the last ferry crossing of the night. Unfortunately we just missed it and had to spend a miserable, cold, night huddled up in the cramped mini bus waiting for the mornings first crossing. Looking through smeared holes in the steamed up windows at the dark shapes of bleak ferry terminal buildings in the rain and sleet.
The rest of the journey was cold, wet and dismal. We got back home to the midlands delirious with fatigue and slept until the middle of the next day when I wrote in my diary that I “had bath and reflected on most fantastic week of life”.
(Written by SHJ)