Bill Nelson's Diary - September 2004

Saturday, 11th September 2004 -- Late  
Deep into band rehearsals at the moment...today has been the sixth day. We've managed to work our way through about 18 of the 21 songs this last week. This doesn't mean that these songs are up to their final performance standard yet, but they are on their way. We still need to deconstruct, re-assemble and polish where necessary but that's what these rehearsals are for. It's sometimes tiring work, sometimes boring, sometimes energising.

I've never particularly enjoyed rehearsing, even back in the '70's but it needs to be done. I find it harder now in that my physical stamina is no longer that of a twenty year old. Added to this, there have been moments when I've felt that my musical tastes have moved on or changed too dramatically to connect with some of my earlier songs. Nevertheless, I've glimpsed enough flashes of inspiration amidst the hard graft to indicate that there may be a few peak moments in store when the band is eventually placed in its proper concert situation. If we can hold our nerve, remember the arrangements and learn to trust and nurture each other, we could have something special to offer our audience.

I've had to re-adjust to working in a 'band context' too. So many years of writing, playing and recording alone, with no need to explain myself or the music's concepts to anyone, has made me an insular, reclusive person in some ways. Having to communicate with others, not just in terms of music but in 'human' terms as well, can sometimes feel rather strange. I've become almost (almost?) socially inept, probably because I've lived totally 'inside' myself for so long. The music has become my own private universe. I completely understand its workings, its ethics, its laws, etc, etc...But the 'real ' world? Well...that's a much tougher proposition.  The band is made up of quite different, diverse personalities with varying levels of  musical experience, attainment, attitude and so on. Some of the members have little idea of what terrors are waiting in the wings for them: stage frights, panic attacks, moments of absolute blankness...what chord comes next? Why isn't this equipment working? How do I get out of here?  I, of course, know all about these demonic fears, but despite the years, am just as victimised and crushed by them as an absolute beginner. I have all the confidence of a rabbit caught in a car's headlights.  It will be quite terrifying, but just as likely wonderful too.

A meeting with Paul Gilby after rehearsals today. Paul and his brother Ian have generously spent a  lot of time assembling the tour concert programme for me this week. We've had a band photo session, I've provided some essays, Paul Sutton-Reeves has written a potted biography, Paul Gilby and I have sourced some rare photo's from my personal archives and so on. The mock-up of the programme that I've seen today looks excellent. It will be a heavy, glossy, full colour affair with plenty of pages, (more like a magazine than a programme) lots of information, images and so on. It's a genuine souvenir/collectors item and will be sold at an extremely  reasonable price. (It should really be much more expensive but the idea is to make it affordable for everyone attending the shows.)

Some technical problems with equipment at rehearsals. Mine in particular. I'm not at all happy with my guitar sound at the moment but this may be a result of not having time to work at it in isolation. I need to build up a practical catalogue of sounds for each song. I'm worried about hanging the other band members up whilst I experiment with this, so I plough on regardless. At this point in the proceedings, my attention is directed more towards the whole band, listening to their individual parts, suggesting other approaches where necessary, being, (perhaps) a little too intrusive, fussy, pernickety. A basic pain in their collective arse. Rehearsals test all kinds of things, besides the music itself. Friendships crumble, minor problems become major disasters, people end up hating each other. And sometimes, if luck is on your side, the exact opposite. All human life is here, as they say. I just want it to be good. I want it to be good enough that I can be bad and yet it will still be good.

Quite exhausted. I really should be resting and not writing but I needed to document a little of this process in some way. Not too much though...the more ephemeral and mysterious the process, the better. The only thing that counts is the concert itself, all the rest is, as I've so often said, smoke and mirrors. Enough. I have to check through the tour programme for typos or errors before it goes to print. Better get on with it.

Wednesday, 15th September 2004 -- 10 PM  
For the last couple of days, I've been trying to stave off a cold. This evening it's started to open up, making its presence felt much more strongly. Feeling weak right now, although it's by no means hit its peak yet. It's been a struggle singing today, a task already complicated by the dramatic changes in my voice over the years. The last thing I need right now is a cold virus, but it looks like I've got one. If it follows my usual pattern of taking one week until it really becomes full blown and then another two weeks before it starts to clear, I'm in for a rough ride with the initial concerts on the tour.

Spent the morning giving interviews to Guitarist magazine and to Record  Collector. Frustrating for me in that virtually all the interviews I've completed so far have begun with the interviewer presuming that the tour has been put together to promote the EMI re-releases of the BE BOP DELUXE back catalogue. This, of course, is NOT the case, as regular readers of this diary will be aware. The tour sprang from the success of last year's solo tour... that and my quixotic idea to take the 'one-off' fan convention band out to play some concerts for the sheer hell of it. EMI's involvement came 'after the event' as it were. Naturally I'm very grateful for their help with publicity but I'm hardly going to be doing this tour purely to promote music that I've spent many years trying to put behind me. Grateful as my fragile ego is for the dimly reflected glory. Of course, there's some Be Bop material in the set and, of course I'm happy to acknowledge it but...there's other material too. Besides, I've recorded six albums during the last twelve months, all of which are much more relevant and indicative of my current state of mind than those old seventies albums can ever be, especially considering the years between now and then. I'd almost begun to accept the Be Bop Deluxe era as a more valid part of my history than I'd previously been able to...but my recent experiences have served to remind me why I once tried to leave it all behind.

Could I be forgiven, I ask myself, for wondering, these last few days, whether playing in a rock band is what I should be doing, or whether or not I've let my goals slip away from me. Sometimes, I can't help thinking that there's something faintly retrograde about all this despite my attempts to convince myself otherwise. So easy to let one's guard slip and lose the plot. By saying this I'm being very unfair to the other guys in the band who don't share my personal agenda but just want to get out there and have some fun with the thing.  Not their fault that I have these foibles. But not my fault that they don't either. I guess I should be grateful that they're even prepared to subject themselves to my moody and sometimes tetchy attitudes. Poor Nick and Steve must be wondering why I keep on attempting to improve on the musical arrangements. Isn't the recorded version good enough? What a frustrating band leader I appear to be. Or am I merely offering this personal portrait in an attempt to exaggerate and exploit the real situation to more dramatic effect?  Maybe I just like the idea of being a highly flawed, awkward, temperamental old so and so who has almost zero respect for his own back catalogue. Then again, it could all be nothing more than another neo-romantic play for the crown of the poet, just a ploy to make this diary somewhat more interesting than the mundane truth. (Which might go like this: Rehearsed today, some of it was in tune, some of it wasn't, some of it was in time, some of it wasn't, couldn't hit the high notes for toffee, couldn't remember the lyrics without my notebook, my guitar sound was crap, band humour was inane and predictable, we're all tired and bored and I'm pissed off that I chose so many mid-tempo ballads for the set.) I do still find all that nostalgic, fatalist shit attractive after all. Never trust a man who conned his way on to 'Top Of The Pops' by writing and recording 'Ships In The Night.'  just to show the guys I used to work with in my local government officer day job that I could get within touching distance of Pans People.

Perhaps I'm simply no longer sure what this is all about, maybe I've lost the plot.  Maybe I think too much about it. (Though if I didn't, it wouldn't be 'true.') I do know that keeping hold of the reins isn't easy, especially when there are individual  inner tensions and personal agendas to  deal with. I tend to give up after a certain point is reached and then just wish I was back in the studio making something new and fresh and stimulating.

One of the problems I've always come up against is the notion of 'the entertainer' versus 'the artist.' Art can be entertaining but I believe that any direct concern (by the artist) for entertainment itself rarely produces art of any great value...Outside of some classic, golden age Hollywood movies, of course. (There's always an exception but never, in my book, a rule.) But all that belongs to another time, as does, if truth be told, Be Bop Deluxe. This tour is not really about that particular band OR about the rock music ethos either...If anything, it's about thirty years of trying to figure out one damn thing or another for myself, regardless of whether it pays off in commercial terms or not. It's about the twisted nerve at the very core of this particular diary entry, the eternal question that I'm struggling with at this actual moment, via a computer keyboard instead of a guitar.  Idealistic, impractical and, in some peoples eyes no doubt, dumb. It's telling that I'd even bother to think about these things in such terms. On the other hand, let's face it, there's nothing 'high art' about any of this. I shouldn't allow it to become so complicated, it's 'only rock'n'roll' etc, etc. And that could be the root of the problem I seem to be having in dealing with it. I could be some way past the trappings of rock and all its youthful enthusiasms. I've always been a little shy of it anyway, so maybe no surprise that this new re-introduction to the 'muso' lifestyle sits uneasily with my current thinking. But maybe I'm tired, suffering from cold and conspiracy, more brought down by my own inadequacies and misjudgments than the immediate environment I've placed myself in. Maybe I should just accept the complexities and difficulties and damn the torpedoes. Simply get on with it, pull the sword from the stone at exactly the right moment, put the negative entities in their proper place, win the day and ride off into the sunset, white Stetson held high, the horizon full of fresh promise and new adventures. Too many 'maybes' not enough here and now, get out of my way, here it comes, lookout, bravado. The right kind of noise is inspiring, the wrong kind intimidating. The rehearsal room environment caused me to buy ear-plugs the other day. I haven't used them...there's far more to hearing than ears.

Bollocks to it...bedtime.

Saturday, 18th September 2004 -- Evening  
The answer to the question 'Do You Dream In Colour?' is most definitely 'Yes...' Last night I had a very odd dream. In fact I've been having vivid dreams these last few weeks, as I usually tend to during stressful times. Last night's was weirdly beautiful, almost disturbingly so. In one part of the dream, I was in a field by the edge of a garden. There was an old house in the garden, kind of arts and crafts style architecture but a little dilapidated. Flowers hung from long stems or fronds over a rickety wooden fence. A large white she-goat approached me from the further reaches of the grassy field. As it came nearer I saw that it had pink and pale green blossoms woven into its mane. It was not unlike a creature from Disney's vintage 'Fantasia' animated movie, but more realistic, less cute. It had lots of little goats running after it, offspring, I presumed but these were a dark chocolate brown colour with pure white tufts of hair and feet. Then things became more weird...the little goats climbed up the stalks of the flowers that were spilling over the top of the fence from the garden and began to eat the blooms. One baby goat after another sprang up and magically clung to the foliage whilst devouring the flower heads. The big she-goat walked over to me and nuzzled up close, affectionately. I stroked the animal's neck and touched the blossoms that were woven through its hair. I had the feeling that this uncanny creature was being protective over me, some kind of wise guardian. Then abruptly, the dream changed, as dreams usually do.

Now I was at the coast, at a sort of open-air art-deco bus station situated on a seaside promenade with the ocean beyond. There was a fresh salty breeze. The location reminded me of both Blackpool and Southport in the early 1950's, a vague echo of a scene from my infancy. Several busses were arriving and leaving but they were quaint, quirky contraptions, part bus, part greenhouse, almost like trolley buses from the 'thirties but with pseudo-Victorian details. I began to walk across the road, in the direction of the sea. The buses passed in front and behind me and as they did so it seemed that each bus emitted an individual piece of music. They seemed to be equipped with hidden loudspeakers. There were several melodies I didn't recognise, but all quite pleasant, then one bus pulled in playing Duane Eddy's ' Because They're Young,' which was the first pop record I ever bought. The area behind where the buses were perambulating, at the edge of the promenade, was criss-crossed with tram lines and several trams were gliding into the area. They were the most unusual and beautiful trams I'd ever seen, a cross between an old Leeds tram from the war years and the art-deco machines that grace the sea-front in Blackpool. But,whilst similar to those, they were also quite different, somehow unique. Their windows were large, silvery and mirror like, reflecting the clear light. And here was the most remarkable thing...I've never witnessed such light as was surrounding this scene. It's clarity was profoundly beautiful, a sky of the purest, coolest blue, a twilight kind of blue but bright and ravishingly intense. The windows of the trams caught and reflected this light as they hummed and turned gracefully on their tracks, their mirrored glass flashing tints of silver and gold and pink. It was as if the best polarising filter on the planet had been fitted to the most finely polished lens in the universe. It was unearthly and staggeringly beautiful, this circus parade of trams and buses, all caught up in a kind of circling dance. A true transport of delight.

And then I awoke, head stuffed up with cold, feeling physically weak and woozy. I lay for a minute or so, trying to absorb and remember the details of the dream, somewhat spooked by it all. It's strange and intense gorgeousness was almost sinister, like a glimpse into a parallel universe, but a universe ruled by a whimsical God who toys ambivalently with his subject's inner atavisms before snuffing them out in a sudden fit of boredom.  I got up, donned my dressing gown and went downstairs for breakfast, my perceptions dulled and fogged by my cold. Watched the news and felt sad and depressed by the state of the world. There are more and more moments, these days, when nothing at all makes sense. (Has it ever?)  Are we living in apocalyptic times?  I wonder how future generations will assess this era, with its mindlessness, spiritual poverty, religious fundamentalism, greed, prejudice and hatred. Nightmares become the norm and dreams dissolve in the tears of poets. I don't like it at all and don't know how to deal with it other than to bury my head in music and hope for the best. A cowardly solution.

Gave the band the weekend off (they'll be back on Monday) but, despite feeling shitty with my cold, I drove to the rehearsal room today and spent a couple of hours there on my own, messing about with different guitar sounds and playing free and unaccompanied, allowing my imagination to steer my fingers wherever the moment took me. Therapeutic, cathartic and sometimes quite noisy. It felt strange being in that big room all by myself after two weeks of working in the midst of a band. Tomorrow (Sunday) I will go there again and try to plough my way through my three solo sets. I haven't had time to deal with these yet and am sorely in need of practice, especially as there are a few brand new pieces to get to grips with.

On Monday, we begin the final week of the actual band's rehearsals, 'though I'll have to break off to conduct some media interviews for tour publicity purposes. Last week's rehearsals saw some improvement but not enough in my own singer/guitarist 'department' to please me. Still, the other guys are getting to grips with the music and the time I've spent working on individual contributions to the overall picture has been worthwhile. But I now need to concentrate a little more on my own performance and sound and trust the others to take care of their own departments without me worrying too much about every little detail.

We timed the whole set and, unfortunately, it came out as being too long for the time we've been allocated to play at the concerts. Consequently, I've had to drop a song from my original set list and may yet have to drop another. The problem is, there are so many songs that we could have chosen to perform. 80 plus albums provides an extraordinary amount of useable material. Inevitably, the music that will end up in our final 80 minute set will only reflect a fragment of the whole picture. Nothing I can do about that, save make the concerts week long affairs.

Just one week from today is the band's final rehearsal, the 'production' rehearsal where we need to run the entire show in real time, trying to make the changes between one song and the next as smooth as possible. (Keyboard sounds to be re-programmed, guitars and effects to be swapped around, etc.) Scary stuff. After that its our 'secret' warm-up concert then the first 'proper' show of the tour at The Leadmill in Sheffield. Tickets are apparently selling well right across the territory of the tour though. I have to admit being nervous. I really want to enjoy it, despite the passing clouds of my previous diary entry. Various references to the tour are starting to appear in various magazines and media. Four mentions in 'Guitarist' magazine this month, including my name being listed in a poll of 'unsung' guitar heroes. Well...I never claimed to be much of a singer so maybe that's appropriate! A nice piece in Sound-On-Sound magazine too. They've been amazingly helpful, those guys.

Well, feeling rough again...Time for some medication and an hour or two of empty tv viewing. Lem-Sips a-go-go.

Monday, 20th September  2004  -- 7 PM  
Another diary entry so soon? Well, things must be going reasonably well for me to be able to find time to write again.

I felt much more positive about the band rehearsals today. Although the band took two days off over the weekend, we seemed to have retained most of the arrangements and many of the songs are now sounding much tighter. I still have some guitar sound problems to resolve but I've been promised delivery of my new Carlsbro amp by this coming Wednesday. It doesn't leave me much time to get used to it and to decide exactly where it fits into my overall sound set-up but I'm hoping that the amp will give me the analog ingredient that's missing from my battery of equipment at the moment. Despite all the hard work we've put in this last couple of weeks, there's still an 'unknown' element that will have to be faced in the actual concert situation. I'm reasonably confident that we'll pull through though. The various band members have put a lot of effort into getting their individual parts nailed down. Sometimes, I forget that some of them have almost no previous experience of being in a band, particularly a band that has suddenly found itself jumping from a rough and ready, 'fun first/details later ' annual fan convention performance to a full UK tour with some general media attention. I've suddenly realised, these last few days, that there is now much more pressure on us as a result of the EMI re-re-release of the Be Bop back catalogue. This has focused the press publicity on that particular era of my work and comparisons with Be Bop Deluxe are inevitable.

Of course, this band is not Be Bop but The Lost Satellites. I don't say this to imply that there's a difference in quality, merely in style. We're operating under our own steam, doing it in our own way and, above all, in the 21st Century, not the mid 1970's. It will be fine but it will be for now, not for then. Even so, the Be Bop songs we've put together sound plenty good enough. A praiseworthy achievement considering our overall trepidation and inexperience. (Or at least my trepidation and inexperience!) I did feel that an obstacle had been overcome today though and I'm pleased that things are progressing. There's a good chance that I may actually enjoy this tour!  Went to the rehearsal room on Sunday to run through some of my solo set. Dave Standeven very kindly came in with me to take care of the playback of my pre-recorded backing tracks. I concentrated mostly on the new pieces with which I'm still quite unfamiliar. I'll take another run at this stuff on the final day of rehearsals when the band have the day off. What with the three solo sets and the band set, there's a lot of musical info to retain in my poor old noodle. The various sound changes within each number, pedal board effects, etc are quite complex, perhaps needlessly so. I still need to rationalise and finalise these things but until my new amp and one more 'secret' addition to my set up comes into play, it's still somewhat up in the air. Still, don't want things to become too perfect and sterile. (Not that there's much chance of that with my memory at the helm.)

Well, dare I say it? We're not only 'getting there' but getting there in style. This may yet be a positive and warmly memorable experience.  Dinner time. Back to work tomorrow.

Sunday, 26th September 2004 -- 9 :10 PM  
Finally, rehearsals are over. Finished today although the actual band  rehearsals were properly concluded yesterday. Today was exclusively devoted to a brief run through of each of the three variations of my solo set, followed by the tackling down of all the  equipment. Then everything was packed away, loaded into the equipment truck, ( generously supplied by my pal Super Steve, head honcho of Moor Lane Construction who are sponsoring the band's transport on the forthcoming tour). Once the truck was carefully loaded, the equipment was driven to a storage location by another friend of mine, the Mighty Jim, (who has volunteered to help out whenever he can). I'm very lucky to have this opportunity to present my music in a band context. In fact, the tour has been made practical only by various people's good will  and enthusiasm. Everyone has been very helpful and supportive and I'm extremely grateful for their faith in the project.

The three weeks of rehearsals have been fraught in many ways but mostly with strange technical problems, many of which have been related to my own complex guitar amplification set up. Yesterday's rehearsals seemed to be particularly gremlin prone. A very expensive amp switching pedal, which enables me to route my guitar to any one of four separate guitar amps/racks/processing units at the push of a button, began emitting a loud, white noise kind of static, regardless of anything my guitar tech Peter did to rectify it. Basically, it had given up the ghost. We had begun to suspect ghostly doings in other electrical regions too as my Line 6 Vetta 2 amp had been playing up in mysterious ways over the entire three week rehearsal period. The weirdest problem was a volume pot that physically moved, of it's own accord, from a reasonably quiet setting to full blast in an instant, with no-one touching it. Physically moved, that is, not just an internal rise in volume but the control knob itself being suddenly changed to a radically different setting than the one at which I'd originally set it. Then, yesterday afternoon, Dave's amp packed in. A blown fuse was the eventual culprit. More baffling technical hiccups today too, not just the aforementioned. What's going on? The rehearsal room was located in an old building that had possibly once been a church hall type of school or something. Old enough to be home to an ectoplasmic prankster or two. But then, I generally pooh-pooh the notion of ghosts and spirits these days so I shouldn't really put forward such a hypothesis, should I? Anyway, the next three days before the warm-up concert will be spent in a frantic search for replacements for the Vetta and the Voodoolab amp switcher unit. Fingers crossed that these problems can be resolved before then.

My custom Carlsbro amp arrived on Thursday evening. The 'Nelsonic Custom-Deluxe.' What a beauty!! I could have included a photo of it along with this diary but...I want this creation to be a surprise and will only unveil it at the concerts. It's much, much closer to my original design than I'd imagined possible...99% identical to the drawings I sent to the Carlsbro team some months ago. They've done an absolutely magnificent job of translating my dream amp into reality. I'm thrilled to bits with it, such a special, unique piece of equipment. Sounds lovely too, 'though I haven't had time to fully experiment with it's extremely flexible tonal control system due to the aforementioned problems with the rest of my gear. Once I've got to grips with it there will be some wonderful new sonic avenues to explore. I can't emphasise too much how mind-blowing this amp is. It will be a talking point amongst any guitar players who attend these shows.

The guitar rig I'm carrying on the tour is the most complex that I've ever used, although, for the majority of the band's set, it stays pretty much in a 'rock guitarist' kind of setting. Actually, that's a bit unfair as I've generally chosen material that focuses as much on songs as on the more generally expected guitar workouts. There are, of course, some noisy string bending moments, but equally, there are also some lyrical, emotive tunes that I hope will put across the feeling of time's swift passing and youth's lost lustre that I'm making central to the concept of these concerts. Oh, yes, the concerts are conceptual, themed as it were, not simply a collection of fan's favourite tunes. By now, people should have realised that putting on a straightforward revivalist show is not what I'm particularly interested in. Everything from the incidental music that the audience will hear on the PA system prior to the show's start, right through to the music they will hear when exiting the venue at the end of the concert, has been chosen to enhance this sweet/sad, euphoric/melancholic mood, the precise mood that the shows have been designed to create in the imagination of the listener. It will be an emotional ride but a subtle and warm one. Nothing to do with rock histrionics and outmoded audience rabble-rousing. It will be romantic in the real sense of the word, tough and tender, poignant and poetic. And loud!  The rehearsal room we've used, Hall Place Music Studios in Leeds, has been perfect for the band's needs. Julian and Dominique, who own and run the place, have shown us great kindness and generosity and I'm personally very grateful for their help throughout the last three weeks. Their two dogs, Lucy and Ben, have been a great source of amusement to us all and have brought a smile to problematic days when things might have become otherwise too intense.

Apart from my technical gremlins, the most regrettable event of the rehearsals happened yesterday, the band's last day, when my brother Ian's car, which was parked in the street outside the rehearsal studio, was stolen by a gang of youths. His brand new tenor saxophone was in the boot. It was a very sad end to the day's work and brought us all down to earth with a bang. Poor Ian, he deserves better than this. The crime was reported to the police and I then took Ian home, reassuring him that I'd do all I could to sort out a new saxophone for him. Today, the police called Ian to say that they'd found his car, abandoned, front end smashed in, a wheel missing but didn't know whether the saxophone was in the boot or not. He will find out more in the morning, no doubt. I could quite easily drift into a long and virulent dismissal of modern day culture and society here, an outpouring of frustration and disillusionment, about the loss of respect for others and for one's self, of the ignorance and stupidity at the heart of these kind of anti-social activities, their root causes, etc, etc but none of that can change the fact that this type of crime happens on a regular basis and that the police are often fighting a losing battle. Nor will it put the clock back and restore my brother's belongings to him.

Once again (and again and again), I have to repeat my belief that the only thing capable of improving our lives in this respect is the development of individual understanding and insight. The big question is, how do we alert these people to their own ugly ignorance without imparting further ignorance as we do so... How do we know, those of us who are so prone to pontification on these subjects, that our own invisible ignorance is not partially responsible for other's pathetic actions in the first place?  Much  crime of this nature is committed by a generation that my generation are old enough to be the parents of, or the teachers of. Or am I once more, seeing things in far too black and white terms?  Living the musician's life can cut one off from the harsh realities outside the studio or stage door to some degree. There's something childish about my own existence in this respect. I've never really had to grow up. As much as I complain about my lot, I'm allowed to remain in a continual state of 'play.' When 'real' events impact upon this questionable mode of living, their effect is even more harsh and shocking than if I was more regularly immersed in our contemporary society. Perhaps I'd be tougher, thicker skinned, more immune if my world wasn't so insular. Or would I simply end up dulled and oblivious/indifferent to it all?

A copy of my Diary Of A Hyperdreamer book arrived on my doorstep on Saturday morning, sent by its publishers (Pomona) and fresh off the printing press. I was thrilled to see it in all its final finery. It looks and feels great...hefty too. My first book! It reminded me of the day I first got finished copies of my 'Northern Dream' album, back in 1971. I kept having to go take a look at it to re-assure myself that it was real. Impossible to describe the feeling correctly but here it is again but, as the result of literature this time, instead of music. Suddenly realising, however, that five years of my personal life is soon going to be available in bookstores around the country brings another spin to the experience. A weird feeling and not one that I'm 100% sure about. Perhaps it will be OK.  The remarkable thing is that I never intended the diary to be anything more than an ephemeral, here today, gone tomorrow outpouring of spontaneous musings. But a book? Well, let's see what happens next. Exciting though, for me. Let's hope its potential readers find it so too. Still...amazing.

Now, time for bed. Lots to do over the next three days, all the final preparations before the tour gets underway, choosing stage clothes, dry cleaning, packing, checking notebooks, lyric sheets, guitar sound cues, etc. Many small things but important enough to require thought and care. Thought and care and a lot of love...these are the key words/ ingredients in this series of concerts. Soon, it will be laid in front of our audience and we will stand or fall according to their support. We've reached the point of no return and will have to trust to providence...lap of the gods time. Sex Gods Of Disneyland that is. Play on!

On to October 2004

back to the Diary index