On Tour For DUMMIES

A Fans Guide To Being On Tour

 

FRIENDS

 

I think it was Irish poet William Butler Yeats that said, “A stranger is a friend you have met yet.” What a wanker.

I bet he was one of those gits that said things like, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around does it make a sound?” And before you write in, yes, I know it was Dr George Berkley an Anglican Bishop, philosopher in the 1600’s, he was an all-round top wanker too.

Yes, it makes a sound. What a total tit. What if you are deaf and it fell over next to you would it fall silently because you are deaf? No! Yes, it makes a sound whether you can hear it or not, whether you are there or not. Wanker!

And before anyone starts banging on about chickens and eggs, it’s always the egg. Fuck’s sake.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I’m surrounded by wankers.

But give him his due, wanker or not, William Butler Yeats was right, so that makes him a right wanker. Right? Well wanker or not, it’s a great quote and I agree with it. Mainly because it’s the truth. 

The people in my life, the people who have meant the most to me, have, I think it’s fair to say, entered my life because of music. Lifetime friendships made at gigs, pubs, clubs, queuing for tickets, fan clubs, online forums, etc…

Yes, it’s tribal and because it’s tribal it can be very brutal at times, but mostly it’s that gang mentally that is very similar the gang mentally of a band, which binds you together. It helps you, it protects you, looks out for you and after you, and just as the band is a gang so are we. Friends for life.

Just as the only people that know what it’s like to be in a band are people in a band, it is only us fans that know what it’s like to follow a band around. The bands have no idea what real sacrifice means, they think they do, but they don’t have slightest idea what we go through, and I doubt if they could survive on the road if they did what we did.

As RUSH once sang, “I can’t pretend a stranger is a long-awaited friend” and I don’t have too either. I know that at some point I’m not only going to meet friends that I haven’t been introduced to yet, but I’m going to meet up with friends I was introduced to last time I travelled that way. *

That is one of the genuine perks of being on tour, knowing that, at some point you are going to have a sliding doors moment, that you are going to meet someone somewhere on the road that is going to totally and completely turn your life around, lift it to a whole new level of joy and understanding.

I for example met Nick in the Hard Rock Café in Tokyo on the Iron Maiden tour in 2008, now what you don’t know is Nick is from one side of the Black Country while I’m from the other, at the time of meeting we lived maybe 20 miles apart, yet it took a Heavy Metal band from the East End of London, that we’ve both been fans of from 1980 to bring us together on the other side of the planet, turns out that we’ve obviously been at the same gigs for years and years and never met and we were both at Wolves v Leeds Utd Boxing Day 1977 (even then they took more). You just couldn’t make this stuff up, but it happens all the time.

And that rush (no pun intended) of knowing that I’m going to travel to somewhere far away and meet friends I haven’t seen in years or simply haven’t met yet, is one hell of a reason for doing it.

 

* RUSH, “Limelight” from the album “Moving Pictures” (1981).

 

Noggin xx