On Tour For DUMMIES

A Fans Guide To Being On Tour

STOP PRESS

 

ILLNESS

 

Illness. Oh yes, illness, the one subject I forgot to mention. Illness the one single luxury that we all take for granted.

How so? I hear you thinking… Well let me tell you how. When you get sick, you take time off from work, and you go home, you go to bed, you rest, the world outside simply goes away. That is the luxury that you and I take for granted.

Never underestimate the luxury of going home to get better.  

That luxury simply does not exist when you’re on the road. Whether you are in a band, or in the crew, or fan following a band, the show simply must go on.

“The show must go on” isn’t just a throw away phrase. When you took time off from work and went home to rest, someone took your place, right. Well, who takes the place of the band member? Who takes the place of the crew member? And from the fan perspective, whether you are there or not, the gig will always go on. Just because you’re on the road and you get sick does not mean the rest of the world gets paused so you can get better.

“The show must go on” is believed to originate from the Circus industry, and that’s what a Rock n’ Roll tour is, it is a circus, a never ending, never pausing performance, that rolls on to the next venue, then the next, then the next. It’s just like a glacier slowly moving down a valley, it simply never stops. It doesn’t matter how sick you get, the show goes on, the circus rolls into the next town or city, the glacier continues to slide down the valley and if you need to evacuate fluid from your body then you find a toilet or a bucket or a window and you do whatever it is you have to do. 

And of course, a Doctor with access to drugs is always big help.

Let me very quickly tell you two of my stories.

 

Germany 2019

Before Covid-19 took my job away, I was working in events driving around Europe and literally living the dream.

I was working on an event in Germany, in the grounds of a castle, and everything was going great, until the Thursday evening when I basically woke up dead in the back of my truck. The next thing I know I’ve got paramedics putting a drip into my arm in what can only be described as a make shift field hospital medical tent type thing. Think Pre-Op in M*A*S*H. I was diagnosed with food poisoning and heat exhaustion.

The night passed and the following day we continued with the load out until I became ill again. This time I ended up in a German hospital and instead of a basic drip into my arm I’m now being pumped full of liquid morphine. It wasn’t just food poisoning and heat exhaustion. Still, I’ve had worse Friday nights.

The night passed, the crew loaded the truck, and on the Saturday morning I discharged myself from hospital. With no opiates in my blood, I was safe and legal to drive.

I then had to get a taxi back to my truck. Complete my truck checks and then drive from the middle German back to Somerset for a Monday load in at 09.00  

I arrived in Somerset late on Sunday evening.

I was the only driver on that job, the show did go on, it had too, and ironically enough, I have video footage of the ambulance arriving as Queen’s, The Show Must Go is playing in the back ground. Don’t believe me? Go and look at my Facefuck page, it’s all there. What you need to understand is this, lots of people kept me alive that weekend, literally. Lots of people took part in that event. Lots of money was raised for charity. Lots of people did lots of unsung work. The show went on and so did I. There was and never will be a pause button.

The following year, almost to the day, it happened again, but that’s another story for another day.

 

Wolfsbane UK Tour 2023

The blogs you have been reading were written in the spring of 2023 and they just sat there, waiting to be posted on the Wolfsbane tour of Nov/Dec 2023. It was my intention to post one blog on each of the nights and that’s what I did, except for this one. This one was written today, 31^st December 2023, because today is the first day I’ve finally been well enough to put down my thoughts.

It wasn’t until I became ill that I realised I needed to write about being ill.

About four to six weeks before the Wolfsbane tour started I caught a cold, it lasted a week and I thought nothing of it, especially as it disappeared so quickly. Less than a week later and the cold returned, but this time it came back full armed.

I was a mess. I was in trouble. This wasn’t just a cold, and I knew it. If I wasn’t careful I was going to end up in hospital. I was running out of time and I knew that too.

I was going to work rattling because of the amount of pills I was taking. Like a fully functioning alcoholic all the drugs did for me was to leave me numb, pain free, a shell of a human being, and as long as I was legal to do my job, I was winning, right.

The tour was due to start on Friday 24^th Nov. On Tuesday 21^st I was told not to come back to work and to take time off because I was so ill. I relented and followed orders. I spent two days in bed basically unconscious.

In my weaker moments I gave genuine thoughts to pulling the tour, the tour I’d spent all year planning and looking forward to.

The opening night arrived and so did I, drugged off my tits, and that’s how I spent the whole tour, drugged off my tits. I took every legal drug I could and I doubled the dose when needed and sometimes more. Whatever it took to get me through the days and then the nights I did. If the virus wasn’t going to kill me then organ failure might, but I’ll worry about that later.

I thought Norwich was going to be the lowest point of the tour for me because of the pain I was in. I was wrong. By the time I got to Blackpool on the last but one night, I was numb, I was literally dead on my feet, it was only the numbness that stopped me from constantly bursting into tears. I was an emotional and physical wreck. I knew people were concerned and few people took me to one side and genuinely asked me if there was anything they could do. It just made me want to burst into tears even more.

I’m not proud to admit that I almost pulled the last night of the tour in London. But I did get there. But at London I just couldn’t hold it in anymore and I did have my moments of bursting into tears. That release. The relief of not quitting.

I didn’t quit. I completed the tour. I’d pay for it later. And I have.

As a side note. All the time I was feeling sorry for myself, I saw Jase going on stage every night, sometimes in a wheel chair and playing with that big daft smile on his face, like he’s always done, except this time he has cancer. Danger really is playing with crippling arthritis. While Blaze had a heart attack and quadruple bypass. If they weren’t going to quit the tour, then neither was I.

My own self-pity left me feeling more numb than the drugs did. I felt a fraud.

 

So, do you really still think I’m “Lucky”? Then go through what I went through and then we’ll swap our experiences over a drink or two.

So, do you really still want to be in a band? Then go through what Wolfsbane are going through or you can tell them about how you were in a band at high school.

“They want to get there, but they don’t want to pay for the ride…” *

So, you want to have these adventures? Then what are you prepared to go through to experience them? Me? I volunteered.

 

* Wolfsbane, “Broken Doll” from the album “Down Fall The Good Guys” (1991) 

 

Thank you Denver.

And good night.

 

Noggin xx