Ten minutes later we screech back into the club lot and send a sandwich board flying. I thank him for the ride, thrusting the mini-Ziplocs into my pocket, and he says very believably that it was his pleasure. Then he gets serious. He must ask me a very important question. In his best English yet, he says carefully, “You are an American.”
Yes.
“Okay, my friend. Tell me what is the reason. Why do you eat your salad first? This is crazy to me.”
OCTOBER 31 / MILAN
The Italian promoter—again, Italian—led us to a folding table in a fenced outdoor area with exactly this:
Paper plate with shattered Lay’s potato chips
Paper plate of hacked-up hot dogs
Nothing. No “3.”
And not enough beer. Before we’d said anything he said, “What. This is . . . ehhh . . . what is for bands. Fu Manchu it is the same.”
“We have a rider.”
“Yes. This is it. So.”
Steve walked in from doing something else, took one look at the arrangements, and said, “Nope.” Nobody was hungry nor would be but that wasn’t the point. It all went very badly. Alain and the guy reared and collided like rams, the rest of the Brit crew barreled in, as did Steve, guido nightclub hooligans descended—lots of shouting, fists, a couple tables went over, people were restrained.
As the promoter was hauled off by the stormtroopy carabinieri I had a flicker of empathy, only because of something he said, before all the unpleasantness, that gave us a good laugh. He said we will have our choice of the females of Milan tonight, that in Milan everyone in a band gets laid automatically, Milanese girls don’t discriminate. “In Meelan,” he said, “even Seebadoo [Sebadoh] get girls.” When we burst out laughing, he said, “No, no! I swear! It is true!”
NOVEMBER 2 / ZURICH
Took the train and had a look around a district of Zurich. Idled in the idyll down by the lake for a while. Bench. Schnapps. Watching little boats, alive and nothing else.
NOVEMBER 4 / KÖLN (COLOGNE)
Two nights here due to ticket demand. They like their stoner rock in Cologne.
Waiting for load-in I was sitting at the bar with a mug of lager I could fit my face into. Above me hung a miniature Stonehenge monument, identical to the one miscalculated in Spinal Tap. The promoter and the bartender said that it was in fact the actual prop from the film. As a rock artifact, Jimi Hendrix’s still smoldering Monterey Strat would hardly be as impressive. The rune was carefully brought down from its hooks and brought to the stage for an impromptu photo session. I tried to incite all parties to the dwarf jig, but in the end had to dance around the thing alone, clicking my heels, etc. For their photo of Fu stood around it, hands pocketed, completely stoic, the druid angle. No one knows who they were . . . or what they were doing.
Album jacket going to print. Still no cover. Our ambition is appreciated but we need to “narrow our scope, a bit, budgetwise,” Miss Management informs us. Compiling the endless “thank you” list the past couple of weeks, this rumpled page I carry around. It’ll require a full panel already; there could never be enough room. Like this morning, Matt says, “Milwaukee chicken shack guy.”
“Who?”
He pretended to spit in his hand.
“Ah. Yes. Of course.”
“The second Milwaukee chicken shack guy, obviously. Not the first guy. In fact, better put that in parentheses or something. So there’s no confusion.”
Parenthetical part will be a squeeze.
Latest is, album release date is pushed until after the new year. We’re an uphill battle without peddling something from a previous century.
NOVEMBER 6 / MÜNCHEN (MUNICH)
The rhythm of touring has calcified. . . . Metastasized might be a better word. I hear the bus engine always, wherever I am, an endless raga-drone. Often enough I feel myself vibrating as if I’m riding in the bus when I’m not. Phantom road textures. I imagine this could be what a fugue state feels like.
Germany is a fugue state.
Bratwurst, bier, Rostbratwurst, bier, Bockwurst, Knackwurst, Fatwurst—Gettinwurst—Weisswurst, Mockwurst, Weinerwurst—bier—Blurtwurst, Dirtwurst, Dinkwurst, mehr bier, Jinglewurst, Hiemerwurst bier, Bierwurst—Couldbewurst . . .
A tour highlight: watching Germans watching a heavy rock concert. The first few rows at any Fu Manchu concert anywhere are a joy to witness, because everyone’s so unashamedly—dutifully—high, and here these Germans are as trashed as the crowds anywhere else, and then some, but they’re scrupulous—the atmosphere is one of unconcealed expectation. The crowd communicates approval and disapproval (more directly translated, what you should be doing and what you should not be doing, the Teutonic concept) and without, it seems, the sort of arbitrary biases (too successful, etc.) natural to audiences in the States. Because we were unknown the Germans had no expectations and we were happy to throw out the set list and go with the flow, make it up as we went. The crowd let us know in no uncertain terms that the first song was gut but remained unmoved by the next two. So we started wanking out extended-proggy punkish improvisations, shots in the dark, and suddenly people were stage-diving, slamming, and for the remainder of the set shouting and pumping fists en masse. This remains an unsettling visual in Germany. Nothing anybody can do about that forever, probably.
HAMBURG / 2:30 A.M.
The Reeperbahn.
The four of us got off the bus on a corner near a park. A car pulled up and the promotions girl from Barcelona or London (Dutch, either way) who had a thing for Eugene hopped out. At which time Eugene mentioned that she might show up. He’d been only half-expecting her, and judging by the expression on his face as she grabbed him and stuffed him into the car, he may have underestimated the situation. Steve tried to get info as to where she was taking him, when he’d be back, etc., but the girl yelled goodbye in German and jumped back in the driver’s seat and peeled out before anybody knew what was happening. Steve said, “Alf Veddershen better be fucking local, whatever it is.”
Then a local pimp was on us, advised us to speak with his associate. He pointed into a McDonald’s teeming with obvious prostitutes. Many were wearing identical, brand-new, white, puffy ski coats, like a uniform. The pimp’s associate could be seen in a booth, holding a single french fry in front of one of the pros, pulling it away every time she tried to grab it.
Cold night. We followed the muffled bass line of “Miss You” to a bar a few blocks away and went in. Two women behind the bar. They were maybe twenty years apart. The older woman addressed us firmly as soon as we entered, her hand going under the counter.
“Zis is not a place fur za Breeteesh.”
“Fuck the British,” said Steve, who entered after Matt and me—“Fucking redcoats.” No one on earth would mistake Steve for anything but an American, his leather cowboy hat, jeans, Tony Lamas. The woman stood down right away.
“You are American zen,” she said, half right. “Itiz fine. Szit.” We took seats at the bar and ordered. The barfrau pulled the pourer off each bottle and filled our glasses. I stared at mine. I had forgotten what a full glass of liquor looked like outside of the bus. Those measured pourers are a true scourge.
In the gloom it was possible to make out a shadowy figure bobbing at a table in a dark corner. Clearly dope-sick. At another table against the far wall a young, miserable junkie couple, in puffy white ski coats, held hands and took turns nodding out. No one else in the place. “Yoo are vat khind uf rohk bahnd,” said the barfrau. More statement than question. She said “rock” beautifully.
“No, no, we’re a baseball team.” Steve says this every time. Whatever it’s supposed to do, it works. The barfrau looked at her partner, the younger woman. The fraulein exhaled smoke toward the ceiling and said, “Beyhzbahl has nein.”
“We’re three each,” Steve said, and they obviously enjoyed this—they barked once in unison without smiling. Easy to read on the barfrau that she’d had a serious prime and was in the midst of another one, of a di
fferent more liberated kind. “Zso. You are looking fuhr guhrlz,” she said. “But you have found zeah ah no gurhls in zis plaze. Only us vimmen.” There was a gentleman being violently fellated on a pinball machine twenty feet away; it had become impossible not to notice. The frau flicked her hand. “Zhat is not a gurhl. Is animals.”
“Vat mewsic du you play?” asked the younger woman, circling her cigarette. Dressed like she’d just come from work, grifting in a hotel lounge. Rock, we said, and cited the usual examples. Stones. Stooges. AC/DC, or Acca Dacca, as the Aussies say.
“Ech,” observed the barfrau.
“She doesn’t like it. She likes bluegrassz. But I like. I like very loud mewsic. Vahn Halen.” We drank to that. It was not hard to conjure a mental picture of drinking games and bizarro flirtation with these two back on the bus. A nice idea, but not quite.
“Yah. Ze bluegrass is goodt. I can blay szome. A leetle.”
“She iss very tahlentedt fuhr ze bahnjoe.”
The door opened and a British rock band entered with much fanfare, and bellied up. Neither woman moved to serve them. The drummer was indignant. (You know immediately who plays what, always.) “Hey!” he said. “Schnell!”
From our point of view, the barfrau’s nonsmoking hand went to the butt of the shotgun under the bar. The guitar player protested that he had invested in the jukebox, and therefore ought to be served.
She reluctantly brought glasses to them, but only filled the pints three-quarters up and charged them double or so. They took it for the moment.
The conversation turned here and there, Steve left, the Brits were barely tended. The frau opined on our place of origin. “Maszachewsitts. Za police in Bahstuhn are ze raszist.” (The bus riots. She remembered that the South Boston state representative at the center of the thing in 1976 was an “ugly, frigid, bitch” and demanded to know her name. None of us knew.) She became vocal on the topic of American police, their “barbaric handcuffs, no better than thumbscrews.” She nodded to Matt. “Yoo prahbablee like zeez hahndcuffs.”
Her friend agreed brightly. “Yah! I szink so! Ha ha!” The Brits demanded another round, without success this time. I slipped off to the bathroom, leaving Matt to write down the show information for the fraulein, who said she’d come even if the barfrau wouldn’t. The couple from the table was in the men’s room. They were kids, nodding, petting each other through their puffy white ski jackets. The guy still held a spike. She looked bad, but he looked much worse. As I went out they were holding each other throwing up. When I returned Matt was gone and so was the British rock band. The frau snapped the shotgun back in place under the bar and poured two more drinks. She told me Matt was in the powder room, and both women cackled. I asked what happened to the Brits.
“Szey vill not be beck,” she said. Her friend laughed and added a punch line but it was in German. Matt emerged from the other toilet and came and sat down. We asked what’s so offensive about British rock bands coming around.
“Szey assoom too much,” she said.
“Szey cahm to Hahmbourg and szey szink szey are za Beatlesz,” said the fraulein.
“Yah. But szey are not za Beatlesz.”
“Only Beatlesz is Beatlesz.”
Then Matt looks down into the glass of Courvoisier in front of him and points out that there is a bug in his drink. The barfrau raises an eyebrow, lights another cigarette, exhales.
“Goodt. Now yoo have szumsing to eat too.”
NOVEMBER 9 / BALTIC SEA
Departed Rostock, Germany, headed for Trelleborg, Sweden, on the ferry called the Huckleberry Finn. It’s new, spanking. The cafeteria—fluorescent lighting; slick, winding, banquettes, neon art shapes on the walls—empty except for crew and bands scattered around, sleeping in booths instead of our usual coffins. All silent except for the television suspended in the corner, on which apes in suits read news in Swedish, and Alain’s snoring, interweaved with the engine rumble.
Very few other passengers aboard apart from us. I’ve seen only one, a Finn, my guess, smoking alone at a table in the disco, the full Saturday Night Fever array of music and lights going. Melancholia mirroballia. There was no one in the store but the checkout girl, who had gray eyes that never moved. Stunning, and batshit. I bought some Viking snack food with six inches of consonants on the package. It was like eating Aquaman’s psoriasis, whatever it was. Tossed it. Managed a smoke on the upper deck, in the stark, Bronze Age wind.
Toward dawn I found the children’s playroom, filled waist-high with blue plastic balls, a little platform, and a slide. I got in there, sank into the balls, and fell asleep looking out the porthole, at fjords.
Back on the bus now, rolling through Sweden, out there like Maine in a weird dream.
Brad and I are sitting upstairs in the lounge. Fu Manchu has been here countless times; Brad points out aspects of the blurring scenery and gives me a detailed rundown of the black metal scene in Norway and Sweden: corpse paint, church burnings, animal—and human—mutilations; gruesome suicides, band members making stew out of each other’s brains, torrents of livestock blood . . . extreme Visigoth deviance. Fu Manchu—Ultra-mellow dudes from Southern California—by extension sometimes intersects professionally, and therefore personally, with these psychopaths. Over here “metal” casts a wide net. More than once I’ve seen the Goo Goo Dolls tagged as a metal band.
We’re watching Candyman again right now. Neither one of us remembers putting it on.
NOVEMBER 6 / MALMÖ, SWEDEN
The backstage area is on the top floor of the club. A barroom with windows looking out on the city is stocked according to our combined riders; there are additional items in our individual dressing rooms, which have gym lockers and showers.
Can’t say enough about the Swedish audience—they had a good time, we had a good time, this is a good part of the world. Post-show there was a party in the barroom upstairs. A couple of the guys from Speedealer (formerly REO Speedealer—Speedwagon filed suit, finally). A clutch of Swedish women in matching T-shirts with Swedish printing on them were the life of the party. “The Swedish blowjob team,” somebody who knew them said, translating the T-shirts.
“They are raising money for a road race.”
“By selling . . . blowjobs?” I said.
“No. Chocolates.”
Sweden. One marveled.
Then it happened.
I lit a cigarette, gagged, coughed. Horrible taste, something wrong with it. Got rid of that and lit another one. Choked on that, too, and the next. The whole box was rotten. Went to my locker and got another pack out of the carton. Lit one, inhaled—disgusting. Bummed a Swede smoke from the door guy. A light of a light brand; it strangled me and made me want to vomit. I was alarmed and disoriented. What it was was I didn’t want a cigarette—I wanted to want one but could not. What good is an addiction if you can’t rely on it?
I bummed a couple more around the barroom, different brands from different people—I wasn’t going down without a fight. Same results. Went out into the hall and stood at the window, breathing, and completely beside myself, in the truest sense. How one even begins to approach a thing like a party, or even hypothetically a Swedish fellatrix, without a cigarette I did not—do not—know. Not the faintest idea. Toppling through space, not smoking.
So I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and hosed the bar. (Just water—they’re color-coded here.) No harm done, until Alain passed through and his feet went out from under him.
NOVEMBER 7 / EINDHOVEN, NETHERLANDS
According to the itinerary, travel from Eindhoven to Amsterdam was to be by train immediately after the show, but after the show no one mentioned that. Steve went to see what was up and returned to the dressing room with Alain. “Sorry, mates, you’re staying here,” Alain said. Nothing to do with him; our not going to Amsterdam was prearranged—he added that he didn’t understand why “at the time.” We called Lenny to say what the fuck.
“Yeah, no. No fucking way you guys are going to Amste
rdam.”
“Why?” I said.
“Why? Quickest fucking meeting I’ve ever witnessed—the do-we-send-the-Unband-to-Amsterdam-for-one-night-in-the-middle-of-a-tour meeting. Under a second long, totally unanimous. Think about it, Mikey.”
I did.
“Enjoy Eindhoven,” he said.
We went into the first drug bar we came to and sat around a hookah for a while, submerged in mingy beanbag tuffets and dreary industrial music watching half-lit people staring at furniture forget to sip tea.
We left and went for a walk around the chic shopping area. My memory is a TV holiday special montage: we point at things in shop windows, cheerily swap bites of street food (me, angelically not smoking), chortling, cocking our heads in empathy at the street urchins bawling for stroopwafels . . .
Back on the bus in the parking lot near the club we watched movies in the lounge, took it easy. Later, when it started snowing, a true Nordic snow, I went up on the roof, where the flakes were just that much fresher. Then some Dutch people walked by and we went with them to a party.
17
WUNT DUNT DUNT
We were back in New York with a good cup of coffee listening to a bad idea.
“Anthrax.”
Eug laughed, hard. Matt said, “I don’t see it,” and it sounded crackers to me, too. Anthrax is a thrash metal band from Queens. It would never occur to me to go to an Anthrax show. Serious knucklehead convention. I’d have to be getting paid to go anywhere near it. Which was exactly what was being discussed. Lenny tried to show us the light.
Adios, Motherfucker Page 17