by Tyla Pallas
And I have no doubt a few choruses of ‘Rabbit, rabbit’ topped off with ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Mr. Burns would have felt proud! Henry was to later quit the Dogs halfway through a gig in Leeds stating that the Dogs didn’t need a keyboard player. He also left his B3 Hammond and Lesley Cabinet for our roadies to cart around for the next two weeks, incase he re considered. He came as weird as he left. We turned up at John Henry’s rehearsal rooms in a pre production of our ‘Straight’ tour in 1990. There we were supping pre production pints from the barrels of the pub on the corner of Brewery and Caledonian road when Deptford John sauntered in ordered a lager and informed us that a geezer had just instructed them to help him in with his Hammond and Lesley while he parked his car.
- How interesting, who’s round is it? I recall saying.
Upon our return to work we did indeed find a keyboard set up, and Henry in waiting. We ran through the set and he got the job. Room and board, on the tour bus for a few months, this included drinks and food. We deemed it to rude to mention a wage we told his lawyers from our LA offices in a post tour finance meeting in a bar just off Hollywood Boulevard. We were more concerned where a couple of $100,000 had vanished to rather than an ungrateful individual asking for PDs from a year ago. It wasn’t our fault he didn’t like Jack and Coke and bubble and squeak everyday for a fortnight now was it?
On top of that our money troubles seemed to just pile higher and higher. We had allegedly spent over $300,000 making the ‘Straight’ album in two studios in Los Angeles. I was also being accused of breaking Rod Stewarts favourite microphone in Cherokee Studios and was being asked to cough up $10,000 to replace the capsule. We later settled out of court, as we had done with the Maison Rouge Fulham Broadway Studio where I had put a slight hole on the control room window when having problems tuning my 12 string acoustic after necking a bottle of Absolute while having an argument with my landlord over the fire in my kitchen and playing loud music after 10pm on a weekday. To top it all I was now residing in a flat previously lived in by Bros and so had to turn the music up to drown out their remaining fans singing ‘When oh, when will I be famous?’ outside my bloody living room window all night! Unaware that they had moved! I actually said to myself at the time ‘I’ll write this all down one of the days’.
Well the $100,000 turned out to be in our now X managers sky rocket after he had made a few cash withdrawals from banks in Dublin, Manchester, Paris and Berlin. He also bought a Russian hat and a bit of the wall as a souvenir and had the nerve to buy me a Tag Heuer watch for my birthday for $1,000 with our cash! Oh well at least I got a watch. I did however feel quite happy once I had lost it on a beach in Spain. It was like getting to the end of seven years bad luck.
It was on that Straight tour that while in Japan I noticed how locked into the world of the endless party we had become. In an interview I was asked to comment on the war. I think I’ve mentioned this earlier in the book, It’s all a blur sometimes.
- What war? Was my answer.
- Err, the Gulf War. Said the interviewer.
I think I managed to blag my way through the answer but basically I had no idea what was going on outside what we as the Dogs did. Not a clever position to be in as I had always prided myself on knowing what the fuck was going on in the world. Sure we watched films and read books...sometimes, but a newspaper apart from the occasional red top never made it on out things to do agenda.
Being on tour you all go a bit mad. At one point I remember someone coming up with the idea of pinching the largest item from a petrol station. I think it was either France or Italy because I remember Jo had managed to steal a rather large bottle of vino. The cork itself was as big as him. Though he didn’t win, Scabs came a close second with sack of potatoes but Deptford Andy came first with a seven foot stuffed Dragon! We had our fair share of trouble with the Police over the years. While on our 1989 Errol Flynn tour somewhere in Yorkshire in a Holiday Inn I was enjoying a night off and was spending it as no surprise in the hotel bar with my running Dog managers, Brian and Stuart. I had already managed to break my right arm on the first date of the tour hitting a wall in Stoke. The next day they drove me to London where a Harley Street surgeon set it so I could continue to play the guitar. It was also set in a new lightweight fiberglass cast, but could still be written on! So there we were getting merrily rat assed when who should walk into the bar none other than a German Karate team, who obviously didn’t follow the code. Words were exchanged a few fists of fury flew about the bar and I was put in the lift and sent to my room. Still in a fighting mood I got into an argument with my American girlfriend who was in the process of dying her hair red. She accused me of not spending the night off with her. Well I didn’t fancy watching her dye her hair and so I’d come down to the bar. In anger I smashed a mirror and attempted to throw the TV out of the window. It was tightly screwed to its wooden base and so instead fell face down. Smash. She fled the scene of the crime and ran down to reception. With all the red hair dye now all over the place, it truly did look like some heinous crime had been committed and so one thing led to another and before we knew what was going on I was being escorted from the hotel by plod and accompanied by Stuart to the local nick. Fear not though the coppers up north were a fair lot and basically we all sat around a table telling jokes and drinking tea and coffee until it was time for my release approximately 6am and we were dropped off back at the hotel. No sooner had I got back in my hotel room than there was a knock on my door. Room service. I opened the door to a hive of activity going on, doors being knocked, phones ringing, voices of all accents echoing down the corridors, but the main words were ‘Its a bust!’ and ‘drug squad’ I for once was not in possession of anything except my sense of humour, but it appeared that Steve had answered a question with the wrong answer and was being escorted to the nick. After the fracase what with the whole checking out process we travelled to the nearest pub and set up camp whilst ordering hairs of the dogs all round. Ok so Steve was in the cells, he’d been charged with possession amongst other things a Middlesborough accent. There was a gig tonight in the said town, for arguments sake lets call it Leeds. Brian and Stuart sat at one table with a couple of plain clothed detectives negotiating the situation. Bam meanwhile was coming up on an eighth of hash he’s managed to swallow, Jo sat quietly worrying about the whole situation and I ordered another round while the crew came in an out while setting up the gear and inquiring what the news was, and of course making they didn’t miss out on any rounds. It was at this point that a friend of ours who was residing in Amsterdam walked through the doors of the pub strode straight up to the table where we were sitting and announced that in the lining of his Parker was stitched a 1,000 tabs of acid. Not now Colin, were a bit busy, and see those two blokes over there, well they are plod, so keep yer voice down. Finally after a few hours a deal was struck, Steve was released with a warning, we all went for dinner with the boys in blue and their families, the show went down a storm, we were however barred from all the chain of Holiday Inns for the rest of the tour. I think we’ll survive. We did.
What I didn’t nearly survive, or actually shouldn’t have survived was the time in Barcelona when my mate Jordi who at the time worked selling mushrooms and truffles. That’s all, his boss was a multi millionaire from simply the sale of mushrooms, and I thought fish n chip shops in the right location did well! So he came round my gaff we had a few joints an a glass of wine and decided to cook these exotic looking mushrooms, which I can only describe as big folded umbrellas for want of a better description about four to six inches in length, that about fourteen centimeters for those of you reading in metric. So I bunged a tickle of olive oil in a big frying pan and bunged them in. I did notice that they didn’t seem to have the shrinkage that most mushrooms have, and virtually remained the same size when I assumed they were done as they felt quite tender, and so along with a few other vegetables and more vino tinto we set about eating. I think I ate about three or four. The night came to a close, Jordi bid me
goodnight and went home. I lay on the sofa and watched some TV of no importance. I drifted off to sleep only to wake a short while later feeling violently ill, and also extremely trippy, I felt very anxious. I wasn’t sick, though I felt I should be so I made myself vomit. Still I felt very shaky and to say the least weird, sweating but feeling cold and shaking at the same time. I rolled a joint and had a glass of wine and found something funny to watch on TV to take my mind off feeling very very strange. I again drifted off to sleep and went off into a weird selection of dreams including being able to breath under water and looking up but instead of the sky, it was the surface of the ocean, then time went forward at a million trillion miles per hour, like watching a film in fast forward, then slowed down and went in reverse, I saw whales crossed with elephants as again I dreamt myself under the ocean. I woke the next morning feeling absolutely worn out from my dreams. I felt I needed to sleep and so I went to bed until about 8pm that evening. Do you ever dream so much that once you wake up you feel the need to actually go to kip for a few hours to recover? I do.
I called Jordi and asked if he was okay - he said yes he was fine. Though we later found out that the variety of mushroom we had eaten should actually be soaked overnight or at least for eight hours and then they should be boiled a minimum of two times before consumption – not just chucked in a pan as we did! Other wise I found out such reactions resembling the effects of LSD could be felt – and then you were violently sick as in vomiting- and then to make matters even worse you would be likely to lapse into a coma – followed by Death!!
Bloody Nora. Once again Lady Luck was leaning up against me fireplace smokin’ her pipe!
I don’t recall but…I didn’t ask anyone to be born, I don’t intend on asking anyone to allow me to die.
So in between I better keep myself busy to especially not think about the latter. My chosen realm being lucky and sharp as is Bullshit. Write what everyone thinks but before they think it, better still make it into a poem or a song, a film an epic a bloody religion. Become greater than God but keep both feet on the earth by being one of the people.
Demi God I think is the correct word.
Remember who you are, who you used to be, who you wanted to be and what the fuck you are trying to do now once you are all grown up and your dreams have long been washed away on the tide of time, the time that is the chaos of being something you deem worthy of other fuckers splashing out large lumps of hard earned cash so that you can ignore them and mingle now with the ones who are in the know, or basically seem far more interesting than Beryl down the pie shop, Stan up the ladder, Phil down the pub and poor old, yeah poor old Jimmy on a slab with not a penny to his name or a mourner to lay a grasp of flowers on his dirt bed.
If it wasn’t only last Sunday morn, I saw him falling through the dawn
With a sour look in eyes, smelling of piss and lies. But these days he has only unto himself to lie to, and with. When in winter he sleeps in the woods,
The snow falls far from his bitter breath
That releases his dreams into the fog of days.
He used to think so hard and be driven so wild
His madness was a sadness that had lived with him since he was a child
Along came the maidens, the friends far and wide
But none of them could help a man
That would not help himself, from inside
He lashed out and lashed in
He doggy paddled in an ocean where all but him had learnt to swim
But he made it to the shore and then like a fool dived back in, For on land he could not walk.
He could only crawl.
With no spine to raise him and no fins to swim,
He took to the skies where his dreams would begin. Over the moons and far away he came upon a land
Where he chose to stay.
No one here knew of his past
So in the highest trees he built the highest of nests
No one in this land had heard of Kings or Queens.
Of Presidents, or Prime ministers or Saints or Popes
Or of Gods or Death or Heaven or Hell.
Television, Radio, or the worldwide web.
No one had heard of hate until his breath choked them with the venom of tongues
His voice from high told of plagues and famine Of Greed and Violence
Things no one would or could imagine
With all this pestilence
He struck fear into hearts that knew no fear His mind bred hatred.
And with no spine he learnt how to stand And with no fins he swam all over this virgin land
Then the ring of the bell and the bus driver’s voice
Drove a river of fear into an abyss of pain
He lay on the seat warmed only by the stain that wept onto the floor
-This is the last stop buddy, you got to get off here,
You can’t keep going around in circles stinking this place up of your piss that was once beer, You got to do something with your life, you got a spine, you can walk, be it bent from the thought of swimming to the surface of your unconsciousness. I know you got a family and I’ve seen your beautiful wife, I see her struggling on this same route with a pushchair full of hope, and faith by her side.
I’ve been where you were once and I’ve been where you are now, but better still I’ve been where you could be if you let me tell you how.
Over the moons and far away is a place you should go one of these days,
The sooner the better, the nearer you are,
Don’t worry about hierarchy; it rides a different kind of star
His fingers snapped and a magicians robe dropped to reveal.. The world as a globe in the palm of his hands all of this did lay. And his wife’s voice slowly drifted in from the day.
-‘’Jimmy, Jim, are you with us my dear or has God taken you To his fields that are clouds?’’
-No I’m with you pet, I was just writing a song, something I dreamt of when I was once young…
I’m working on an ending here’s what I have so far.. Over the moons and far away, lived a man and his love to this very day,
Their children were angels.
Their lights shone bright
They’d been through a lot
Yet their day had not even reached night.
The thing about my life is that I can come out with a phrase like, I was in my hotel room in Phoenix Arizona (I grew up in Wolverhampton, England remember) So I’m in my hotel room and I decide that I want to do a few paintings, which as I’m on tour I like to sell at shows for a few extra readies. I’d come up with an idea while in my hotel room in Chicago, it was a toss up between going and seeing the Pogues but as I wasn’t on the sauce at the time I decided to be constructive instead of destructive. I made a stencil of my world famous ‘Guitar man’ and purchased some spray paint, no not car spray, that smell will linger for weeks, (I sprayed my crutches Black in Germany when I was suffering from a broken foot once, not a good idea) so not a good idea to do the same in a hotel room. The stuff I got was proper art shop spray, non smelly and twice as much as graffiti cans. So I place the stencil over a blank sheet of paper and spray, once the stencil is removed you have a background, all I have to do is fill in the guitar man at my own leisure. This way I can knock up a considerable amount of backgrounds at once, kind of like a production line. I’d bought this heavy-duty watercolour paper that would stand up by itself, so I lined up a few sheets and began spraying. When I moved them from the wall I realised I had sprayed by accident the hotel wall. Shit! I thought. Ding, light bulb idea, off I went to a hardware store and purchased some paint to match a piece of the wallpaper I had removed from behind the sofa in the hotel room, it was of course Magnolia. I wish I had shares in that colour, I’d be minted. So back to the room. I painted over my mistake, but the Magnolia was too dark. The wall had been faded by the Arizona sun on this bit of wall by the window, but not behind the sofa, I would have had to bought a gallon of paint to cover the whole wall s
o I came up with plan B. I would ring up the front desk and complain of a weird smell in my room. I’d booked in for 3 days, and paid in advance. Sure enough they sent someone up who agreed they could smell something but couldn’t be sure what it was so they agreed to move me and my artist supplies to another room. Problem solved.
I was off the booze due to a slight mishap in India with some cobra venom. But that’s another story....
I was awoken by my Moby, whistlin the theme tune of ‘Only Fools and Horses’ in my shell like.
-Do ya wanna open up for Hanoi Rocks? we could do it as the Hot Knives. Bellowed my Geordie mate Spikey.
- ‘fraid I can’t make it old bean; I’m off to visit the good ol’ U S of A. Shall not be available for bookings for a good few months, make that arf a year.
- Way eye, well it’s not until September mayte! (It being February now)
- Awrite, well we’ll see, but they should be bloody supportin’ us you know, they never charted in the UK above number 80.
- Al reet. God Bless!
I hung up the phone and stared at Mr. Big, John (Dryland’s) cat staring back at me.
- ‘spose you’ll be wanting some grub eh fatty?’ (To the Mr Big not John.)
John dropped me off at Heathrow Terminal 5. I stood in the long line pretending to read a book but really I was eavesdropping on the conversations around me. Airports are funny places and great for just watching the way people react before they get on the plane. Hardly any of them are relaxed, including myself, always looking at the boarding screens whenever possible. Checking tickets, and boarding cards and passports, on their mobile phones saying such things as,...
- Yeah I’m just waiting to board
- Its been delayed..blah blah....
- Lots of different accents, lots of different languages, but all
saying the same things. I would learn a few things on this flight, so I wont fuck around with any formalities of the goin through customs routine, its never really eventful leaving your own countries, that all starts when you attempt to leave or enter a foreign one.