In Search of The Now Man… Part One
Hello. My name is Noggin. I’m typing this in the spring of
2012. In the summer of 2002 Bruce Dickinson played his last solo gigs (five festivals
in Europe). In the spring of 2002, for reasons lost to the myths of time, Laz
contacted me and asked if I would write a Tour Diary for the IMFC (Iron Maiden
Fan Club) Magazine. Why me? I wondered, but I immediately said yes. It wasn’t until
later that I remembered I am totally dyslexic and can’t write to save my life.
The weeks passed by, the gigs arrived, came and went and I
spent hours and hours in a hotel in Ellesmere Port writing up my notes by hand.
Some months later I got a text off Mick who mentioned some
tour diary thing that was in IMFC Magazine No.66. Not having a clue what he was
banging on about, he faxed it over to me. WOW! It was my Tour Diary. It was the first time I’d seen it. It was heavily
edited. Arguably, badly edited. However, the edits where necessary. To this day
I stand by them. Laz had taken my ramblings and turned them into something
worth reading.
IMFC Mag No.66 - it still makes me smile when I see it
Then two things happened. Firstly, people who knew me said positive things about the tour diary, while secondly, I found out people who didn’t know me were saying positive things about the tour diary and it was a wonderful ego trip.
As the years have passed by, people have mentioned
re-writing it, web sites, all kinds of ideas and thoughts. I never did find
anyone willing to help me start up a little basic web site. So until that day
arrives, I’ve decided to re-write it and simply forward it as an E-Mail (and
now I’m blogging it – Why didn’t I do this years ago…? D’OH!).
I hope I haven’t rambled on too much. Also, I hope my words
don’t read like, look at “ME”, I hope they read like, look what I’ve “SEEN”,
look where I’ve “BEEN”, look at what I’ve “DONE”, look at the “FUN”.
It would be very easy for me to write this with hindsight. I
have decided not to. I have decided to leave the mistakes in.
So, without further to do, here it is, an un-edited version.
For good or for bad. I hope it makes you smile.
Graspop, Belgium
Ticket and wrist band
Thursday July 4th
05.05
Woken by the sound of tyres screeching to a halt and some sort of scuffle,
resulting in someone repeatedly bouncing off the front door to my house. By the
time I was dialling 999 I was standing stark naked looking out of bedroom
window at the police placing someone
into the back of their squad car. Um! I stumbled back into bed thinking this
was going to be a strange and very long day.
22.00 Walsall.
M6 Junction 9. The coach arrived early which was good, because it was just
starting to rain. I sat at the front and gave the driver directions up to
Junction 7. Once we were back on the M6 I slept for England.
23.58 Honest.
I woke up just as the coach left the M1 and joined the A41 and off into London.
Nothing ever prepares me for the impact of London. London is
the greatest city on the planet. The only two negatives about London are the
people who live there and the tourists that clutter it up... It’s true and you
know it.
Friday July 5th
00.30
Victoria Coach Station. The 4th bleeds into the 5th and
there have been no major terrorist attacks (that we know of anyway).
I can’t help but be overtaken by the sense of adventure as
more fans of more bands join the party. We depart Victoria 30 minutes ahead of
schedule and make our way to Dover.
London purrs like a kitten, like she always does and as we
wait for her to spring into life we quietly leave her behind. Parliament
Square. Westminster Abbey. Big Ben. Westminster Bridge. The Thames. The Eye. I
smile to myself and I remember.
01.00 Greenwich.
The Meridian. We really are now heading east. I try to get some sleep, but I can
hear the vodka on the ferry calling to me and it’s hard to think of anything
else. Thoughts of my daughter (Anna) break my concentration and I wonder if she
will be doing the same as this one day. I wonder what the band will be.
02.15 Dover.
HGV after HGV pour into England while caravan after caravan plod off into
Europe. Perhaps it’s because of the generation I belong to, or the things I’ve watched
on TV or the subjects I studied at school, but I can’t help but think of The
Battle of Britain, Dunkirk/Dunkerque, D-Day and how over the years leaders of
far off lands have looked at this part of my country and salivated at the
thought of invasion. I guess in a strange way it’s now our turn to invade. We
stand. We sit. We wait. Neatly in rows. In columns. Vehicles simply waiting to
invade Europe. Perhaps that’s too strong a way to describe it, I’m not sure.
But we quietly wait. Growing greater in number. Waiting… Waiting… For the
whistles to blow…
03.45
Finally, we set sail for France. Once on the ferry we all head straight to the
bar. I start writing a “wish you were here” card to my mate Danny who has just
been sent to prison. But on a positive note, I got his job so I got a
promotion… WHAT!?
05.00 Calais.
06.00 Uh? We’ve lost an hour. Thanks to BST and GMT and European Time we have
lost an hour. That’s one hour of missing drinking time. GUTTED! Typical of the
French to perform such an under handed trick.
06.15 We
do what everyone else does when they enter France and fill up with cheap fuel.
We head off towards Dunkerque and you all know what happened
there. I sit and watch the landscape go by and I can’t help but remember what
happened there and think of all of those people that died trying to defend and
then re-take that piece of land. It’s 60+ years since WWII but it seems so
fresh to me as I travel along those roads. Sometimes I feel so proud to be
British.
09.15
Awoke only to see a sign reading “Graspop 4” as we made our way through what I
can only describe as a “LEGO”™ village.
A short time later we drop off the campers and because of
the heat there was a little bit of envy, but not enough to drag me away from a
five star hotel and a hot power shower. The thing I noticed was, Hey! Time
Warp! It was like 1982 all over again. Skin tight jeans, denim cut offs,
leather jackets etc… It’s as if the “Grunge Fashion” thing had never happened
and as for all that “Sub-pop” stuff, not one Nirvana shirt to be seen.
FANTASTIC! Perhaps all these people were too busy having a good time to be
miserable. I felt an instant attraction to these people.
As we made our way through villages and towns towards
Eindhoven and our hotel I noticed that the bigger the town the more people seem
to ride bicycles and that’s how it should be. Maybe they know something that we
Brits haven’t learnt yet.
09.50 Enter
Holland, except the sign reads “Netherlands” and I’ve never really under stood
that.
10.25 Arrive
at our hotel, Hotel Dorint (junction of Vestdik and Ten Hagestraat) only to be
told that our rooms weren’t ready and wouldn’t be ready until at least noon.
(Until I get these
images scanned in properly then these will just have to do)
A few beers later and clutching my room key I head towards
my lovely power shower. I had already decided that I wasn’t going to the
festival today because there was no one that wanted to see and to be honest I’d
rather go shopping and explore Eindhoven.
Find the hotel radio and tune into The BBC World Service. “This is London calling…” Oh Joy, my
little piece of England, “And finally. Readers
of “Welsh Waters Wonderful, Isn’t it?” have voted the water of Birmingham the
best in Britain...”
After a quick shower it was off to explore Eindhoven. 30
minutes later… Chuff Me! Or words to that effect. To say there is nothing to do
or of interest in Eindhoven would be wrong because there is PSV Eindhoven and
Girls… but that’s about it… so I had a great time… I made a mental note that my
daughter was never to come here… hahaha…
Shopping. Puma, Speed Cat, High Tops, Black and White, FIA,
fire proof. How much? RESULT! No one back home will have these. It wasn’t until
later that I thought about how I would get them home in their box… Um… I hadn’t
really thought that through had I…?
22.00 I decide
to check out the night life of Eindhoven. I found a street full of bars about
two minutes walk from the hotel and right at the end of the street I found a
biker bar which is so cool. Here is a brief description, spit and sawdust, road
signs, eleven piece drum kit on top of a pool table, toilets visible to the
public (REALLY!) condom machine on the wall in the bar, “V-Twin Harley Engine”
modified to pour beer, a hand painted sign that reads, “spitting at the barmaid
strictly prohibited, violators will be shot”… Does that paint a picture? Good.
Now go there. Here is the name and address. Thunder Road House Café,
Stratumiend 105-107, 5611, ER Eindhoven. Ask for Brad and drink called
“Flugel”. Trust me I’m a doctor.
Thunder Road House Café
Let the duck out!
Saturday July 6th
08.00 Alarm
clock welcomes me into the real world with a thump and while having breakfast I
do the post card thing before I go and get them sent off.
11.00
Sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin… Here comes the science bit… Anyone not
interested in football should look away now. While across the street at the
post office getting the post cards sent off I bought a map of Eindhoven. I spy
with my little eye something beginning with… PSV Eindhoven. FUCK! It was right
around the corner from the hotel.
11.15 I
leave, “In Search Of…” PSV Eindhoven.
11.25 I
find PSV Eindhoven. Just how small is Eindhoven?
Now this is a little strange, even for me, but I swear this
is true. As I walked along “18 September Plein” towards “Mathildelaan” and PSV
I stumbled into a cockerel, a real live cockerel, doing what cockerels do best.
He was one of those mad multi coloured ones that the French always seem to
smuggle into the Parc de Princess whenever they are playing England at rugby
and even stranger still manage to find their way onto the pitch if the French
are winning…. It’s true and you know it.
And so, there I stood, in the middle of the street, at 11.20
on Saturday July 6th taking a photo of a mad multi coloured cockerel
with the PSV stadium rising out of the back ground like some freshly landed
spaceship.
There it is, for all
the people who over the years have asked me, “Was there really a chicken?”
12.00 Once
back at the hotel I grab my stuff and head for the bar (I think you might have
noticed a running theme here…). We all meet up and I tell some of the guys
about the bar I found last night while patiently listening to the other guys and
their plans to steal those Heineken glasses.
13.00 We leave for the festival.
14.00
Arrive at the festival. WOW! It was sunny. That doesn’t happen at Donington…
It’s true and you know it.
14.15
Enter the site. Get T-Shirts. What? No Bruce shirts? Oh well, let the silliness
begin… I had already decided I wasn’t going to rush the barrier. I was going to
do this festival properly. Check out all the bands, on all the stages, all the
different foods, drinks, visit the stalls, meet up with old friends, find new
ones, after all, isn’t that what it’s all about?
For the back see Part Two
By the time I had reached the Main Stage Area “Tristania” were in the middle of a quite a good set. I slowly made my way towards the sound desk. The “Tristania” set ended and I stood there watching the sound guys doing their stuff only to find that when I turned around the crowd had gone. So I calmly walked up to the barrier. I couldn’t believe it. This wouldn’t happen at Donington. Centre stage on the barrier 40 minutes before the Metal God… Chuffing Hell!
15.35 Rob Halford comes on stage and I suddenly realised that I had left Walsall some 40
hours and 400 miles earlier only watch someone from Walsall performing on a
stage in a field in Belgium.
I love the way Rob simply strolls around the stage like it
was his kitchen, then what starts with a simple guitar problem develops into a
backline problem (mainly with the Bass I think) and then before I know it the
whole set descends into a Spinal Tap type event. The gig grinds to a halt.
The band leaves the stage. Crew run all over the back of the
stage like ants over a freshly dropped sticky sweet.
What seems like an eternity or two later the backline is
back up and running. The band walks back on stage and I actually heard through
the monitors Rob say, “There is a God… well a second God anyway…” I guess you
had to be there but it was so funny.
“Cyberworld”, what a song to come back onto, only then to
have the plug pulled on a blistering “Electric Eye”, which in a twisted way
made it much more effective. Rob and the rest of the band shout their thanks
and their apologies and then leave the stage. A very brutal end to a set.
17.20 Here
comes Bruce, on stage and on time.
Spot the difference –
win a prize… Chris the roadie and Chris the rock star
I will not go on about the set list because that’s boring
and you have already read the set list on the internet anyway. I am going to
try to paint pictures of the important things like, the smiles on their faces,
the massive grins that they carried all over that stage, the obvious fun the
band was having. Now please don’t get me wrong, all the other bands played good
well delivered sets, but that’s exactly their failings, were they enjoying it?
Personally I’m not sure, but this band looked like they were getting off on it
me than us.
Bruce reminds
me of one of those polar bears you find in old decaying concrete enclosures in
those old eastern bloc countries. The way they pace up and down across their
little piece of concrete stage performing for the masses who don’t care or
realise that it is losing its mind, wants to escape, wants to break free, a
poor little tortured soul that wants to be anywhere but there… (Hey… it’s just
an observation).
Alex simply
stands with his back to the amps, legs apart, so wanting to be in Status Quo,
while doing his best not to look like David Cassidy (what do you mean, you’ve
never noticed…).
Robin having
known him for some time and knowing how much of a Maiden fan he is, I could at
least guess as to how he was feeling. To be playing with Bruce and how much he
was getting off on playing those Maiden songs (it was good job they playing outside cause you
wouldn’t have got a smile that big indoors).
Pete the
conduit, the connection between Bruce, Alice Cooper and KISS, well, in a
strange and twisted way. Anyway, have I seen him in Sack Trick? I can’t
remember, but then, I’ve seen everyone else has been in Sack Trick. Am I the
only one that thinks he looks good in black PVC trousers and shirt?
Chris gave
me the biggest smile when he saw me. He really is starting to prowl the stage
properly. During “Innerspace” we had massive eye contact as we both sang the
opening lines and for all the obvious reasons it meant so much.
All too soon it was over. How could 60 minutes pass so
quickly? I hoped other bands were watching. This band has such a presence. More
than most of the other bands combined. Was it the performance of the day? No.
Because I don’t believe it was a “performance”, I believe I witnessed something
very real and genuine. Something very visceral that you could easily reach out
and touch. This was easily one of the best Bruce gigs that I’ve seen.
Was that really Dave Mustane on stage right down in the pit
watching gig?
After the Bruce set I removed myself from the barrier and went
off to explore. I spent the rest of the evening into the night simply wondering
around, doing what I set out to do. Met old friends. Make new ones. I saw so
many different bands, Tristania, Hypocrisy, Cannibal Corpse, Deviate,
Biohazard, Immortal, Machine Head, Dream Theatre, and Slayer, some of those bands
I wouldn’t normally bother with.
What was with those bicycles upon that fence? Did everyone
cycle to the gig? That’s something else that wouldn’t happen at Donington
either.
And yes, that really
is one biker giving a piggy back to another biker… If I hadn’t seen it…
As a footnote to the day Halford stole the day. Simply
because sometimes the best gigs are the gigs where it all goes tits up.
At the end of the day I went for a walk up to the village and
I had a kebab… you can take the boy out of Walsall…
Pass guide for security
Sunday July 7th
00.00 Somewhere
close to just after midnight we found our coach and were driven through the
night back to Eindhoven. Some slept while the rest of us told tales of our
adventures.
02.00 Back
at the hotel around 8 of us decided to go to the biker bar I had discovered
earlier. There was still 2 hours of drinking time. We walked briskly. We drank,
talked, drank, danced and drank some more and isn’t it funny how 8 people can
see the same gig and come away with 8 different opinions… We did our best in
trying to drink the bar dry. Eventually it was throwing out time. We walked
back to the hotel, well, I type “walk”, it’s a sad lookout for human kind and
evolution if how we got back to our hotel could be called “walking”…
04.15 What
happened next I don’t have time to put into words but, to the people who were
in the corridor, “Hello”, to the people we woke up, “Sorry”, to the hotel
security, “It wasn’t me”, and to Argon Events, we are VERY sorry, but it was so funny…
08.00 Oh
the joy of an alarm clock… oooooohhhhhhh my fucking head… I curse the name
Bacchus as I pack my ruck sack… A liquid breakfast of orange juice and paracetamol
and while still cursing the name of Bacchus I head off to the bar to meet up
with everyone else and to have beer and set about stealing one of those
Heineken glasses and to find out why the hotel staff were treating us in a such
negative fashion…
We did what…? When…? It wasn’t me… I wasn’t there…
FLASHBACK! Oh my fucking God… Hiding under the bed you say? Really? That is
funny… I put my Heineken glass back.
We checkout and while at the reception desk I said to the
most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life, “Which way to
England?”, she just looked at me with this really cute sly smile, a glint in
her eye and said “Go west young man”, as she pointed out the door… I was going
to rush off for a wafty crank but I’d already rushed off… I asked for a tissue
and quietly walked away…
10.30 We
leave the hotel and head off to pick up the campers. All the telegraph poles
are concerete over here and quite pretty they are too, as far as concerete
telegraph poles go.
10.55 There
is that sign again, except this time it reads “Belgique”. Now I understand that
but how does “Holland” become “Netherlands”? Answers on a post card to me…
11.10 We
arrive at the camp site. Bloody Hell fire. I could not believe my eyes. You
know how in England girls who are into Death Metal, Hardcore, extreme stuff
like that tend to mad ugly old bats that shouldn’t be allowed out… even in the
dark… It’s true and you know it. Well
not over here they’re not, the girls over here are stunning.
13.30 I
don’t remember falling asleep, only waking up somewhere inside Belgium, only to
see a fighter jet going through its display routine. I have no idea what the
air base was but I did see a road sign that read “Dunkerque 25km” so that
narrows it down a bit. As for the aircraft it looked like a “Hawk”. Do the
Belgian Air Force have them? Could it have been an “Alpha Jet”? To be honest it
was too far away and we were moving. For about 5 to 10 minutes I watched as the
jet ripped up the sky in the same way a child does with their toy plane. Great
stuff.
13.40 There’s
another one of those signs except this one reads “France”. Why didn’t it read
“Francis”?
Dunkerque… Um…
14.10 Calais
and we do what everyone else does when they leave France for England and that’s
top up on duty frees and cheap fuel. We make our way to the ferry. What, no
passport checks? BASTARDS! Typical of the French to perform such an under
handed trick.
Have you ever seen the film “Mary Poppins”? Well, you know
that bit where they are having the Tea Party on the ceiling and Mary Poppins
says to Uncle Albert, “It’s time to go home now”, and Uncle Albert says, “Oh,
that’s sad”, and they all start coming down to earth? Well that’s what the
coach party started to feel like and by the time we got on the ferry people
just drifted off to do their own thing, myself included. A few of us did get
together in the bar but the vibe was changing and we all knew it.
16.45 Dover,
England. We all roll off the ferry and head up and over those white cliffs.
18.00 I
woke as we approached the outskirts of London. Road works, traffic jams,
diverted traffic… etc… it’s so good to be back.
18.50 What
a place to cross The Thames, Westminster Bridge, what a skyline and doesn’t it
just piss all over Manhattan… It’s true and you know it.
18.55 Victoria
Coach Station and the first of the drop off points. The coach is almost silent.
No one speaks. Good byes are whispered. Plans made. London sights wait for our
next visit. The M1 winds north. Walsall here we come. The sky grows dark.
21.25 Dropped
off, Wolverhampton Road, opposite The Orange Tree pub which is about 2 miles
from where Rob Halford grew up as a kid.
21.50 Home.
Everything goes into the washing machine. In 9 hours I’ll be up and having to
re-pack. I live in Walsall but I work in Ellesmere Port, so I’ve got another
week in a 3 star hotel with free food and drink. It’s a hard life isn’t it…
The End of Part One.
To Be Continued…
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