Upon arriving in London I was most pleased to see that there are actually bright red phone booths everywhere, and policemen actually do wear tall, funny hats. I did a lot of shopping, a lot of eating, and then some more shopping and more eating. I didn’t do any sightseeing, I didn’t feel the need to see Big Ben or Buckingham Palace or anything like that. I was more interested in just checking the city out. My most impressive acheivements for the four days in London? Taking the subway multiple times and not getting lost, but even more impressive…I did not get hit by a car, I came really close a few times, since my brain was not capable of grasping the concept of looking right THEN left when crossing the street. I’ve been honked at a lot the last 4 days. I’ve gotten used to it.
The gig here was a little hard to manage. The stage is on the ground floor, but the production offices, dressing rooms and catering were all up 4 flights of stairs, or you could wait 5 minutes and take a huge freight elevator. Neither option is all that appealing. I opted for stairs, and it was a painful reminder of how out of shape I am. The upside to this problem was that we had golf carts to drive the band around.
I love golf carts.
I would drive one all the time if they were street legal. After hours of begging, our stage manager finally let me drive one. And when I say he let me, I mean that he didn’t come chasing after me or start cursing me over the radio when I got in and drove away with out anyone’s permission. Mission accomplished. But then I ended up having to drive Stevie up to the dressing room when she arrived and then back down for soundcheck. Driving with one of the band members is kind of nerve racking, I felt like I was taking my drivers license exam. If my golf cart had turn signals, I would have used them….in addition to using hand signals. All I could think was “don’t crash, don’t crash, don’t crash”. I didn’t crash. Yay for me.
The dressing rooms at this venue are all trailers, which I like, because they are all arranged in a little corral. So it leaves this open space in the middle where we set up couches and some mood lighting. It gives everyone a place to hang out together & mingle, it’s nice. We call it Camp Fleetwood Mac, now all I need is a firepit and some marshmallows.
The shows were good, there was a strict 10:45 curfew, which basically means if the band is still playing at 10:46, there’s a big, huge, fat fine to pay. So we were planning on going on at 8:00, that didn’t happen, I think we went on at 8:15, and we ended up having to cut the last song. But the second night, our lesson was learned and the band was saying good night at 10:40 after a full set.
The band stayed really late after both shows, London was full of friends, family and guests. We had to have two huge tents in addition to our normal hospitality area just to accomodate everyone.
We’re off to Manchester in the morning. Only 5 more shows to go and then The Mac is going on vacation! As much as I’m loving Europe, I’ll be ready to go home when it comes time….I’m tired and I miss my own bed.
