My Effin' Life Tour Book
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- ATTENTION-RASH WATCH ARE BASS PLAYERS HUMAN TO
- Pine StreMATION unterpar touri994 DOTE
- Page 455 AUG
- Page 6THOUGHT IT WOULD BE FUN TO INCLUDE A few anecdotes drawn from the original 1,200 page draft (yes, you read that right) of My Effin' Life that I submitted to the pub- lisher, but which obviously did not make the book (otherwise I would have had to name it Every Effin' Detail)... A few times in my life, I've attempted to keep a diary. My first effort was more a bookkeeping exercise than anything-a dry record of gigs with columns listing city, venue, attendance and what we got paid each night. Later on, my scribblings became more authentically diary-like, noting my moods and day-to-day experiences, in three sep- arate categories, no less: physical, intellectual and emotional. I rated our gigs out of five stars, talked about missing my girlfriend (and later wife) Nancy, about contract negotiations, about writing songs on the road, about interactions with other bands, etc., etc.. I even wrote down what drugs I had taken, including how effin' high I was from night to night. It was a travelogue of sorts too, and ultimately a more sophisti- cated record than just the collection of hotel room keys I amassed on our very first tour in '74, when even Evansville, Indiana had seemed exotic to me and I thought I'd probably never return. I was doing my best to cope with the wide range of hopes, triumphs and disappoint- ments I was experiencing, and only half a mind to keeping a record for posterity. Which turned out rather useful, wouldn't you say?
- Guy Rating (performanceRespase Poor
- Page 10T THREE MOMENTS
- DON KIRSHNER'SROCK CONCERT CHRIS FRITZ & CO URIAH HEEP
- Page 14coming out of the UK, and being a bilingual country with a large French-speaking population we also felt a certain French influence; in addition to that we had instant access to U.S. culture and thus, as music fans, were on the concert circuit for British, European and American bands. So, on the eve of the tour we smugly figured we had the U.S.A. sussed out. A naïve and foolish notion. We soon learned that although our countries looked a lot alike, we were very different indeed-not least, in this case, because America was born of a revolution, while Canada's independence was a product of a negotiated evolution. That was evident to us in the behaviour of American audiences, which were more confident, louder, brasher, ready to party hearty; you sensed that this was a people who had the willingness to fight for what they believed in. Canadians are so much more reserved in that regard-you could say that in their quiet and thoughtful way, they sit somewhere between the clichés of the loud and ugly Americans and chilly British reserve.
- Page 16ARF 40
- Thanks for such a greatGarden W Garden
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THREE MOMENTS
IN 1974
HINGS WERE COMING AT US FASTER NOW than Steve McQueen in Bullitt, as we zig-zagged across America, anywhere our agent could snag us an opening spot-usually as a last-minute add-on to some other band's tour already in progress. We arrived in Washington D.C. to do a daytime pop show on WDCA-TV called Barry Richards Rock and Soul, a corny traditional variety program for teens-the kind on which acts mimed their hits. Lip-syncing was never a big deal for me; pretending to play live was a fine tradition in rock and roll television, but Neil hated it and considered not even setting up his kit. (Some drummers like Keith Moon, meanwhile, made a mockery of it, while Charlie Watts, say, would sit on his throne looking taciturn and toler- ating the charade.) Yet in the end he relented, playing at full-bore as if it were live. (Later, in the Eighties, with the explosion of music clips on the all-mighty MTV, it became more and more necessary for us to lip- sync, and even he agreed that videos were an opportunity for a grand visual expression of our songs, but he'd always insist on playing live on the set. If in our videos it looks like he's hitting the hell out of his drums, it's because he is. As such, making videos was more exhausting for him than it was for Alex and me, but in the end he felt he had noth- ing to be ashamed of.) In 1974 on Barry Richards, he was still figuring out his position on the matter, and partly because we barely knew him, even if his stance jeopardized our appearing on a show, we were not going to fight him. We respected his opinion and let it slide.
[Opposite photo: Michael Capotosto]
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