Heading Home

 The Camaro SS was wasted on the roads around Sunset Boulevard so a trip up to Mulholland Drive was far more fun than was legal. I wasn’t sure the tyres would last the 4 day rental!

  From Lookout Point I could see the fires away in the distance. The wind was blowing stronger today and as I stared out across the valley towards Big Bear and then south following the massive smoke trail, I felt for all the people and animals struggling to make themselves safe and save what they could.

  The following morning from my balcony, I saw what I thought was a large drone in the air some way off. The perception and scale had fooled me. It was over a mile away and was in fact a V-22 Osprey. A military vertical take off and landing aircraft with a swiveling rotor blade on each wing. With news that the fires were headed for Bel Air I guess the million dollar military fly by made the locals feel that they were safe and something was being done.

  It was good to catch up with some of my friends in L.A.. Around dinnertime I would get some good Mexican food and Margaritas at El Compadre and listen to the trio making the right sound to complete the early evenings combination. I’ve been going to El Compadre for 38 years and it never fails to be a great start to the evening.

  Goodbye to my layover on the West Coast and back to the UK. Within hours of arriving at Heathrow I was driving down the lanes to my quiet home. There had been a small flurry of snow and all looked as it should.

  A few days later I went to see Robert Plant play his last show of his UK tour in Birmingham. I had missed Chrissie singing with him at the Albert Hall a few days earlier. It was a great night and the band were truly amazing. Robert has such great command of the stage.
After the show I had a few words with him about the gig and missing him at his London show. He always gathers a great collection of musicians around him. In a way it was a home gig for Robert and I thought I may see some old faces backstage. Birmingham is only an hour from Hereford and was a source of many gigs like Mothers and Henry’s Blues House not to mention the Birmingham Town Hall that I had played with my band Karakorum on a UK tour with Alexis Korner in 1971. I was very pleased to meet with Bev Bevan who was the drummer from The Move and other collaborations. A delightful man.

  Robert mentioned to me about our possible USA tour with him in the summer of 2018. Much to my disappointment nothing was to come of it.

  That week I called Johnny Borrell. It was obvious he was burning with a load of enthusiasm and had written more material since we spoke in Los Angeles. I told him it sounded like we should get on with it before Christmas, which we did. In the new year the majority of the album was completed.

  I had met Johnny a few times before at rehearsal rooms and liked the fact he worked on old motorbikes. Bass, guitar and drums were the way we worked. With Johnny and collaborator David alternating between playing guitar or bass, the arrangements were formulated. In the new year during the recording process I awoke at 4am one morning with the shakes and sweats. The following morning I continued as normal, but the bug put Johnny in bed for 2 days and David for three. Nevertheless, the songs tumbled out well and I’m sure they will get a lot of airplay. I look forward to hearing the finished mixes.

  During this time, I managed to fit in a trip to the historic and picturesque city of Bath, where I saw my two grown up children for a little food and a catch up. They looked great and happy as usual. With being away so frequently and the continuing work back at my home, it is always hard to find the time to visit (not to mention feeling exhausted and being so burnt out from the travel.) It is, of course, always great to see them both. I look forward to having a home soon that can accommodate a visit from them all together.

  True to form, rehearsals for the South American tour loomed quickly and suddenly there were lots of preparations I hadn’t seen coming. Yellow Fever inoculations for Brazil and a second passport to enable us to get visas for Argentina because our other passports were at the Peruvian Embassy and then with the U.S. Embassy.

After a lot of rushing about, things were in place and a new set of songs were arranged and placed in a running order for our opening show at the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.

M.D.C.

Entering a New Year and into the Recording Studio!

Milford Sound. Technically it's a Fiord, not a sound!

  Coming home is part of the reason I go on tour and this time, upon my return, I find myself in deepest Herefordshire remembering some of the greatest tour moments for many a long year.  

After all the hectic travel around this planet I count my blessings that I have a quiet private life in an area of outstanding natural beauty to return to.

 We seemed to raise our game during the European tour, specifically the Iberian leg. How or why is a wonderful mystery but we rode the wave in style right down into Dunedin in the south of New Zealand.
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 After getting an MRI Scan and seeing a sports injury specialist, my knee felt quite normal and the meds were working. In Auckland a bike ride was arranged out on Waiheke Island, and we rode 35 kilometres on our electric bikes. No one got injured, although Gaz Fail almost lost it on a fast downhill right hander. He gathered a considerable amount of undergrowth in the moving parts of his transport system and almost parked it in the hedge. The end result was him looking like the commander of our camouflaged support vehicle. 

  The Forsyth Barr Stadium was our last show for 2017. My drum tech Justin Welch had been exceptional the whole year solving little problems and remembering all the things I would forget, so I presented him with an engraved 'over and above' Pretenders tour medal as a memento and a NZ highway police hat. He seemed quite pleased.

 We were invited to the stage by Stevie and said our farewells to the Nicks band only to see them again at the airport 16 hours later. Everyone flew off to Auckland and home and I went to pick up my 4x4 rental car. I was heading west to Milford Sound for some peace and quiet.

Last gig.

  Oddly enough, the following day I started off playing 3 or 4 songs with my good friend Jimmy Taylor at 5 in the afternoon in a bar in St. Clair on the coast. I then visited the only mainland albatross colony in the world and saw the magnificent royal albatross. 

 After 6 hours sleep I drove to Gore where I stopped for a bracing cup of tea and carried on to Te Anau on the lake for supplies. 

  I needed this time alone but now having no work on at all the 'end of tour rundown bug' attacked me and I felt as if I was all stuffed up with a cold. This stayed with me until I caught another bug in Los Angeles on my way home.

LA friends.Carmen Vandenberg, exceptional guitarist of Bones!

 Whilst in New Zealand, I stayed in a back packers hostel and made a few friends. I walked miles, got buzzed by nesting terns and encountered a lot of wildlife that I couldn’t readily identify. Now in my element, I sneezed my way through a pleasant week.

 I caught my flight from Dunedin to Auckland in the morning of Saturday the 2nd of December and then on to Los Angeles through the night. I arrived at LAX at 10.30am on Saturday the 2nd December, gaining a day.

The following day the phone rang and it was Johnny Borrell from Razorlight asking me to help him make his new album. Although I had many things going on when I got home, I figured I should do it and told him I would call him upon my return.

Meanwhile I drove up to Mulholland to look at the gathering firestorm.

M.D.C.