TOURING INTO 2013

On Manchester Radio with Brian Mitchell

Hello Everybody

Spring is in the air now and it's over six months since the last time I wrote to you on this website. So I have decided to get my act together this morning and let you know about some of what has been going on in this period. The end of last year into the beginning of 2013 has been full of all sorts of exciting musical journeys and recordings.

In September and October of 2012 I found myself on a four week tour of Germany, Netherlands and Belgium supported by Gerard Starkie the singer who was once main man in the band Witness. Gerard had decided to perform on this tour  with a drummer who just happened to be John Langley from Strangelove days. The German promoter who set up this tour having no idea that myself and Gerard came from the same town or that I had such a deep connection from the past with 'Langers'. It was really wonderful to spend time with John again. I had not really seen him much since Strangelove split up in 1998. Also it was a great pleasure to start and develop a new friendship with Gerard who I'd enjoyed only a nodding acquaintance with at the beginning of the concerts.

We met at Bristol Bus Station on Thursday 13th September where our grueling journey to the first gig in Belgium began. For various reasons we were traveling for the majority of this tour on public transport . John proudly showed me his drum kit when we arrived at Victoria Coach Station. He had packed the whole thing into a large suitcase on wheels which he had bought from Wilkinson's for thirty quid he said. " Whole drum kit in there" he pointed at the case. " Symbols stands and everything ".

First time I noticed something might be going wrong with the case was in Belgium on the first day. We had caught the Eurostar at 6.00 am after a sleepless night on sofas in London. It was another two train journeys on from Brussels to our final station which was in the middle of nowhere. A place called Kappell-Op-Den Bos. We had an address for the gig but no idea where it was or how to get there. The station was totally deserted. Ominous looking power cables criss crossed the sky . No taxis or bus stops or friendly faces to be seen. We had to drag all the equipment and suitcases down about five hundred concrete steps on to a pavement that ran along the side of a motorway and start heading towards the centre of the town in the hope of finding something. In retrospect I can now see that myself , Gerard and John are all the sort of person who like to let someone else sort out the practical complications .

Gerard however, who was originally from Wigan, possessed a kind of fatalistic Northern charm that helped keep us moving. You got the impression from Gerard that everything was happening as the result of malevolent Gods playing tricks on us for their amusement. 'Of course it was raining' 'Of course we were lost' 'Of course the tinpot inspector  was chucking us off the train for not buying the "correct" ticket'  'Of course on the one occasion we decided to hire a car to get to a faraway gig it ended up costing us two hundred euros and only three people turned up anyway'. He just shrugged his shoulders pulled down his cap and set off into the storm with the giant laughter echoing all around.

I watched Gerard crossing the motorway bridge with John about 50 yards behind him and me about 100 yards behind John. I had a lot of stuff to carry and my hands were bruised from the already nightmarish journey through London tube station staircases and onwards to Belgium. My retro suitcase was heavy man. As John dragged his drum kit case you could see two black tire marks being left behind by the small rubber wheels. As John staggered over the bridge the wheels were beginning to disintegrate due to the weight of the kit. I followed those two black lines down the other side of the bridge and into the town.

The Catholic Basilica in Kappell-On-Den Bos

 We eventually fell into a small roadside bar. John and Gerard both sat down to order a few lagers. The first of the many various types of drinks they would drown on this tour. Having experienced life threatening problems with alcohol and drugs as a young man this was the first time I had been around hard, daily drinking rock 'n' rollers for any sustained period of time since. To be honest I had wondered how I would fit in. I knew of course what John was like and I'd also heard about Gerard's good natured heavy drinking reputation from various friends. I can say though, hand on heart, it was a real delight to be with them. It's been seventeen years now since I've drank any alcohol or taken any drugs . The great thing I found on this tour  is that I really am in a position of neutrality as regards these addictions now. At no time did I feel like having one myself. At no point did I feel jealous or judgemental or left out by them as regards their inexhaustible party spirit. At no time did I allow where I was coming from to alienate me from the proceedings. It was so great to realise I'd really changed as a person on such a fundamental level. That all the time I've spent trying to sort myself out has really made a difference. The good vibrations I felt towards them just grew and grew as the tour went on.  John and Gerard had me laughing my head off every single day !

 The concerts were fantastic . I've been coming to Germany and The Netherlands for a while now. I've made proper friendships. Places like Groningen, Hengelo, Osnabruk and Bremen. I have true friends in these places now. People who I really look forward to seeing and playing for and who really appreciate what I'm doing. This is such a great feeling.  My playing has really improved. Having done so many gigs over the last few years the concerts are becoming deeper and deeper experiences for me. Every single one of them is challenging and exciting now in some way or other. I feel I'm moving into uncharted territory in the sense that the quality of listening I'm experiencing coming back to me from the audience seems to have expanded in some way of late . This is incredibly inspiring to be a part of. Mysterious and enlivening. I'm loving to play so much now .......

 In Kappell-Op-Den Bos we were staying in a youth hostel. John kept me awake all night with his grandiloquent snoring. As the piercing autumnal sun rose I took the blankets from my bed and went and lay down in the corridor outside our room. That didn't work either. Opposite the hostel was a Roman Catholic Basilica. I was born into the Catholic Faith and although I don't practice it now I have a subterranean connection with the archetypes. Deep in my bloodstream that imagery holds an unreachable part of my childhood intact. I walked inside. A dark interior that stretched up into a cavernous domed ceiling above the alter. The place was dominated by a huge wooden pulpit depicting one of the forbidden trees form the Garden of Eden. It must have been a hundred feet high. As tall as a tall tree. Around the carved trunk coiled a serpent with fruit in its mouth. Two life size figures of Adam and Eve with distraught, anguished expressions. The faces of seraphim and cherubim adorned all parts of the tree. Above the pulpit angels stood with their arms aloft crying out to God. Weeping and lamenting. A haunting sorrowful sound.

Mary and Child in Kappell-Den-On Bos

On the other side of the church a shrine to Mary. It reminded me very much of the Hindu Shrines I had visited in the Far East when I'd been on tour over there. She wore an ornate pale yellow robe encrusted with jewels. Mary's white face was painted in a childlike way with round red cheeks. Holding the crowned infant Christ, who looked like a spoiled brat, in her arms.

Around the sides of the church sat confessional boxes with tall carved figures outside the entrances. One of these carvings was of a life size skeleton holding an arrow. Hooded with strange reptiles crawling all over his bones. I was fascinated by this place. Angels holding candlesticks with snakes emerging from them.

I discovered an earthenware jar filled with Holy water on a table by the pulpit. I stared again at Eve's tormented face. Poor Eve. She had been blamed for her disobedience in listening to the snake and misleading Adam. As I looked at her sorrowful expression I could feel compassion arising in me. In continuing to contemplate the carving I found myself entering into a dialogue with Eve. It was more than just forgiveness she was seeking. It was understanding for her actions and for her natural human curiosity to taste the knowledge of Good and Evil that she longed for. I found myself scooping up the holy water from the jar and allowing it to fall all over her haunted face. In my heart I wanted Eve to feel comforted by this water to be able to feel my sympathy and solidarity for her actions. As I stepped away I looked up into the huge dome above the foot of the high alter. It was amazing. Painted with hundreds of stars. There was a deep sense of peace and a feeling of freedom in me that day. The old God who continues to superintend the church was fast asleep. Funnily enough I could hear him snoring like some old relative at a family get together. Once more I realised how much I loved the Old Man but over the years I've grown in the knowledge of feeling compelled to seek out a power that is awake and knows no boundaries and doesn't want to keep you under control.

Eve

By the time we finally reached Bremen, and the accommodation which was to be our home (on and off) for the next month, things were already getting a little ragged.  I had conjunctivitis through lack of sleep and the wheels on John's drum kit case were not looking too healthy either. The weight of the equipment and the friction had now melted and twisted the wheels so badly that they no longer rotated.  John was having to drag the case up and down roads, on and off trams and trains and buses as we travelled to and fro from the various concerts we were playing in Northern Germany. The flattened wheels had no chance of spinning round. Everywhere we went there was the tell tale sign of two black trails on the pavement arriving at the gig and departing. Eventually after a week of this John hit through to the metal interior of the wheels and the trails were less noticeable after this. Watching him dragging its colossal weight through the streets at night pissed out of his head could sometimes be hilarious and sometimes really quite moving. In the mornings on the way to the next gig there was often a sense of tension as we trundled through the streets. John would not accept even the slightest assistance with his case and after he'd worn down to the metal you could hear him coming from a very very long way away. He would usually be bringing up the rear of the party now due to the sheer effort of dragging the drums stands and symbols in the offending luggage bag . One night I absolutely insisted that he allow me to help him and he let me drag the case about a hundred yards. It was unbelievably arduous. However he would not allow me to help him more than that. Pushing me aside he grabbed back the handle of the disintegrating case and between peels of manic laughter insisted that "he must be the one. That he enjoyed it . That he actually wanted it to be this way."

Eventually when we reached Groningen in The Netherlands all the fun as regards the case was truly over. It was a extremely long walk to college where me and Gerard were facilitating a workshop on songwriting with the students that afternoon. After we got payed myself and Gerard used all the money we earned to buy John a large red hand trolley with extremely thick rubber wheels. Like the kind you might see a janitor or factory worker use to shift a washing machine. After that we kept seeming to be offered lifts everywhere.

Dylan turned up . He was Gerard's manager. Dylan was an amazing character and one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. His story is so great. He started off as a fan of Gerard and John's band Witness in the late nineties when he was still at college. He ran a website for the band which was far better than the official record company effort and so the band asked him to work for them. After they were dropped by Island records Dylan promoted a gig for Witness in Wigan which was also very successful. So Dylan went into promoting bands in Wigan. After a while of that he started putting on an Indie Disco every Saturday Night. This venture proved so successful that Dylan was able to make a very good living out of it. As he said to me. "All I had to do were print up a few posters and flyers. DJ for a couple of hours on a Saturday night and I were loaded." " It were around the time of The Arctic Monkeys and Indie were big in Wigan" "Thousands turned up every weekend" he said with a sheepish grin. "It were easy" . With all this money and spare time on his hands Dylan put it to good use. He started to fly to unusual destinations around the world. "just to see what they were like." He went to North Korea , Iran , Outer Mongolia and Chernobyl to name a few. He made contacts and then set up Lupine Travel. A travel agent organising trips to these extraordinary places. He has hundreds of fascinating stories that kept us all spellbound. At one point he was almost executed in Iran due to being falsely accused of adultery. He also set up the first ever Golf Tournament in North Korea and " I don't know nothing about Golf." I got on great with Dylan and I'm leaving some links here... one to his website.... and one to a news report about him on the BBC. Enjoy ! Dylan was a real breath of fresh air as we travelled around.I defy anyone not to like him.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-12607211

http://www.lupinetravel.co.uk/

Now about three weeks into the tour we were doing some gigs in Lower Saxony. In between concerts we went to visit the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Belsen was composed of numerous camps, established at various times during its existence. It held Jews, POWs, political prisoners, Roma (Gypsies), "asocials," criminals, Jehovah's witnesses, and gay people. On April 15, 1945, when British forces liberated Belsen they found around sixty thousand prisoners most of them seriously ill. Thousands of corpses lay unburied on the camp grounds. Many former prisoners, too ill to recover, died after liberation. After evacuation, British forces burned down the whole camp to prevent the spread of typhus..

Upon entering the grounds the first thing you come across is a long grey concrete building with no windows. This is the museum where the information about what has happened in the camps is relayed to you. There are holocaust survivors speaking on video screens. You can put headphones on and hear their stories and read along with the subtitles. There are long rooms with glass cases holding personal artifacts rescued in the liberation. A pair of child's mittens knitted in the camp by a Jewish woman. Alongside the woollen gloves a story written in scratchy ink pen by the child herself. Of how the woman (whom she did not know) finished knitting the gloves, handed them to her and died. There are hundreds of these stories that stretch along the corridors in the museum. Behind black drapes there are a series of cinemas where the horrific footage shot by the liberating British troops is shown. People shuffle from one room to the next in silence. Students with baffled faces walk beside each other defeated.

It was pouring with rain on the day we visited Belsen but I wanted to go and see where the camp had stood. So I ventured on outside the museum. A man who was coming in from the rain gave me his umbrella. He passed me a map which showed where the various buildings had once endured. I walked through a small ebullient woodland to the grounds of the concentration camp. On emerging from the trees the huge scale of the place struck me hard. It was like a vast green stretching on and on and on. It was continually shocking to experience the expanse of it. I was the only person there as I walked past the mass graves one after the other. The simple plaques  .. 10,000 souls or on to the next... 5,000 souls. There were many of these raised mass graves covered in moss and grass. Their voice mumbled to me in the pouring rain. I was completely silent within myself. There was a truly harrowing atmosphere of deep peace and love everywhere you stepped. It was unspeakable.

The House of Silence was a memorial building made of aluminium just beyond the mass graves. It shone out a dull silver. Water was pouring off its roof. The rain so heavy that the building could not cope. A torrent of water like a small waterfall was cascading down from the corner of the roof and clattering onto the sodden ground. I  put down the umbrella and stood underneath the cold water and it battered down on to the crown of my head. Inside the House of Silence I stood soaked through and shivering. When I walked outside the sun had come out and there was a huge staggering rainbow blazing across the sky. It was unsettling to witness it. 

When Dylan had suggested we go to Belsen I wondered whether it might be too upsetting or overwhelming. If I'm honest what had persuaded me was the firstly the fact that the others so clearly wanted to go but also a morbid curiosity in me to experience the place. I learned about the concentration camps at school when I was a boy. There had always been a strange magnetism or a fascination surrounding the sense of their existence. When I've heard people who visited them speak to me about their experiences I have been transfixed.  However out here in the middle of Belsen all that curiosity had vanished. I was reminded of myself as I stood there and I realised how meaningless all that fascination was. It seemed so crass in comparison to the experience which was now so very quiet and humbling. Belsen had a shattering effect upon me. The presence of the sky-scraping dead completely washing away my more usual preoccupations. For some long moments there really was nothing to say. Nothing to reach for. Nothing to be intrigued about. 


 I saw the commemorative gravestone to Anne Frank and her sister Margot who both died in the camp. I had visited the hiding place of Anne's family in Amsterdam the previous year and it had been a deeply moving time. Now I  had followed her here to the very place where she died. There were flowers and photographs of Anne that gathered themselves into a shrine at the foot of the stone. The faces stared out in every direction.  There were beautiful epitaphs hand written on stones and on the backs of the laminated photographs  The sun was shining strongly through the clouds now.

I stood at the wall of remembrance in the sunlight for a long while. Inside myself I was witnessing the moon giving birth to a still born baby.

 John, Gerard and his brother and Dylan approached me from the other side where they had visited the POW camp. We stood next to each other in cold silence. I walked around the rest of the camp with Dylan. It was like you'd jumped in over the wall somehow. That you shouldn't be there. That you were disturbing a monumental fragility.  At the same time however you felt that everyone should know about this atmosphere and experience it for themselves.... that if they did something would be changed forevermore. 

 The concert that night in a town near Belsen was one of the highlights of the tour for me. After the concentration camp and being so close to the realisation of how inconsequential these gigs really were made them seem all the more important in some way. I sung my heart out.

The flat in Bremen where we were living was now infested with fleas. John had hundreds of nasty red bites all over his body which did not seem to bother him in the slightest. "Learn to wear your scars" he said to me. I on the other hand who'd suffered about twenty bites on my arms, legs and forehead was completely squeamish. Utterly freaked out by those tiny bastard blood suckers. My skin was crawling every time I went into the place. I spent over two hundred euros on all sorts of sprays and capsules and creams to try and defeat them. They eventually did give up the fight against me and helped themselves to the serenely self possessed John. Gerard remained untouched by them but supremely supportive of me and my ferocious chemical warfare battle to wipe them out.

Gerard's lovely brother Bernard had turned up by now and we were getting driven around by him in a type of black sports car. Luxury. A week later by the end of the tour Gerard and John were really good at what they were doing. I was enjoying watching them so much. I knew all their material very well by now and was joining them to play guitar on three of their songs every night. It was fantastic to be part of something and to play with great musicians again after having done solo gigs for so long. Dylan used to record our performances each night. On arriving home we used to stay up late in the flat watching them and laughing because it all sounded so good.

After four weeks of playing every night (and often during the day as well) my own performances were becoming effortless. I was selling lots of C.D's after the shows and had to send back to the U.K for new boxes of them on two occasions. That was a great feeling !

http://vimeo.com/61488719


The tour ended in Club Moments in Bremen. We hired a car to take us to the Belgium border which John crashed immediately after our last gig. However after a hair raising few hours we were able to somehow work out (with the help of the beautiful Mariake who worked for the promoter) that the damage was not irreparable. Having not slept, at four o'clock the next morning we began our journey home. The drive in headlight blackness on a German Autoban with lorries and cars screaming past was draining us of the little we had left.  John Langley drove a blinder .

We reached the border of Belgium alive.  Gerard and John bought themselves a few well deserved lagers from an early morning train station bar and we boarded the first of three trains we needed to take us home. They both fell asleep on the Eurostar and I will leave you with this photo I took of them.

With Love Patrick xxx

John (Left with flea bitten arms) Gerard (Right) . Top Geezers !