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| The Firebird in Groningen Museum |
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Hello Everyone
Just to let you know.... the first three paragraphs of this text were written whilst I was on tour in The Netherlands and the reminder were written on returning home. x
At the moment I'm on a three week tour of the Netherlands that was set up by two young men from the province of Groningen named Laurens Dijkstra and Wouter de Boer whose adventure into promotions is called Wishful Music. I'm travelling and playing each night together with Tom Copson a really talented twenty six year old singer songwriter from Cambridge. The schedule is a mixture of festivals,venues and living room gigs. I met Tom at about 5.00 a.m in a huge semi evacuated house in Elsenham, Essex just as the sun rose and cast long shadows over the first day of our tour and we set out in Tom's electric blue Berlingo to catch the early morning ferry from Dover to Dunkirk. The mood was one of high spirits as we rattled along listening to music from Tom's i-pod with light pouring into the car driving blurry eyed into the piercing sunrise. Tom a sensitive and intelligent young man with a scruffy, generous and good humoured nature. I knew it was going to be a pleasure to be around him. Tom didn't have any road tax so we had to locate a Post office in Dover where the woman behind the counter for no apparent reason gave me quite a telling off as I changed my money into euros. I thanked her and said "No-one's told me off for ages I feel like I'm back at school" and as she tutted back in ruffled irritation me and Tom burst out laughing. We winged into the ferry port and just as we reached passport control white smoke started to pour out of the bonnet of the car. We pulled over through some traffic cones and the smoke fumed on and on. "This isn't funny anymore" said Tom and we both got out and stood staring into the smoking labyrinth of Tom's bonnet with not even an inkling of mechanic between the pair of us. The middle aged and senior citizen drivers in the ferry queue staring out of their windows at us as they crawled by the spectacle but looking quickly away if ever you caught their eyes. Tom did however have insurance and in a miraculously short amount of time a shaven headed and smirking cockney of about thirty years of age turned up in a white van poured about five gallons of water into the engine and triumphantly piped up " Where WERE you going ?"
A man of about 50 years of age called Rog turned up in a huge tow truck about half an hour later and Tom's blue car went up on the platform. Rog who announced he was "an Essex man through and through" told me as we drove along that"'this country has gone to the dogs". Rog said the only reason he stayed in England was because of his mum and "as soon as she's dead. I'm Off ! " " Where will you go Rog" I asked. " I'm going back to Thailand" he said. Rog told me that he'd only recently returned from a great time Bangkok. "I was wandering around the city about seven in the morning after getting thrown out of the clubs" he said ".....and you can go into a bar and get an early one no problem....... I was sitting there.... and nobody's bothered..... and these Thai people bought me breakfast and everything and insisted I sat down and ate with them" he continued. " I mean imagine what that'd be like in England. People would either be trying to take a piss on you or beating you up.. do you know what I mean" I told Rog I did kind of know what he meant and he continued to enthusiastically talk about his time in the Far East where a 'young lady friend' had introduced him to some of the principles of Buddhism that Rog said were better than Christianity even though he was a sort of Christian himself. Rog talked at length about a kind of World theory he had but I lost him a bit there and I started to notice that he was beginning to sweat profusely. Rog said he loved music and he asked me to put on The Mad Straight Road. His favourite tracks were The Tourist and Ed's Not Dead which he said were "really brilliant" and "properly had something". However Rog did not like A Woman who Don't Talk English which he said was "way over my head" and made him want to "slit his own wrists" Rog then wanted to listen to Tom's c.d but when he put it in the player it jammed up the system which had never happened before. It just didn't seem to be Tom's day and when Rog's electric tag for the Dartford tunnel wouldn't work and he had to pay to get through Tom said " I don't know how but I think this has probably got something to do with me. Sorry " Rog then told us in cheerful detail about some of the nastier accidents he'd been called to in his years on the tow trucks and we chugged north to Toms parents' house in Cambridge where we would pass a night having cancelled our first gig in Groningen. Rog wished us luck on our tour and I waved him goodbye as he was off to "another job down Basildon"............ God Bless you Rog !
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| Rog getting into his Truck with Tom's Car on the back |
We travelled by ferry from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. It was a beautiful clear sunny day and we spent our time up on deck surveying the seas, snoozing, playing guitars and making friends with assorted passengers. An esoteric book seller from Norwich 'on a jolly' to Bonn in Germany , a seven and a quarter inch guage steam model railway enthusiast from Lancashire called John and a couple of crop circle multi dimensional film makers from Colorado, USA. Between times we kept drifting off into semi sleep and Tom said he thought the sea had a way of stealing your vitality. I'd never thought of the sea in that way before. It was strange to think that the oceans were secretly envious of humans and engaged in the pirating away of our life forces. I looked out over the waves and wondered whether the sea was indeed hiding jealousy somewhere in its blue green depths. I stared and stared. I think it more likely that the sea calms us and absorbs our anxieties and preoccupations. We are running on the momentum of anxiety so much of the time that when it begins to dispel we are left with a woozy realisation of how tired we really are. The sea is a revelator rather than a thief. The sea's sway stills the mind and then the body can reveal itself to us. The sea breeze runs its fingers through our hair and we sink into the beginning of a weariness that has been gathering over generations. I wondered what with the brutal and bloody history of mankind in our collective consciousness and the atrocities and injustices of those centuries to the present day carried through our bloodlines we are deeply fatigued. The day to day worries and distractions of our lives with their little plans and designs have a frenetic momentum that covers over an exhaustion that is not only our own as individuals but belongs to us all. I pondered that only once that exhaustion is experienced and surrendered to can a real healing begin. In the contemplation of the experience of that exhaustion we can eventually unearth a vitality that rises up not from fear and frenzied anxiety but from the true depths of our nature. A wellspring that runs clear despite all the blood that has been spilled into the earth. A source that is deeper than history. I recalled the special times I have experienced the power of that vitality and the ship rolled on through the north sea. Its wake a white foamy road cut out of the blue expanse that led back to England and the past. Anyway, amongst other things, that was what I was musing about as we drifted groggily on through the north sea sitting on our deck chairs until me and Tom made up an incredibly catchy and amusing song called 'Hook of Holland'
After docking at The Hook we eventually arrived in Amsterdam after being befriended by a series of beautiful looking Dutch girls who helped us carry our luggage and enabled us to travel cheaply on the trains as they each had a special dispensation pass that included friends. This was the beginning of a never ending kindness and goodwill that myself and Tom received throughout our stay in The Netherlands. Wouter De Jong was waiting at Amsterdam's Central station for us. He had set up one of the gigs in Amsterdam. As many of you know Strangelove toured Britain extensively with Radiohead back in the nineties and Wouter looks (and has a vibe) uncannily like the guitarist Ed. Wouter and his girlfriends father helped carry our heavy load through the cobbled city streets, bridges and canals back to Wouter's spacious attic apartment where the first concert would be performed. I could feel Jim Morrison's presence strongly in the city as we tramped along. He peers into the distance through many of the 'coffee shop' windows and I heard him shouting out to me that he is sick and tired of having listened to forty years worth of stoned conversations and is there any way I can help get him out. "Get me outta here" he hollered to me as I dragged my suitcase over the cobbles "There's something else I want to say now ! "
It was such a great pleasure to spend time with Wouter de Jong and his beautiful blond haired girlfriend Arjette. They were such delightful people and I was blessed to develop a good friendship with both of them as the tour progressed and as you will later read I returned to Amsterdam. I found the relationship between Wouter and Arjette to be a real inspiration to me in the time I spent with them. They seemed to really love each other with a depth that went beyond the thrill of romance without abandoning it. You felt uplifted by being around them. With Wouter and Arjette you also got Eddie. They had adopted Eddie as a surrogate child. Eddie was a hamster who could send subliminal messages of a positive nature through the bars of his cage. "He can run on his wheel and he can stick his nose up through the hole in the upturned flowerpot which is his house" Arjette enthusiastically informed me. Eddie lived in their kitchen which was a dressing room for the night of our gig. As I changed into my suit he told me he was the happiest hamster in the whole world. The only traumatic event of his entire life was when Wouter had accidentally kicked him across the room when he was running around the living room in his ball. His ball is a little contraption Eddie has that allows him to move around the floor of the apartment in relative safety. Eddie said for the most part that he felt he had forgiven Wouter de Jong for his complete lack of awareness in what can only be described as this moment of almost cruel and certainly dangerous thoughtlessness. Eddie said his favourite singer was Michael Jackson and that he also thought I was great too.... but in a different way.
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| My Guitar, Tom's Guitar and Leendert's guitar at Wouter de Jong's House |
I got to see Leendert play as the opening act on the first night. He is the son of a protestant minister, a thirty year old Dutch singer songwriter who has lost his faith in God and whose songs are a howl of beauty and sadness into the void. Songs of loss and emptiness and almost religious themselves in their own strange way... even when you can't understand the words he sings in his native Dutch. Deep songs. I could feel the silence that surrounded his performance move out over the city of Amsterdam accompanied by Arjettes cello playing. I also got the chance to see Tom perform for the first time and it was inspiring. He has a really strong and beautiful voice with a falsetto a bit like Jeff Buckley and he intuitively knows how to write moving and uplifting songs. There is an endless vitality behind his performances that is utterly infectious and even though he insists he's not much of a musician I personally thought his guitar playing was totally great. I grew to love his music and performances. He uses an omnichord each night, which he played like a mad professor and he sang Karaoke to instrumental tracks from his new album which is shortly to be released. I witnessed that he was able to make people happy as well as touch them.
I really enjoyed the first night because of all this and because of the beautiful people I was lucky enough to meet. The friends and family of Wouter de Jong and Arjette. On reflection however I realised that I had embarked on this tour in a rather ragged state. I had encountered a few difficulties that arose just before my coming and not really taken into account the effect they would have on me. When you play live I believe you open yourself up to where you really are inside yourself and the concert at Wouters had done that for me. The attention of an audience upon a performer makes it a remarkably powerful occasion that has the capacity to bring about transformation. This transformation is not always easy as it starts with bringing into your consciousness the immediate geography of your inner world. The difficulties I'd recently experienced had sent cracks through my personal life and through those cracks the old demons had found their way out without my noticing. I had not even realised it that first night ......all I knew was that after the show there was a restless and uncomfortable sensation in my stomach but I dismissed these feelings as the shadows of departed ghosts. I reasoned that I often get these kind of disturbances anyway.... after the pure release of a successful performance coming back down to earth can be troublesome. I ignored the feelings for the most part and at the end of the night climbed up the twisting spiral staircase that led to the rooftop bed where I reached for sleep. Wouter de Jong and Arjette crashed out in the Kitchen with an excited and somewhat agitated Eddie (his rattling wheel wasting the early hours) and Tom snoring far below on the floor of the lounge.
The next day we went to play an early evening show in a vegan cafe in Amsterdam. A guy in his mid fifties with a mess of curly hair and the unmistakeably clouded pink eyes of a semi functioning and inveterate cannabis user was there to greet us with a relaxed impish grin. He set up the bizarre p.a arrangement in a spirit of confusion and contagious goodwill. Tom was the first to take to the small stage and he eventually won over most of the audience of long road hippie couples, assorted freaks and green peace families with tangle haired children. By the end of his set there was a pleasing quality in the fried atmosphere of the room. After he finished most of the people moved on and I took the stage to straighten out my pedals. As I began playing I soon realised that I wasn't connecting with the remaining audience who were all more interested in the various conversations they were already engrossed in. This has occasionally happened to me throughout the years of my solo career. It's never particularly easy but the last ten years or so I've been able to rise above myself for the most part. When an audience will not give you their attention you simply have to draw upon inner resources, play for your guardian angel or find one or more persons in the room who are with you and transmit your Love and strength through them. However on that day when I reached inside I discovered only those demons and I couldn't find my way through them. They had been waiting for me. The tongues of mocking self doubt and scorn. I've always, at certain times, been plagued with these voices and when I was younger it was truly unbearable. I almost died in my misguided attempts to kill them off. To feel like you've been deserted by your spirit when playing a concert and to find only humiliation and anger in it's place is frightening. I battled on through the songs but for me only darkness intensified. I have come through this so many times on stage and found that the grace and vitality which carry you through always reveal themselves to you eventually but on that day for some reason the strength to do battle was not there. I walked off after four numbers which I've never done before and found that I was really shaken up. I stood outside the cafe in the pouring rain and the soundman called out to me "Why did you walk off that was brilliant" "No it wasn't brilliant" I snapped "C'mon man" he said "Don't be like that Patrick"....." but I turned away feeling really annoyed with myself for doing so and just managing to stop myself from saying 'leave me alone'. We had another gig to perform in a couple of hours and I was starting to loose it.
I excused myself and walked through the streets of Amsterdam as the rain started to ease away. It was a crisis of confidence the like of which I have not encountered for such a long time and it had come completely out of the blue. The last thing I had expected as I had set out to the Netherlands. I walked on through the drizzle and I remember looking up to see the occasional gloomy face of a person as they filed, head down, past the fast food shops and supermarkets with flickering neon shop fronts wavering in the reflections on the glistening pavements and all I could taste was corruption and collapsing decadence. The world of parked cars didn't seem to care about anything and I could feel it's sharp teeth in my stomach. No guiding hand just a cold monster that was turning out of control and eating me alive. I was trying to work out how on earth I would be able to get up on a stage later on, in the state I was in, when I came across the only place that seemed to be open at that time. This was a shop solely for the purpose of making telephone calls where you sit in booths and then pay a distracted man behind a glass screen at the end of the room. I called my exgirlriend Delphine who has remained a really close friend and source of strength to me and also my friend Juan Gabriel Guitterez who took the photos for The Mad Straight Road album and is a film maker, fellow artist and supporter of my work. They both showed me kindness and encouragement and helped transfer to me enough perspective to consider attempting to do that nights performance in another hours time. Afterwards I remained sitting in the booth staring at the wall as this dark night of the soul intensified again and rooted me to the spot. Eventually I was ushered to leave by the Turkish owners who looked a little shocked and a little embarrassed and a little confused by my tear stained face.
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The Gig at Delicattesen Photo by Kasper Vogelzang
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As I walked back towards the venue I found myself drawing strength from the realisation of all I've had to come through in my life. My battle with addiction to alcohol and drugs and the darkness in myself I've had to face in getting clean and sober and most of all the humility I've found that can cry out to a spirit of the universe (whether it is there or not) when there isn't a light at the end of the tunnel and no friendly direction cause you don't even know what direction your heading in. From past experience you just know that if you don't keep moving you are going to be in even more trouble. Surrender that's what I drew strength from. Surrender. Knowing that there was no way that I could do this gig in the state I was in but that if I just had the strength to put one foot in front of the other pick up the guitar and walk on the stage and do my duty then something would carry me through whether I could feel it or not. All I had to do was make sure I showed up. The rest would be up to the songs and all the practice I've put in over the last few years and the Spirit that had brought me there. That was how I took the stage that night in a semi rage/fear and gave everything I had of myself and the songs that I played and I was indeed carried through. From my heart Thank you so much to everyone who was there in Delicattesen that night who listened to me and made it in many ways a really special night for me.
The next day we were to travel to Groningen. We said goodbye to our hosts as I sat on my suitcase singing Wake Up Richard and The Tourist. Tom improvising drums with a beater on the front of my guitar as I strummed and Wouter de Jong and Arjette dancing in the early morning rainy streets as we waited for a man called Michael to shake of his hangover from the gig at Delicattessen where we had met him the previous night. After a slightly befuddled but highly enjoyable motorway madness ride we arrived in Groningen a few hours later to be met by Wouter de Boer the co-organiser of our tour. He had sorted out a car for us and Tom then drove us to the festival where we were playing that afternoon. Tom was slightly freaking out because he couldn't get his head round the left hand drive vehicle and he kept on shouting out something about curbs. It was a large festival and our particular gig was to be held in a derelict barn on the outskirts of the main event.
It was about 2 O'Clock in the afternoon as I set up to play on the stage with Led Zep 2 being blasted out to the point of perforation (of speakers and eardrums) by a swarthy middle aged alcoholic barman and his faded leather clad degenerate cronies who already looked well on their way to another day that would end inevitably in black outs and motorbikes. In the subterranean distortion of it all I would occasionally catch the eye of one of these five or so old rocker drunks who sat semi comatose at the bar. Looking into their eyes was like being posted into some gruesome vision of outer space. 1973 had got out of it's coffin and was wandering around all mouldy and maggot ridden.... it's few remaining long hairs scraped back into a pony tail and suffering an unspeakable headache that it was trying to cure by smashing a hammer over its own head............. now it seems it had decided to sit down for a bit at the barn bar where I was about to perform. As I sound checked they asked me where I was from and I told them.... The United Kingdom. They shouted back ' Led Zeppelin ! ' and one of them raised a glass with the last dying flicker of enthusiasm that remained between them.
I played the gig and thankfully Wouter be Boer and Tom were there at the back of the straw filled barn getting into it and sending me good vibrations and some other younger people wandered in and stayed to watch and enjoy it as well. The rockers stared out into the void and I started to be able to appreciate the unearthly connection I had with them as we felt our way blindfolded through the eerie atmosphere my songs were creating between myself and them. This was not Led Zeppelin they were listening to but I had the impression the music was reminding them of something that they were reaching out to recall. Like a vague memory of something that just might be important that their distant ghost uncle had said when they were really drunk together just before he died. I managed to get all the way through the songs until for some reason I finished with a strange impassioned rant about the 'responsibilities' of audiences that seemed to shock everyone a little and to be honest it shocked me as well. I'm laughing about it now as I write but at the time it was embarrassing man ! ..... cause I didn't really know Wouter de Boer and Tom that well yet. The shadow of the previous day was still there and was leaking out a little. I spent the car journey back in silence trying to persuade myself that 'the rant' had been within reason.... We arrived back at Wouter be Boer's house where we were to sleep. It was absolutely great to meet Wouter. He spoke about his music promotions collective called Wishful Music and it was really inspiring to listen to him.
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| Tom asleep up on deck on the Ferry..................zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz |
Wouter de Boer was a really fantastic person to be around. Naturally cheerful and easy going and generous and relaxed about me and Tom staying in his house. He most usually wore a spreading unselfish grin on his face. Tom had actually played a really beautiful gig in the barn and a hippie woman had approached him afterwards and given him a space cake. Tom had eaten it. Back at the house as Wouter de Boer spoke about the upcoming tour and asked us questions, in order for us to get to know each other, it became clear to me that Tom was totally stoned out of his mind............. and becoming more..and... more.... unable...... to...... string........ coherent.......... sentences................... together............ .....However he was still having a go ! Tom had initially not told Wouter de Boer about the space cake so it was a confusing and slightly stilted atmosphere in the room as Tom proceeded to misunderstand and stumble through each question he was asked in an increasingly bizarre way. I'd already done 'the rant' so I was starting to feel a bit worried about what Wouter must think of us. I suggested we have a jam to take the heat off Tom but he could no longer play the guitar. It was hilarious ! I really started to like Tom even more now. You could just see what a genuinely lovely guy he was in his 2000 light years from home state. Desperately trying to be polite but just not knowing how to do it anymore. Wouter de Boer showed a great sense of ease, humour and good nature as 'the truth' came out about Tom's state of mind. "Why didn't you just say Tom...I don't care if you want to get stoned" "........Uh..... I thought you were..... uh......." . Myself and Tom eventually retired to our bunk beds in the spare room where Tom went on the internet to try a make himself feel sane. Wouter de Boer ran around ancient Rome killing people into the early hours as part of a video game that he played out on a huge screen television in the apartment.... for relaxation purposes.
The next day we played a festival that was arranged by Wishful Music in a beautiful park of lawns and fountains, lakes and towering green trees situated in the centre of Groningen. I had the chance that day to meet up with Laurens and Ralph who are the other partners in Wishful music. Laurens was a young man in his early twenties who always wears a black pork pie hat and sports a dashing pair of pink spectacles. He has a raggedy beard and light shining out of his eyes. Laurens was full to the brim with enthusiasm for music and his high spirits were totally infectious.......another really cool person to have met. Having now spent time with both Laurens and Wouter de Boer I realised that I was really blessed to be working as part of their collective. They actually are running their organisation for the Love of Music. As an artsist you had a real sense of being supported by them and their numerous entertaining and charming friends who are regulars at the Wishful Music events. It was like being carried into the sheltering arms of a generous family and it reminded me of the feeling I had when I went to Malta and worked with Tim Ellis. I have not experienced gigs like this before in my career where there is such a strong sense of community between the artists and the promoters, the venue owners and the audience. I loved it.
The gig in the park went well for me, even though it started raining the moment I began playing. The sound men were cool and totally on the case . I sang songs up into the sky. You could feel the dead souls of Groningen gathering together in the park and bestowing their favours upon the proceedings as the living stood fast against the rain. As I sang the clouds began dissipating and the rain died away. It was Wishful Music and their friends who carried out the take down of the stage at the end of a successful day and I felt touched as I watched Ralph walk round the park with black bin liners in the humid drizzle collecting every last piece of litter from the grounds.
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| The Living Room Audience in Amsterdam |
Ralph was our driver and road manager for the duration of the rest of the tour. Agreeing to the job at extremely short notice after the breakdown of Tom's vehicle. 'Ralph makes life better' was the conclusion that myself and Tom drew after spending a week with him. Ralph was a quiet man with an extraordinary spirit of goodwill that you became more and more aware of as the time went on. He was a helicopter pilot in his other life and if I ever hit the big time again Ralph will be flying the 'copter for absolute sure. His reassuring presence, depth of character and consistency put him up there with the best road managers I've ever known. Allowing myself and Tom to play some fantastic gigs. By this point all the difficulties I had experienced in the beginning of the tour were disappearing and at each show I was regaining strength and confidence. There was something even sweeter about these concerts having come after the struggles with myself I'd experienced earlier on. We were to play in homeless hostels, abandoned schools, derelict nunneries and peoples front rooms. The young dutch people seem to be extremely adept at squatting old buildings and turning them into cultural centers. Also there was something really cool about going to someones house and playing in front of friends and family in their front room. The experience seemed to tap into a time before radio, television and the internet when people made their own entertainment. An intimacy that is different from a gig in a venue. No better or worse, just different. I felt people intuitively understood this difference and it became a growing joy to play these concerts. It felt to me that we had left our hosts with a timeless gift when it came time to leave their houses and that was very gratifying. Also people seemed to be able to really open their hearts to us in this intimate setting of their own home . I will always remember walking through the forest with Ralph, Tom,Wendy and her beautiful baby daughter after the amazing gig at Wendy's house. I saw a woodpecker and walked barefoot on the wet sandy soil in a trance through the avenues of evergreen trees. I was able to reflect that after having played massive gigs with Strangelove, sometimes in front of thousands of people, it has been a long old journey for me to be able to truly appreciate the sense of achievement of playing a successful show in front of a relatively small number of people in a front room. However my feeling showed me that if you can play with depth and conviction and really reach the hearts of even the most humble of audiences your time and effort has been well spent and is handsomely rewarded. I came off at the end of these gigs as high as a kite and as enthusiastic and inspired as at any time in my whole career. Obviously I would like to grow and grow in popularity and reach as many people as I possibly can with my new songs, but the intimacy and intensity of these living room gigs is something I hope will always stay with me.
Ralph drove us to Hoogeveen to the Moonlight Studios where we were to play our next concert. A scruffy and beautiful woman of about 30 years of age with mousy hair in a pony tail met us outside with a distracted 1000 yard stare and vaguely agreed that yes this was where we would be playing that night. She absentmindedly ushered us into a sprawling bungalow. The first room, coming in from the sun, was dark and musty with a low ceiling and six or seven men of various ages sat around against the grubby whitewashed walls on sofas and easy chairs. All of them reclined in total silence barely acknowledged us as we entered . The smoke hung so heavy inside that room that it was honestly difficult to perceive the gestures on the faces of those men who sat patient as oxen in the impenetrable gloom. The stench of the weed was so overpowering and the atmosphere so charged that I felt almost immediately intoxicated myself. I stood still in the middle of the scuzzy brown carpet trying to focus as the years rolled away from me. Of course I knew this place well and I began to feel myself slide apart as I was piped back down to the languid penumbra of my teenage years and the bedsits and squats where I fretted away my youth. From behind a desk at the end of the joint through the purple haze rose a giant of a man Bernhaard. 'Welcome !' His wild eyes blazed with rage and passion and he gestured to me to roll one myself as he started to pour himself a huge glass of whiskey from the bottle he was to single-handedly devour as the evening darkened. Bernhaard was the main man here and that was as clear as crystal. I liked him straight away.
Moonlight Studios were a shelter for the homeless people of Hoogeveen and it was seemingly run by Bernhaard and his young wife.... the beautiful woman who had met us outside. On further investigation it was also an artists studio where a number of tormented self portraits of Bernhaard hung in brutal defiance of the eyes of the world as well as a recording studio filled with about twenty to thirty electric and acoustic guitars in various stages of dilapidation and a huge 24 track desk. I swear Bernhaard was the doppelganger for a Vincent Van Gogh asylum years painting come to life and although now in what looked like his fifties he had an incredible charisma. The Spirit of Rock n Roll still orchestrating his body and mind and informing his every movement, gesture and utterance. I sat back down (in the first room) on the one remaining rickety wooden chair, picked up a ragged nylon strung guitar and started to strum. It was the only thing to do in the light of the situation. The guys in this room were totally out of their minds, far far gone. This was no place for polite conversation or awkward silences. Bernhaard immediately grasped onto the relentless rhythms and the repetitive Doorsy, Velvetsy type riffs I was making up and smashed his fist into the air over and over raising his voice into a blinding,tortured howl that finally threatened to eclipse the ramshackle moonlight studios and bring its walls and ceilings tumbling down upon us all. It was desperately sad and desperately uplifting to witness his raw talent and the power that raged through that threadbare bungalow so far from my home...... and yet it also felt in some strange melancholy way that I had come back home. To the place where I learned as a teenager to throw off my conditioning. To rise up and to seize the right to find myself and to really start living....... as, unbeknownst to me at the time, I simultaneously began to destroy everything that held promise in my young life.
We played on and on and the druggies of Hoogeveen went out and came in again. This was the place you eventually ended up in Hoogeveen if you wanted to get really, really wasted. As we ate our evening meal a Columbian man with a bandits moustache shuffled around us muttering an incomprehensible diatribe about the government. Tom and Ralph left me alone with him (cheers guys ! ) to nervously prepare the stage for what would be another vibrant and moving performance from Tom. The lost souls at the moonlight studios rolled spliff after spliff after spliff after spliff. By the time I got to play my scheduled performance the light had so completely evacuated from every atom in the place that the lifeless oppressive air loomed over us like a funeral. I played through the subterrestrial doldrums to a blacked out room of about ten people who hung their heads and smoked and drank in heavy-hearted silence. I played the slow songs that mean the most to me and as the set moved on I felt a deep Love rising through my bones. When it came time to go I told Bernhaard and his wife I believed that they were truly beautiful people and I meant it from the bottom of my heart. I turned back to stare into Bernhaard's eyes and said 'Flame On my Friend. Flame On !
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| The Far Side Of Basz's Bedroom |
We played at an abandoned school in the communist town of Winschoten. Whenever we told anyone in The Netherlands we'd played in Winscoten they would burst out laughing but I never found out why that was. We travelled there by train and were met at the station by Basz. He worked as a television presenter and squatted in the derelict school where we would perform. He was all dressed in black and modelled a big black quiff like the one Nick Cave had when he was young. His apartment was a huge studio room with a wooden gymnasium floor with many of the blocks of wood uprooted and scattered around in disarray. He had a great collection of vinyl recordings and as he prepared our food I lay on his dusty sofa listening to The Songs Of Leonard Cohen. I Love that album so much and it really does sound better on vinyl on a sofa staring at a collapsing roof surrounded by various pieces of bohemian furniture, broken musical instruments, upturned fish tanks, mutilated mannequins, overflowing ashtrays and lampstands galore. I played a really great gig that night probably the best one so far on the tour in terms of my relationship with the playing. I really felt the living spirit moving and it was a beautiful audience that night. On and on went the tour in and out of living rooms and student hostels and bars.
The last gig I played with Tom was in the picturesque city of Delft. The concert space was in a huge derelict nunnery that had now become home to various artists, poets, musicians and drifters. The gig had been organised by Wishful music and the poet Jelmer Van Lentern who occupied one of the old cells in the nunnery. A bespectacled young man in his early twenties who wore a brown dog tooth flat cap and who met us at the great black front door. Some people have a gentleness and grace that is inspiring to be around and Jelmer was one such person. In a world that is full of individuals all clamouring for attention of one sort or another it is a real tonic to meet a quiet and humble person like Jelmer who has a great sense of depth and weight about him for one so young. With a straightforward consideration he left me in his room to warm up and I couldn't help noticing a rather fetching black homburg hat perched on the edge of his bookshelves of poetry. I could not resist, and it was slightly embarrassing when Jelmer unexpectedly returned to his room to find me looking at myself in the mirror wearing his hat. Especially as I'd only just met him. "Um, yeah sorry man,....Uh , I just saw the hat... it's really cool" .... "Then you must have it" Jelmer replied. "Oh No.. I couldn't really" "No. I insist" continued Jelmer "It has never fitted me properly and it looks really great on you" . And so I had a new hat and I wore it at the gig that night and at almost every gig I've done since. Thanks Jelmer ! (I can see that hat now as I write hanging on the end of a large gong with stand that is in my bedroom). The gig in Delft was another special occasion. There were a lot of people crowded into a large wooden floored room. There was a hushed quality in the atmosphere of the concert. It was like the prayers of all those nuns down the years were holding their breath as I played through my songs and the pin drop audience of all ages were absolutely fantastic. When Tom played there was thunder and lightening and candles and fairy lights and it was a cracking end to our time together. That night we stayed at Jelmer's dads house. The coolest dad on mainland Europe. Tom drank whiskey with him late into the night and we listened to music. The next day Tom set off very early in the morning to play a festival in Marleybone, London. It had been an absolute pleasure touring with Tom. I felt that we were able to develop a strong friendship in our time together and I felt the spirit of great generosity towards him as we said goodbye in Delft and wished each other all the luck in the world. Sometimes being around other musicians on tour can generate a weird sense of competition that no one ever talks about but skulks around in the background at all times. However the genuine admiration I felt for Tom as a person and as an artist helped me to really rise above that. I've never really thrived in an atmosphere of competition anyway..... it makes me feel uncomfortable. Tom had properly reached my heart with his goodness, the spirit of his music and the many many laughs and difficulties we'd shared with each other in our time on the road.
The next morning I stayed on at the cool dads house alone until Jelmer turned up and we ate breakfast. Jelmer then wrote me out an English translation of a truly beautiful poem he had written which I will treasure. By midday I started on my journey back to Amsterdam where I was to continue playing some gigs with the singer/songwriter Leendert. We played at a kind of poetry festival in the small upper rooms of an old castle. The musicians playing were myself, Leendert and Jean. I have never met a man with so much intense Love pouring out of his heart as Jean. He seemed to bleed Love for the whole world and he radiated a vibrant engagement with every person he met and with every single moment of his life. It was fascinating to meet him. After our performance we drove back to central Amsterdam in a borrowed car talking about fathers ! Jean later sent me an incredibly considerate and compassionate letter helping to clarify some of what emerged through our conversations. I really appreciated that gesture. I stayed at Leendert's apartment. This was a room of great stillness surrounded by the hussle and bussle of Amsterdam. Looking out of his window on to the streets below a trickling river of hippies cycling to and fro by day and night carrying unfathomably large bundles or items of awkward second hand furniture on their bicycles. Leendert told me that since he had decided to stop believing in God his life had been so much happier. He sat in his chair smoking roll ups beneath a beautiful icon of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ which watched over his every move. Leendert was a deep thinker and a man who listened to what others around him were saying with a calculating and intense concentration on his furrowing brow. He did not always offer back an opinion but when he did it was most often well rounded and deep. He had a really great sense of humour and a passion for women that was delightfully flawed (which I was able to fully identify with) . We had lots and lots of laughs and I felt very comfortable and invigourated being around him. We passed easy hours together talking and playing songs and wondering about life. He also enlisted the help of the most beautiful roadie/cook the world has ever seen in his friend Monique who, as well as this, was a very talented photographer and stand up comic on the side. The three of us drove out to a house gig that looked across the water onto an amazing psychedelically lit industrial zone with a long vista of huge metallic towers spouting blustery yellow fires from their apexes across the darkening evening skies. Like a hundred Port Talbots at Christmas time. Later Leendert had to drive us all the way back to Amsterdam without using the brakes because he doesn't know anything about cars and every time he used the brakes we broke down for some reason that he was unable to explain as it was not his car....... and that was obvious !
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| Leendert at the house gig we played...Photo by Monique Bruijn |
My last night in Amsterdam was spent at Leenderts apartment with Wouter de Jong and Arjette who were by this time like family to me. After returning from a gig where I played behind the bar in an all night cafe the four of us suddenly and unexpectedly started a spontaneous drones jam of voices and guitars that went on late into the night. The resulting music grew into a haunting and mesmeric experience. Music to be played over panoramic shots of Norwegian Landscapes and performed in cinemas around the world it was eventually decided. It had been a long time since I'd really played like this with other musicians and the feeling reminded me of when I first started getting stoned (and the drugs were still working) and me and my friends would have one chord jams on broken guitars sitting down by the river in a forest near our parents houses in Bristol. The Greens we used to call that Music and it holds a special place in my heart. Arjette had an amazing untrained singing voice of great purity and beauty and Wouter de Jong played a relentless, hypnotising counter melody against me and Leendert's drones. We all sung as the spirit of the playing ebbed and flowed. I love this kind of spontaneous music. It puts you into a trance and is all about the feeling that the people have for each other and the moment. It is what I like to think of as Sacred Music. It serves its purpose in bringing you into an altered state of consciousness and keeping you there. The cinema idea came about because Norway is the spiritual home of Wouter and Arjette and their dream is to relocate there and live in a self sufficient community away from everything that is not real.
This was also the night I learned about 'Farm Date'. According to Wouter an internet site that Arjette used to subscribe to where young women search to go on dates with farmers...... "because all the boys in Amsterdam are so pretentious and boring" protested a blushing Arjette as the rest of us hooted with laughter at her. Luckily Arjette met Wouter just as her first Farm Date subscription was up for renewal and those two were about the happiest couple I've ever known ! The next day the four of us travelled by tram to the train station where me and Leendert would depart for Groningen and our next gig. On the tram I was approached by a slightly unsettling old woman with a faraway smile across her face as she made her way around the coach rattling a sphere made out of green Jade. The sphere fitted comfortably into the palm of her hand and as she jangled it from side to side the sound of distant bells could be heard. I fell under the spell of those bells as she muttered something to me in a thick eastern European accent. "Had I never seen something like this before" she asked me. "No" I said. I was hypnotised by the sound of the distant bells and it was like everything else on the tram started to feel like it might start to disappear. The apparent world around me taking on a misty configuration. I found myself staring into the delighted childlike eyes that shone out through the knife edges of her wrinkled face as I drifted into the sweet reverie of brandy that I could smell on her breath. As she got off the tram she handed me the ball of green jade and said "It is for keeping secrets in" "What about your secrets.... are they still in there" I called out through the door of the tram, but she just laughed and said " don't care about my secrets" and I watched as the tram left her crinkled face behind and we twisted and clattered our way off down the metal lines.
We waved goodbye to our delightful friends at the central station and then myself and 'the sphere' and Leendert caught a series of packed trains to Groningen. This was the best train journey of my life as I spent the whole journey singing and playing guitar with Leendert who was adding amazing backing vocals to my songs as we entertained the various passengers we happened to cross. I really was so free and so confident on that day. I felt like we were musicians from bygone days who travelled around surrounded by a mysterious aura which magically drew people towards us to captivate them by songs and stories that had the power to raise them out of the problems and preoccupations of their everyday lives and transform their worlds for a few special hours. The gig at the club that night was absolutely fantastic. All the beautiful friends that I'd made in Groningen (who now really did feel like my family) were there to see me and it was such a feeling of celebration and Love. I know that night will always remain with me until the day I die. Leendert singing his heart out with me on a few of my songs and I ended the night on top of a huge round table singing Cocaine Blues by Johnny Cash ! Wouter de Boer told me later with a huge grin on his face that Laurens had come up to him afterwards and said... "So.. that's it...That's the end ..........we can never do Wishful Music again....because it can never get better than this night with Leendert and Patrick ! ". That felt like such a great and humbling thing to hear as I had such respect for Wouter de Boer and Laurens by this time ! ......... and especially because I knew that as usual Laurens was only jesting about the end of Wishful Music.
The next day we had some time off and myself, Leendert and Chris decided to go to Groningen Museum as Wouter de Borg had negotiated a deal for Wishful Music Artists to be admitted to the museum for free. Chris was Wouter's de Boer's flat mate. He was a sensitive and highly intelligent young man who was deeply immersed in philosophical studies. He spent every day of his life going to the library and reading heavy texts from centuries past. He had no money and he was in Love with a beautiful young woman who was a clown( One of the ones with the sad expressions painted on their faces) and sadly for Chris he could not be sure whether his clown loved him back or even if she knew of his feelings for her ......as he was such a shy and sensitive soul in coming forward to her. (You couldn't make this stuff up man !) He was such an interesting person to talk to and be around. A treasure house of knowledge and a true individual. I thought he was amazing and we became good friends in my time in Groningen. The three of us travelled by tram to the museum. This was the first day Chris had taken off from his studies in the library for a long time. We were jostled around as the tram made its way down town and when I showed Chris the ball of green jade he was immediately as transfixed by it as I had been.
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| Exhibit by Nacho Carbonell |
We were met at the museum by Steven Kolsteren, the coolest guy who has ever worked in a museum in the history of museums. He was in his fifties with a proper beard and he treated us like visiting royalty on our arrival. To be clear it wasn't like a museum that you'd get in England because all the exhibits here were in fact by contemporary artists. It was really what we would call an art gallery. So the coolest guy who has ever worked in an art gallery. It was a thought provoking exhibition of about seven or eight different artists spread out over as many large white rooms that stretched over three floors. I will mention two of them for the sake of relative brevity. The first exhibits created by the artist Nacho Carbonell were of papier mache cocoons suspended around a series of relationships between two empty chairs. In the first example the chairs faced each other, in the second they faced away from each other back to back and in the third they were placed side by side facing in the same direction. Over each of the three pairs of chairs hovered the suspended cocoons( three of them in all) which had holes in them (two for each cocoon i.e one head hole for the subject implied by each chair) where you would be able to stick your heads if you were sitting in the chairs. (The exhibition however did not allow you to actually sit in the chairs as these objects were all behind a prohibiting rope.) The papier mache cocoons were natural looking structures and from a distance appeared like they were made up of something like chewed up tree bark, clay and the saliva of insects. They were knobbled and rough on the outside and painted brown like weird globular tree trunks. The head holes above the chairs made into the undersides of the cocoons seemed like an entry into a dark world where the two subjects implied by the chairs would be able to retire. The shape of each cocoon seemed to be defined by the relationship between the chairs. Whether they faced each other, whether they faced away from each other or whether they sat side by side. To me it was a contemplation on differing relationships and the boundaries we create to explore them. The worlds that we create between each other in our relationships are like wombs into which we retreat. a safe naturalistic place to explore our relationships and to define them within boundaries represented by the cocoons. Something about the almost disturbing naturalness of the cocoons unnerved me. These cocoons seemed to be created by nature and I started to feel how millions of years of evolution holds us in a grip. We unconsciously form structures to protect ourselves and each other in our relationships because we are programmed in some way to do this by nature. Evolution is rooted in the horror of survival and consciousness has evolved to allow us to question these patterns and to contemplate their usefulness to us as we further evolve as beings. Art can help us to frame these questions ...to give an image or a series of images to help uncover what remains to be excavated within us. To consider and challenge our unconscious patterns if necessary.
When I spoke to Leendert about my uncomfortable relationship with this piece and why it had slightly unnerved me he furrowed his brow at me and said dismissively that he felt it was a good thing that we create these worlds (as I had explained them)....... And in some ways I could agree with him. My initial reaction to the piece was wanting to jump the rope and stick my head into each of the holes to see what it was like......thinking about it now I see in my minds eye one of my favourite things in the world which is to be under a duvet with a woman I love(if I'm lucky enough) in a kind of make believe world where nothing remains but the dark sensation of each other. If you let just a little light in it feels like you are only partly separated and able to celebrate the delight of something more like an emerging separation from each other.....but the other so called real world of total separation is all but shut out. Or if you shut out the light completely and go into total darkness you can be like one thing merged together. Like evolution in reverse and at the same time in some deep sense Very Exciting ! So I know what Leendert meant and I've loved that feeling since childhood......... but surely that feeling rises from something unconscious within me. I remained unconvinced on contemplating this piece whether the urge that informs these worlds to develop really truly serves me anymore. Also I felt that the relationships implied by this piece were in the wider sense of relationship as well. All the differing kinds of relationship we encounter were implied here. All the different kinds of cocoons we allow to grow around ourselves and the people we engage with. A series of unconscious private chambers that can develop and grow around us without us really even noticing . To me maybe there was something suffocating about these worlds, something comforting yes, but also stifling. I felt a sense of that ambivalence as I looked at the exhibit. Something about these cocoons shuts out the rest of the world in order that the two people might incubate what ? A womb that protects us from what ? I see more and more how the flower of consciousness is here to help me ( not just to manifest itself as Thom Yorke's unborn chicken voices that keep me awake at night). Consciousness is my friend. Art can really help to liberate us through providing symbols that draw out questions from the unconscious about what is really driving us..... and it can be a daily battle against an unconscious state. Not all of which is no longer necessary of course but not all of which serves us anymore either. Consciousness is the flower of evolution and it also allows us to look into and challenge the blindness of evolution. Not by denying its taproot... not by detaching itself from it and withering....but by contemplating the direction the process of evolution urges us in and allowing us to assist in altering its course. Especially if we can take on the responsibility of freeing our questioning from petty self interest and liberate ourselves to think about the wider implications of all of our actions in light of our true experience and in the light of the history of mankind. Evolution has given us eyes to see which direction we are going in and a mind that can contemplate and plot a course. Without reflection we are blindly driven by the inbuilt terror of millions of years of survival instincts. I feel the weight of that evolution upon me now and I don't think I fully trust everything about its demands or its blind progress either. That's why in its wisdom it has bestowed upon me the precious gift of self awareness.
On the Third floor was The Firebird. The Artist Othilia Verdurmen inspired by the myth of the Firebird. Consigned to fire, the Phoenix turns to ashes and is subsequently reborn. I couldn't help but think of my own life and the series of deaths and rebirths I've experienced myself. The things I've had to leave behind in order to survive and the new life that follows and rises from the ashes. The firebird is the symbol of both life and death. Many cultures have stories about its significance. It was a fascinating installation of textile and steel in which this wondrous transformation is given shape by means of light, aroma and a soundscape. The dead firebird was a giant object, more than seven metres wide, which could be viewed from all sides. The reborn bird reflected the bird’s old form but radiated energy and lust for life and displayed completely different colours. With layer upon layer of textile, intense, imaginative images, forms and colours. I walked round and round these huge birds in a state of wonderment. One bird dead on the floor in a black and charred like state the other rising up and exploding with life and movement. It was a powerful symbol for everything that had occurred to me on this tour and continues to occur in my life each day. As parts of me die away and parts of me come to life. Leaving me to ponder how my attention can help or hinder this process.
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| The Firebird Rises from the Ashes of it's former self |
Chris had become so attached to the green jade sphere that the old witch had given me on the tram in Amsterdam that I decided to leave it with him as a keepsake. I left the flat in Groningen for the last time saying my goodbyes to both Leendert and Chris. I travelled with Wouter de Boer to my final gig in Rotterdam. I played for the Tiny Music organisation in a Marquee in someones garden. As I went onto the makeshift stage to start the gig there was a middle aged woman in eccentric hippy clothing cramped on a sofa at the back of the pint-sized stage area. "I'm going to sit here for your performance" she said. I sat down on the chair in front of her and it didn't feel right. To be performing with someone sat right behind me who I couldn't even see. Also I felt some king of aggression in her voice when she'd announced her intention. So I said to her "I'm sorry would you mind moving round and sitting in front of me. It feels strange with you sat there right behind me right now when I am about to perform" This woman went totally beserk and started shouting abuse at me. Ranting and raving. I'd already been introduced so this was actually the start of my performance. Not what you really want before you've even played an intro with a unsettled audience looking on.......... and although I enjoyed that final gig I must say her strange behaviour had left me with an uncomfortable feeling which was quite difficult to throw off as I played through the set. However looking back on it I'm glad I had the courage to say what I'd felt. And in the light of her reaction I think It was probably the right thing to have done. My favourite part of that final evening was when most people had left and I played songs in the candlelit garden to the heart of the people who organise Tiny Music.
The next day the amazing Wouter de Boer taxied me to the coach station in Rotterdam and I began my journey home. It had been a wonderful experience in The Netherlands from the ashes of the freak out at the beginning to the rising string of amazing gigs and truly beautiful people I met and the friends I made. Love and Gratitude go out to Tom Copson and Leendert the musicians who travelled with me and whom I consider to be my friends for life. And also of course to the wonderful Wishful music Wouter, Laurens and Ralph whose Love, hard work and dedication made this incredible chapter in my life come true !
