The Living Years (27 page)

In the end we got to Washington in one piece but by then we were all too drunk to care, and Keith was in the same state as the rest of us.

It was actually Charlie Watts who I think best summed up life in a rock band: he said that being in the Stones for thirty-five years boiled down to five years of work and thirty years of hanging around. I never stopped loving travelling and touring but there were down days when we’d be in Kansas City and it would be pouring with rain and we’d been there twenty times before. This would be decade two or three and by the end of it we’d begin to feel a bit landlocked.

I did try to work between gigs. I ended up feeling so guilty that I wasn’t busy writing songs all the time that I asked one of the technicians at The Farm to design a flight case with a little monitor/mixer, a tape recorder and some pedals in it so that I could record ideas while on tour. In my mind I imagined I’d sit in my hotel room writing and doing great things, but talk about a white elephant . . . Every day the hotel porter would come up to my room, huffing and puffing as he lugged this thing in, and every day I’d open it up, look at it, shut the lid again and send it back down. I never used it once.

We all had ways of coping. Phil had his portable train set, which would keep him amused for hours. Tony went through a phase of weighing himself before and after he went to the loo – he had always liked science. For my part I ended up watching a lot of American television, or rather American commercials, which always seemed to take up more time than the programmes. There was one car dealer on the West Coast who always started his endlessly repeated ads with ‘Hi! I’m Cal Worthington!’ I never met Cal, but pretty soon I wanted to kill him.

Trevor Horn, the Frankie Goes to Hollywood producer, also had a quote about life on the road that I always liked: he said that touring bands were like a Viking horde coming to town, raping, pillaging and leaving the next morning, the fires still smouldering. The only thing that fails to convey is that the casualties were usually mostly on the invading side. At the end of one particularly memorable tour there was only one roadie left who had been restrained enough not to need penicillin.

* * *

Rather than a Viking horde, a touring band is more like a visiting circus. In some towns, for the two days that you were there, you weren’t just the most important thing that was happening: you were the only thing that was happening. It still felt like we were living in an increasingly strange bubble a lot of the time.

Until the early eighties, PR had mostly meant press and radio. In America on the late-night radio, you’d often end up chatting and smoking dope with the DJs – their voices would always drop an octave the minute they went on air. We’d choose the songs we wanted to hear and we’d chat away, but it never ceased to amaze me that what we were saying was going out beyond the room we were sitting in. That disbelief was the key to it, really – otherwise I would have been a bit worried about whatever was spooling out of my mouth.

Sometimes some dignitary or other would arrange for us to receive the keys of their city, which was nice but slightly puzzling. Why on earth would you trust your keys to a bunch of long-haired musicians, of all people? But it was when MTV launched in 1981 that my life in the band really began to resemble my father’s years of hurrah cruises: PR went crazy.

We put up with the chat shows but, as for MTV, I had mixed feelings. I could understand how exciting it was for fans to learn more about the bands they loved and to see songs coming to life in videos, but at the same time I felt videos took the mystery of the songs away. You weren’t free to interpret the lyrics as you’d imagined them.

There was also the fact that MTV fed an insatiable curiosity about bands as individuals, which I didn’t think was necessarily a good thing. I had mostly escaped attention throughout our career, but with MTV image suddenly started to matter for everybody in a group, which was a pain in the arse. During the
Mama
tour my image mainly involved leather trousers, curly hair and a jazzy red-and-white striped shirt. At least it was better than the Robin Hood look I’d had earlier on, but that’s about the only excuse I can offer.

With the birth of MTV, promo became a bigger and bigger part of our lives until eventually we seemed to spend more time in TV studios that we did on stage. There was one day when we sat in a studio in Chicago and from 10 a.m. to 10.15 a.m. we were on the main morning show in New York, then from 10.15 a.m. to 10.30 a.m. it was Baltimore, then it was Philadelphia . . . and on it went round the country, non-stop, for eight hours. I could have shot myself.

Phil was great on camera, which was a big help, but one less positive effect of MTV for us as a band was that our singles were played so much they tended to dwarf the rest of the songs on our albums. This in turn altered the public’s perception of us. I’m sure that in America, where we were now playing to huge crowds, a lot of the audience had come to hear the three- and four-minute singles, but live it always seemed to me that the long songs in our set, like ‘Home by the Sea’ two-parter, went down just as well.

* * *

Norbert Gamson was a trustworthy guy: smart, reputable and generally in control. He was our French promoter for the
Mama
tour and by the eighties promoters were a bit more professional than they had been in the seventies. They didn’t solve disputes by waving shotguns around for one. Nevertheless there were still dramas, and one night Norbert was attacked and robbed.

Hard as it is to believe now, this was an era when promoters would still often leave a venue with £100,000 worth of takings to bank in the morning. On this occasion Norbert had taken our £100,000 worth of takings and was walking back to his hotel late at night when he was set on by a masked figure who, having relieved him of the cash, sped off in a car.

This was all a bit suspicious. Who knew Norbert’s plans and where he was staying? Who knew when exactly to catch him with the money? It had to be an inside job, one of Norbert’s employees, we thought – and it was. It was also possibly the easiest investigation in French criminal history because not only had the culprit used his real name when hiring his getaway car from Avis, he’d hired it using Norbert’s company account.

The Norbert Gamson robbery wasn’t the first time we’d been victims of a set-up. In the mid-seventies we’d played two nights at the Academy of Music in New York and as the dates were back to back, decided to leave our gear locked in the hall overnight. The next morning I came back and my guitars were gone.

A union security guy had been in the hall all night so there was absolutely no doubt who was behind it, but New York unions at that time were pretty scary. I’d been amazed, the first time we played New York, that Dale couldn’t even carry my guitar from one side of the stage to the other: a union guy had to do it. (They’d alsoalways drag their heels setting up so that they could get overtime. Between six and seven o’clock, the stage would go dark while everyone went and had their supper. The union guys would barely even pretend to lift a plectrum until ten to six and then they’d go into a frenzy ten minutes before they were due their break.

For several hours we were all left wondering what to do until finally a phone call came through informing us that we could buy some of the gear back. We didn’t have any choice about it: a deal was done and the guitars were returned – one of them being the Rickenbacker that I’d borrowed from John Al at Charterhouse and somehow never got around to returning. It had stood me in good stead over the years.

* * *

I knew by the time we were touring
Genesis
that my future was not as a solo artist. Any doubt I’d had had been removed by
Acting Very Strange
, which was released in 1982 and was the first and last album I’d ever sing on.

I had no real desire to sing but people would always ask if I was going to try it and eventually I decided, what the hell, I’d give it a shot. But it was one of those times when, even before you start, a little voice inside tells you it isn’t a good idea. And you end up doing it anyway.

What I had discovered about my singing is that if I drank enough Remy Martin my voice could get a bit of a husk, a bit of character. The key then was getting to that stage and doing my bit before I got entirely drunk. I managed sufficiently to make the album but afterwards I can clearly remember Dad dropping a very polite hint that branching out on my own wasn’t the best thing to do. Obviously Mum thought it was the best record I’d ever made. She particularly loved the video for the single, ‘Halfway There’ – four minutes with the camera focused almost entirely on me. It was more of a surprise that Eddie Van Halen liked that song too.

When Eddie suggested that we should have a go at doing something together, I don’t think he realized what he was getting into – i.e. that my vocal ability was pretty well linked to my alcohol consumption. But then I didn’t know what I’d let myself in for with Eddie.

Having arranged a date I flew over to LA and checked into the Sunset Marquee, looking forward to starting work the next day and prepared for the fact that Eddie liked to get going early. This sounded fine and sensible to me. Then I found out Eddie’s early was 2.30 a.m.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years about late-night sessions it’s that they don’t work for me: your judgement goes. ‘That snare drum sounds great there!’ you think – and then the next morning you find out it doesn’t.

But working like that obviously suited Eddie so I set my alarm for the early hours and drove over to his place feeling that horrible, gummy-mouthed feeling when you’ve gone to bed and got up again too soon, in addition to which I was jet-lagged.

I liked Eddie’s guitar playing and he liked Genesis and I still think that, had it not been for his schedule, we might have got somewhere. But after three days of 2.30 a.m. starts I was in bits and on day four I wandered home again. I’m not sure he knew I’d gone, really.

Even though it hadn’t worked with Eddie the idea of doing something collaboratively still appealed to me. I knew I didn’t want to form another band and I knew I definitely wasn’t going to sing myself again but maybe, I thought, I’d just try and find some songwriters to work with and see what happened . . .

Mike and the Mechanics didn’t begin as a group. They began in 1984 when I asked Jon Crawley and Stuart Newton, who ran our publishers Hit and Run along with Tony Smith, to recommend some songwriters to work with me on a solo project. Phil, meanwhile, was making
No Jacket Required
and there was a gap in the Genesis schedule. Jon and Stuart came back with a list of ten names at the top of which were B. A. Robertson and Chris Neil, so that’s where I decided to start.

I didn’t know much about B. A. beyond that he was a Scottish singer and songwriter who’d had a couple of hit singles with ‘Kool in the Kaftan’ and ‘Bang Bang’. He had also written for my childhood hero, Cliff Richard. Chris Neil was an actor and producer as well as a great songwriter and had previously worked in George Martin’s studio on Montserrat. To be honest, though, the whole thing was an absolute punt – their names just happened to be the first two on the piece of paper I’d been given – which meant that it was wonderful to find that the three of us seemed to have a chemistry straightaway.

Chris, B. A. and I spent the summer of 1984 bluesing away at home and by the autumn we seemed to be drawing near to making an album. Chris has got good ears and could hear something in my noodlings. ‘All I Need Is a Miracle’ started as three different songs and it was Chris who took the best bits from each of them and put them together. Even though what we’d got was sounding good there was no master plan. We didn’t have a record deal and I had no idea of what we’d do next. I just knew that I didn’t want to form another band. So off we went on our separate ways until, on a cold, blustery November day, I got a call from Chris.

‘I’ve been thinking, Mike – why don’t we go to Montserrat and record?

I looked out of the window. It was grey.

‘Do you know what, Chris? I think that’s a good idea.’

As well as knowing how to pick his moments, Chris had a way of making the atmosphere in a studio fun, which I rapidly came to appreciate. Producers are always first in, last out and quite a lot of the job involves saying things like ‘It’s sounding great guys! I think you’re on to something!’ while inside you’re dying. I would soon learn this the hard way producing an American band called Red 7 at The Farm. In a band, if something isn’t going well or you’re not sure about something, you can pass it around like a hot coal and take turns to carry the can. If you’re a producer, you’re on your own. I also realized that if it wasn’t my music, I didn’t feel the same passion for it. Chris, by contrast, had natural enthusiasm – or else he was a better actor than he’s been given credit for. Given that he’d been in
Adventures of a Plumber’s Mate
, that wouldn’t be difficult.

We were on Montserrat for three weeks during which time we accomplished an amazing amount, partly because of the catamaran that went out each afternoon at 2.30 p.m. American unions might have got themselves into gear at the whiff of overtime, but if you really want to get something done, dangling a boat trip in the Caribbean in front of people is pretty foolproof. It all went well and we came back to the UK feeling pretty pleased with it. Then I realized, ‘Oh Christ, we’ve got to find some singers now.’ There had never been a plan – the plan was to go bit by bit, see what we’d got – but this was still quite a hitch. Fortunately, Chris Neil was old friends with Paul Young and B. A. brought Paul Carrack down from Sheffield.

Paul Carrack was an R & B singer so on paper he was the wrong choice entirely for ‘Silent Running’, a big, lush, dramatic soundscape of a song with lyrics that were about as un-R & B as you could get: ‘Take the children and yourself / And hide out in the cellar / By now the fighting will be close at hand.’ They were rougher and tougher and bigger than anything Paul usually sang. In another voice it could have sounded rather pompous; coming from Paul they never did.