Eddy Says

Eddy Says: Rockstars – how do you like yours?

By | Published on Wednesday 15 September 2010

Losers

If you’ve ever been in a band, you’ve probably come across a bit of rockstar behaviour at some point. If you’ve ever spent any sort of time with musicians at all, in whatever capacity, you probably have too. This week, Eddy takes a look at a couple of his own experiences with rockstars, one particularly close to home.

So, it’s out.

Years in the making. Blood. Sweat. Tears. Beers. Jägermeister. Hummus. Cake. Even chilli cheese went into the making of ‘Beautiful Losers’ and it came out on Monday.

We launched it, as planned, at Club Remix, Proud Galleries. It was an epic gig, with an incredible finale, which you can see here: youtu.be/WsPZWb6Ne7g

And we had dramas. Serious dramas.

A bit of background: Tom is a rockstar. A proper one. He was signed to BMG by the same person who signed Take That, when he was still practically a child. Tom is also a staggeringly good musician. “The most talented musician I’ve ever worked with”, said his last agent, who represents some of the biggest bands in the UK. Tom also has a rare gift: to be able to play while blind drunk. He swears he plays better that way, and I’ve never seen evidence to the contrary. This has led to a tradition that to every gig Tom brings a bottle of something hard, accompanied by a bottle of something soft. He mixes them. He drinks them. He plays. Very well. This album launch night, said bottle of spirituous liquors was Morgan Spiced and the mixer, the classic American symbol of the capitalist free west, Coca Cola.

Bringing these to this, or any gig, is, for Tom, as traditional as a slice of cake when grandma comes round, or a cup of tea in the afternoon, or cheese rolling, or morris dancing. Unfortunately, the bouncers at Proud didn’t see it that way. Tom was stopped and searched, and a man with muscles as hard as breeze blocks explained that he could not, under an circumstances, take that bottle into the venue, despite Tom’s protestations that he was headlining this gig. From the bouncer’s point of view, who Tom was and his role in the evening were irrelevant. This was a licensing issue and non-discriminatory.

From Tom’s point of view this man was getting in the way of a harmless tradition, so he sneaked around the back of the venue with the bottle and began his harmless and traditional pre-gig drinky-poos.

The aforementioned bouncer twigged that Tom had circumvented him and went looking. He found what he was looking for. Now, what happened next is unclear. Suffice to say words were exchanged, the bottle was confiscated, Tom’s iPhone came out to start filming, said iPhone was smashed out of his hand and broken… it was ugly.

Cut to the performance itself and the drop section of ‘Sirenna’. Here, Tom usually makes a reference to whatever gig we’re at, so he chose this moment to go on a pretty funny rant, involving some quite descriptive sexual imagery and an offer for the security to fellate him. Obviously funny to all but the bouncer, who was watching, and not appreciating the impromptu lyrics.

The bouncer told me afterwards he was extremely close to stepping on stage and stopping the performance in the most direct manner possible, by taking out the singer. Something he was well equipped to do. We are talking about a professional doorman who, when asked by Liam – The Meddler – from Red Pill TV what he did for a living, replied: “I hurt people”. Hmm.

He was not only big in the traditional sense, but also big enough to admit to me afterwards that he thought we were really good, so he didn’t want to ruin the night by lamping out our singer mid set (but that he would happily do so now the gig was over…)

It got ugly later, we got locked out with our gear still in the venue, and the whole episode ensured none of us got home till 4am and I was in big trouble with my other half. And Tom, with whom I had a row, which made me feel awful.

But all of this brought up an interesting point. Lead singers. Rockstars. How should they behave? OK, it’s nice when you meet a proper rockstar and they turn out to be really nice, but I truly believe that if you’re one of those ‘special’ people who can front a band and hold the attention of a room, a venue, or a stadium, then you kind of have a right to act like what us mere mortals would refer to as ‘an arse’. Or possibly worse.

I’m reminded of a pertinent story. A few years ago, I was on my way to a festival in Belgium and excited to be on the bill with one of my favourite new bands. I’ll leave the name out because the singer is now trying to be a responsible broadcaster and this could undermine his ‘new life’ a bit.

So, I see him at the Eurostar check-in, looking a little worse for wear.

“Hey! S******!” I called out.

“Hi Eddy…” He replied, sheepishly.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you mate…”

“Me neither, what time is it?” He glanced at his watch. “Shite, I was supposed to be on the last train… actually, I think I was supposed to be on the one BEFORE that”.

He looked guiltily at a bag of cymbals and drum hardware, the last remaining bits the band needed for the gig.

We boarded, sat down, and as we started catching up, the full horror of the situation unfolded.

“I had a bit of a heavy one last night…” he began. This turned out to be a bit of an understatement, like calling the invasion of Iraq a quick weekend manoeuvre

It transpired that he’d been up all night, even though he knew very well that he had to be up early and on a specific train in order to get to Belgium in time for his band’s soundcheck. Festival soundchecks are rare as rocking horse shit and if you get one, you can guarantee the window of opportunity won’t be longer than you can hold your breath.

A few minutes into the journey he gave a massive sneeze. His head whiplashed into his open palms and as it rocked back he looked at his hands, then at me, with a mixture of panic and shame, as they were covered in a gloopy mixture of snot and blood. Mostly blood. His nose exploded a second time, and he said: “I’m so sorry… just need to go to the toilet…”

Our seats were diagonally adjacent, and next to the toilet, so all he had to do was fall out of his chair, past me, and into the cubicle. All I had to do to hear everything that went on while he was gone was, erm, just sit there.

I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes listening to an overture of heaving, involuntary muscular spasms and retching. It was so loud that other passengers gave me ‘evils’, or tutted, or looked at the booth, then at me and shook their head.

He re-appeared with a smile and a knowing ‘that’s better, sorry about that’ look. We both knew that meant ‘I am thoroughly ashamed of myself but were not going to talk about this for a very long time’.

The next portion of the journey was spent mostly on the phone, him trying to work out if he could get off the train and into a cab, or onto a motorbike, to get to the festival in time for the live set, the soundcheck now a distant memory, and me taking calls from the band’s manager, who was so angry that he refused to talk to the singer and insisted on using me as a mediator.

Soon I started getting messages from other band members, at the ends of their tethers, insisting that when we arrived, he would be summarily executed.

He really did feel awful, by which I mean regretful, but this was, apparently, another in a long line of band faux pas from the singer. I told him not to worry, and that I would have a word with the band.

When we arrived, me bang on time, him, about half a day late, I ended up chairing a crisis meeting. The band wanted to sack him, they had made up their minds. All that stood between him and the dole queue was this DJ.

“Look, boys”, I addressed them. “I understand your frustration; you’re all on time, and he’s woefully late and irresponsible, which makes your lives more stressful, but let me ask you this: if you were sixteen or seventeen years old, and you had a poster of your favourite rock n roll singer on your wall, how would you want that singer to be? Would you want him to turn up on time and sober? Would you want this potential icon of popular culture to be responsible, like your bank manager or your doctor? I know what I want. I want them to turn up late, I want them to be drunk, or strung out on heroin, and I want them to have heart failure in their thirties and be resuscitated having stared death in the face, or to blow their own brains out in their penthouse flat the day before their third album launch”.

“Who would you rather have as your front man? Jim Morrison or the dude from Keane? Jimi Hendrix or a Jonas Brother? Yes, your singer is a nightmare, a professional hand grenade, a loose cannon and a liability, but he is the essence of punk rock, he’s going to inspire kids and make them want to rebel, not to get sensible jobs and toe the fucking line. Yes, he deserves to be fired but if you do that, you’ll regret it forever, cos you know what? If I was in your band, I wouldn’t have him any other way”.

The speech worked. He had a stay of execution. But not for very long in the end. Sadly they split up, I think before their album even came out. It was the album of the year and nobody heard it. I’m still gutted how it all turned out.

So, back to our launch party and Losers’ incredible frontman. Danny McNamara of Embrace saw us at Brownstock and said to me afterwards: “That boy has more charisma than Chris Martin, and pretty much everyone, there’s only a train load of people in the world that can do what he does, count yourself very lucky”.

I do. There are some that say ‘rockstar behaviour’ is not tolerable under any circumstances and that all human beings should be polite and thoughtful all of the time. I disagree. I think if you really are one of these chosen few, then you have a right to behave like a twat. Not all of the time, that would be simply unworkable, but I expect it sometimes. I just think it comes with the territory, and the rest of us bass players, drummers, managers and other mortals just have to make allowances for that.

The day after the show Tom texted me and said: “Sorry I acted like a cunt, take me or leave me”.

I will take you.

Every time.

You fucking brilliant man.

Eddy x

PS. Bill is talking about YOU here… youtu.be/xRkA6zugNMQ

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