‘That’ gig…

So, Saturday 9th May was one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to / done/ heard of / dreamt of. The RPJ band members all got to the Grosvenor Hotel on Park Lane at 2pm for an early soundcheck. Why so early, you may ask….? Well, the band on before us needed to set up and soundcheck their gear and they were considered fairly important, as support bands go.
Here’s how the gig worked out for us:

6:30: we have our own table at a very posh dinner. These tables cost a lot of money and the food was absolutely spectacular.

8pm Peter Kay comes onstage and chats a solid half hour of hilarious and random bullshit. On his own admission, he hasn’t done stand up for a few years and had very little prepared.. so he basically invited heckling and freewheeled for a bit. And still managed to be hysterical. A master at work.

Time rolled on and there were various awards, presentations, comedians and things that were all slowly leading up to the main event of the evening. We hung out in the changing room, chatted randomly with the glamorous, beautiful, interesting and witty ladies of Fireball and after a while heard the strains of ‘Lay Down Sally’ drifting up through the Grand Hall.

We wandered out and watched the band. I mean THE band. Eric Clapton on lead guitar, Andy Fairweather Low on Rhythm, Willie Weeks on Bass, Steve Gadd on Drums. There were two chaps on keys, who both played great, but to be honest, for me it was all about the Gadd. I snuck over to the side of the stage (in through the little ‘exclusive’ backstage area) and sat as close to Gadd’s drums as I could. I wasn’t hearing PA or even much in the way of monitors. It was Steve Gadd’s acoustic drums coming straight offstage into my ears. And it was glorious. They played ‘Badge’, which I remember so vividly from my 16 year old explorations of my dad’s vinyl collection – it was a stand out tune that blew my mind at the time and 14 years later it still made the hairs on my neck go up. That arpeggio guitar part at the end…

They played another favourite of mine, ‘Old Love’ which, with solos, jamming and all clocked in around 10 minutes – it was beautiful, dynamic and entirely engaging – everything that those Blues jam crappy bands can’t manage to muster in their lifetime and these guys, you cut them and they just bleed the stuff out. It somehow felt simultaneously exciting and effortless.

I usually feel that I could live a long and happy life never hearing ‘Wonderful tonight’ again, but they even managed to bring the magic to that. A shuffle groove that you could build a house on in ‘Before You Accuse Me’ and rousing blasts through ‘Layla’ and ‘Cocaine’ brought the set to a close. The audience went (appropriately) mental. Clapton came offstage, gave Rick a hug and said ‘We’ve warmed them up for you…’

Brilliant.

We walked on, all charged up and exploded into our set. I had been quite viciously sick the day before and had apologized to the guys – chances were I’d be putting in a rather sedate performance. It didn’t really work out like that. I felt so inspired, so charged up and excited – we all did. We went absolutely mental and the audience reciprocated. We played a solid hour and a half and finished, bathed in sweat and ready to keel over.

I had a few choice moments where running around, playing and singing had begun to make me feel a bit dizzy… a static rock out on the drum riser, a few deep breaths and I felt well enough to continue… which in part meant jumping on a load of flight cases and mounting the speaker stack off the side of the stage to rock out high above the audience. Combine that with Rick crashing into Owen and I (I was kneeling on the floor and Owen was bent over backwards on top of me playing a maddddd solo) almost knocking the whole thing over, me jumping on my own lead and breaking it (prompting a mad scramble from the super-helpful stage crew and half a song with no bass) and for all the good and the bad, all the accidents and near accidents…. it was a gig that I will never forget.

By no means a perfect performance by me, not without flaws and spending most of the day feeling like death warmed up (hell… I even had the vegetarian meal for dinner) but there’s a feeling, a certainty in your heart that nothing can disrupt when you look up mid soundcheck and Willie Weeks is nodding and smiling at you. He then added ‘You guys sound tight!’ and I knew nothing short of a fire was gonna stop this gig for being fucking incredible.