Stuttgart
"The tour bus was scheduled to roll out of Frankfurt at 3 am to drive to Stuttgart, so there was plenty of time after the gig to hang out backstage. I was sitting with Adam and Guthrie and we got onto the subject of Alan Holdsworth, guitarist extraordinaire. I have not met him, but heard innumerable stories about him from the other guys in Soft Machine Legacy who all recorded and toured with him for ages. I introduced both Adam and Guthrie to Alan's amazing solo on Hazard Profile on Soft Machine 'Bundles' which blew them away. Adam also played Proto-cosmos from Tony Williams' 'Believe it'. The thing I love about those solos on Bundles is there is still a gritty earthiness to them. Alan played a Gibson SG guitar then and he 'digs in' with the rhythm section playing very rhythmic phrases that the band latches on to. Later on he became more ethereal and his glistening solos would float high above the rest of any band he played with. Great too - always incredible playing, but to me less connected to the other musicians than on those early to mid 1970s recordings.
We then had an interesting discussion about great drummers and the difference between drummers with a metric and square approach to time and those with a more circular approach. Subdivision versus alchemy, elasticity versus tight precision and how both approaches work differently in a band context when you are trying to play with them. And between Guthrie, Adam and me we have worked with Marco, Chad Wackerman, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Gadd, John Marshall - some serious drummers!
We arrived in Stuttgart for our day off and proceeded to have a 2 hour VISA 'party' with a bunch of us going through the long and complicated online questionnaire together that has to be completed prior to the interview at the US Embassy. Dull but necessary. Fingers crossed I got it right.
Then chilled in my room and finished reading 'Neverwhere' accompanied by Brian Eno's 'On Land' - one of my favourite albums of all time (yes, really). Great book. I then popped out to get a bite to eat. On the way back I found a stall that sold 'Berliners'. Now famously JFK made a speech in 1963 in which he said 'Ich bin ein Berliner' meaning 'I am a Berliner', trying to show solidarity with the West German people but in fact it meant 'I am a jam doughnut', as a Berliner is indeed a special doughnut (donut if you are American), very soft, round and filled with a strawberry sauce in the middle. Well here it was, and I felt a moral and historical duty to try out this delicacy. It was indeed most delicious.
Went to sleep - no snow. Woke up the next day, snow everywhere. Just as we thought we were done with it. And it is nearly April. The gig was in a venue we played at last year. Good sound. Full house. I felt rested after a day off. I always particularly enjoy the first few notes of sound check after a day off. It feels like 'yes - here we go...' The gig itself went well though there were a couple of technical glitches behind the scenes. Probably nothing that would have been noticed though. Great response by the crowd. I subsequently heard that more UK autumn dates have been announced and posted, including Bristol (15 Oct) Wolverhampton (17 oct) Newcastle (18 oct) and the Royal Albert Hall, London (20 Oct) That is going to be really special.
After the gig, the film on the bus was Quadrophenia. Absolutely love it. Love the original album by the Who, love the film. Something important was pointed out to me at the very beginning of the film that I had not seen before. Tonto our excellent guitar technician is a proper mod. Scooter with all the mirrors, trips to Brighton on the bank holidays, has the gear, knows the people and the places. It was great to hear his inside knowledge as I watched the film again. Then I seemed to stay up rather later just chatting on the bus before retiring to bed at 3.30 am."
Theo Travis
photos by Diana Nitschke.
