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Leicester and Glastonbury - June 2000
Two hours into our eight hour flight to the U.K.,
our new tour manager Chris finished his dinner and announced "Well,
so much for the high point of this flight." Indeed. In seat
23B I read a paragraph out of one of the books I brought and put
it away. Then a paragraph out of the other book I brought. Then
I solved two clues from the crossword puzzle in the airline magazine.
Then I watched five minutes of the movie. Then I tried to sleep,
woke up, and repeated the entire cycle for the remaining seven hours
of the flight.
By the end of the flight I had read four paragraphs
from each book, solved five clues from the crossword, and slept
a total of thirteen minutes in 45 second spurts. The passenger in
22B had no such problem. With his chair reclined comfortably into
my lungs, he slumbered peacefully, dreaming big oxygen-filled dreams
about a ranch in Montana.
Hours later we were walking the streets of London
trying to stay awake on our first day (essential if you want to
get over jet lag). I bought a huge bag of tea from a vendor in Kensington
and wondered if the U.S. customs dogs back home would think I was
a drug smuggler. The London sky was gray and thus offered our body
clocks no clue as to the actual time. Every so often I would look
at my watch and count the hours before I could lie down in bed and
dream of suffocating the man in 22B. I fell asleep on the subway.
I fell asleep while eating dinner and again while riding back to
the hotel. There I climbed into bed, turned out the light, and waited
for sleep. Nothing. Finally I turned on the light, found the television
remote, and watched three hours of soccer.
Twenty four hours later we found ourselves in front
of 800 fans in Leicester. This was our first show in eight months,
the longest we had ever gone without playing. We played for 75 minutes
and performed a new song "Tomorrow for Now" for the very
first time. (It may or may not appear on our next record. ) The
crowd provided excellent hip swinging and called out the names of
songs off of "Great Divide." Dan played an electric 12
string guitar on some of the songs, a first for us. Afterwards,
we sat in the dressing room with some friends as Dan removed the
white stuff from half a box of Oreos and ate only the chocolate
wafers. It was fascinating to watch.
We had the next day off, so Dan, John, and I went
to the Tate Modern Gallery in London and then split up for sightseeing.
John and I wandered off to a pub near Oxford Circus. A friend had
recommended it. John drank a beer and wrote a postcard to his friend
while I sipped a Coke and breathed the second hand smoke fresh from
the lungs of a couple seated at the next table. They argued in a
foreign language and then went silent for minutes while smoking
intensely. Later I found a bookstore and bought a copy of Nick Hornby's
"About a Boy," a great book which I finished before our
flight home when I really could have used it.
The next morning we left London early for the Glastonbury
festival, a three hour drive. Along the way we passed Stonehenge,
which was no more than 300 yards from the highway. An hour later
we came upon a sea of tens of thousands of tents covering the countryside.
The people who go to Glastonbury spend as much as five days camped
out there, taking in day after day of music while putting up with
rain, mud, and sleeping bags. I walked around the grounds all day
and took in not only the music of the bands but the supreme commitment
of the fans.
We played at the end of the afternoon and had a
great time. I spent most of my time on stage looking across the
crowd at the faces, many of them singing along. Several friends
of ours from Minneapolis stood on the side of the stage, and I saw
them gazing out into the crowd as well. An event like Glastonbury
is even more of a treat from the stage than it is from the crowd.
After our show we walked around the various performance areas and
saw Ocean Colour Scene, Elastica, and Joseph Arthur. The sun took
forever to set and the music seemed to get dreamier as the shadows
grew longer. The storm clouds that had threatened all day retreated
leaving an open sky for the nighttime performances which ended with
the awesome music of Travis.
The next day we flew back to Minneapolis. It was
a longer more boring flight than our trip over. I remembered how
when we flew to France two years earlier, the Air France flight
attendants said "Bon appetit" when they brought us food.
Alas, on Northwest Airlines, lunch is preceeded by the word "Catch!"
The movies sucked. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't find any other Nick
Hornby books at the airport and hated the books I had brought from
Minneapolis. All I could do was review the pictures in my mind from
the day before and wonder if the U.S. customs dogs would freak out
when they smelled my big bag of tea.
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