Gigantic.55
Leap
I remembered playing three or four festivals in the summer of 99. Revisiting my journal, it says we played over a dozen, each described in great detail.
In Norway, I went fishing in the middle of the night with giants who used glowworms as bait. In Spain, it was so hot I didn’t want to get out of the pool, so they interviewed me while I was swimming.
At a festival in Greece, the crowd was sandwiched between the stage at one end, and a carnival with rides and attractions at the other. While the band dEUS was playing, some guy on the bungee-jumping platform 100 feet up was having second thoughts. The singer from dEUS noticed.
“We’re not gonna play the next song until you jump,” he said, his voice echoing through the PA system.
The crowd turned to face the bungee platform. Can you imagine standing at the precipice with twenty thousand people screaming for you to jump? When he finally leapt into space, the entire festival erupted.
Shortly after, we had a two-week break. The rest of the guys went home, I stayed in Europe.
I can’t remember why I went to Paris, probably just because I could. This was the first of many visits to Nicolas and his wife Veronique. The first night, we went to a party and saw the rest of Superflu plus their other friends. I wasn’t with my American rock-n-roll entourage anymore. I needed to speak French.
My French is really bad. I was always under the impression that French people hate it when you mangle their language, but it’s different when they’re your friends, then they sort of find it charming instead of moronic. At least that’s what they told me. Maybe they just liked my accent.
Nicolas showed me around for a day or two, then he and Veronique went to a festival, left me the keys to their flat and took off. For the first time in my life, I was truly on my own in Paris.
I walked around, rode the Metro. I went to Notre-Dame, Père Lachais, Café Charbon.
It gave me time to think.
Paris was the city I’d dreamed of moving to when I was 21. Where had life taken me instead?
When I took the Eurostar back through the Chunnel to London, Katie was there at Waterloo Station to pick me up in her Mini convertible. She’d been busy setting up my show.
The next day she drove her hubbie Sean and me to a practice space. Sean was a big-time nightclub promoter, but he’d also been the drummer in JoBoxers and was kind enough to play with me. On bass was a nice fella named James who took the train in from Brighton. I can’t remember how he wound up in the mix, but he’d learned the songs in advance, and we ran through the set for two hours, seemed like we could pull it off.
Katie called Sean on his mobile to say the Mini had broken down. It was getting close to soundcheck time, the Camden Falcon wasn’t too far from the practice space, so we decided to hoof it.
All over Europe that summer, crews had all but carried our toothbrushes for us. Here I was, lugging my own gear through the streets of London, to a club that turned out to be further away than Sean remembered. I kind of loved it.
When we got to the Falcon, we did a quick soundcheck. The barmaid handed us each two sweaty drink tickets which we exchanged for warm Heinekens.
The crowd was modest compared to what I’d grown used to, but Katie had gotten the word out. A lot of my old London friends showed up, and my new London friends too. It meant a lot to me that they were there.
I did the first few songs solo. I thought I would rush through this part of the show but, when I started playing, something remarkable happened: the room went quiet. Everyone was actually listening. I slowed down, let myself get into it. Then Sean and James joined me on stage, and it all just came together.
When I’d played London over the winter, I didn’t feel like I knew what I was doing. This felt like a real show.
Three days later, I flew back to Kingston, spent a week with my family, then headed back to Europe with Mercury Rev for more festivals.
A week after that, we were back in Los Angeles, touring with REM. Swimming pools, movie stars…
It might be hard to understand how someone leading such a charmed existence could, at the very peak, consider walking away from it. The stereotypical stories about bands are all true. Strong personalities under pressure. Brotherhood at its best and worst. Promises kept and broken.
But when it came down to it, it was really simple: I just didn’t feel like myself.
I’m not sure if I imagined I could achieve this same level of success on my own, or if I’d be content with less, so long as it was on my own terms.
Either way, there I was at the edge, willing myself to make a major leap. But, for the first time since joining the band, maybe I had somewhere to jump to.
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