Storybook Ending

REM Tour ’99

One last overnight bus ride. We wake up in a Houston parking lot. We’ve got two hours in a Ramada Inn day room, and I intend to take full advantage of it. Shave, shower, a full tune-up before two days of plane travel.

Caron needs to use the landline, but she says I can try using her cellphone. This is 1999, so I need to go outside and walk around a while before I find a connection.

I call my mom to tell her I’m in Houston, seems appropriate since this is where her dad disappeared to. I tell her I’m looking at some palm trees. She tells me she remembers seeing palm trees in Houston as a girl.

This leads to story that I never heard before. I never knew she and my grandmother had chased my grandfather here in 1946, trying to get him to come back home. No luck.

She describes taking a Pullman coach, staying at a motel at the edge of town, which was still pretty desolate at that time, right after the war. Oil derricks everywhere. I try to picture the automobiles. Must’ve been something to see.

Dominic drives us to the airport. I say goodbye to him and am the first to follow Caron into what we believe to be the right terminal. Not seeing her on the other side of the revolving doors, I spin around and realize she’s running back onto the bus.

In the few seconds it takes me to get back outside, our bus has already taken off without me. I’m left alone standing at the curb.

Not going to mention names, but if this had happened to certain bandmates, they’d still be standing outside Bush International to this day. In their defense, that’s sorta how tours work. Beyond the music and promo, management makes the day-to-day adult decisions, the band follows along like puppies.

Luckily, I have maintained the ability to manage my own affairs. I figure out the proper terminal, take the airport tram, and beat my bandmates to the correct ticket counter. Slightly odd that no one noticed I was missing, but I suppose Caron would’ve realized eventually.

Turns out she’s got other troubles, there was a mix-up with the tickets, they don’t have us on the flight to Newark. Such is her ferocity with the ticket agent that she wangles every last one of us a seat, but we’re scattered throughout the plane.

Jonathan and I manage to sit together. Once we’re aloft, they bring us exploding meatloaf sandwiches. We’re both like:

“Jeezo, what kind of flight is this?”

Bonding afresh over bizarre airline food, we get to talking. Jon has always been supportive of my solo career, and he gives me solid advice about how to navigate the music industry should I decide to go this route.

This tour has been a turning point for me. It’s true that even before the tour I’d been playing solo shows and was pondering some opportunities overseas, but over the course of this tour in particular, my thinking seems to have crystalized.

Something about getting a taste of the very height of the music biz. There’s no mystery anymore. If I stick with the band, if the cards keep coming up aces, this is where that road leads.

Strangely, and inexplicable to most people except those who know me best, my conclusion is something like this:

It might be better to aim for being a little less famous, but more in control of my own destiny.

So there we have it.

We have a relatively reasonable layover in Newark. So close to home, but the schedule’s too tight for even a single night’s sleep in our own beds.

The transatlantic plane is way nicer than our domestic one had been. I don’t get to ride in the cockpit like I did on our way over, but I do get a row to myself so I can stretch out.

We land in Frankfurt, Germany sometime early the next day. New tour bus, new driver, an hour ride to a hilltop hotel in Wiesbaden, where my room has its own terrace and a view of the town, demanding to be explored.

I grab a local map from the concierge and a few of us head out. Unlike the bigger cities in Germany, often largely rebuilt due to the war, the architecture here is intact, and it’s gorgeous.

We make our way to a central town square where, yes, there is a beer fest going on! Tons of people, merriment. We plunk ourselves down at a long wooden table and, yes, our waitress looks like the St. Pauli Girl. Can’t make this stuff up.

Somewhere in the afternoon I squeak in a nap. We all hit the town again for supper and have a pretty sweet time. I forget my map and have been drinking on top of no sleep, but somehow manage to navigate back up the hill to the hotel.

The phone in my room rings as I’m walking in. It’s Caron.

“I’m at the bar down the street, you need to get down here.”

I am deliriously exhausted and have no intentions of doing a single other thing other than sleep. But Caron is insistent.

On fumes, I somehow convince my legs to carry me back down the stairs and to the address where Caron is waiting.

When I walk in, I understand why.

A somewhat-elaborately carved wooden bar encircles what appears to be the establishment’s main attraction. A hammond organ, and it’s got my name on it.

Caron speaks German, so I have no idea what she told these people, but evidently everybody’s expecting me to play it.

The stops are all in German, half of them are broken, but none of this matters. Someone pours me beer. I squeak out a Rev song or two to satisfy requests, then switch to American songbook. Mona Lisa. Moon River. It goes on from there.

Everyone’s happy. Someone pours me another beer.

This touring business, it twists your head around. Even if I can read a map and decode a schedule, I never know where my head is going to be from one night to the next.

But tonight, sitting here at this busted up hammond in a foreign town right out of a storybook, I have to say, life is looking pretty grand.

This was the last installment in the REM series, thanks for reading.

Click here for Table of Contents in case you missed anything.

Coming next week, something new and surprising!