Uplifting: in rehearsals, we get little idea of how things will play out in public. Cocooned in a near-airless space, stopping every hour or so while one or another volunteer brews tea and coffee, taking maybe 40 minutes for a light lunch brought in from a sandwich shop in town, we go over and over parts and arrangements until a semblance of near-perfection is reached, and this time recently we were attempting this with almost 30 songs in total (many familiar, of course). It went well, and there was a satisfaction among the players in the knowledge that several old titles had been either revived or introduced.  Then I was alone. Alone to collect them all together, the titles, and create a running-order for a Live audience.
Leamington Spa Assembly Hall is a cracking good rock venue. Good acoustics, standing on the ground, a lot of history, and backstage (downstairs), there is a sense of other-worldliness. The owner, Chris Alexander, has installed his private collection of fairground memorabilia. There’s a dodgem car, a rocking horse, and a 1960s 20’ chromium caravan. Rumour has it that it was made (fitted out, anyway) for Tammy Wynette, and who could argue? Once the lights and sound picked up my 12-string rhythm, the reception was a gratifying  kick-start for us. Ritz was always in danger of shocking some, and I have opened with up-tempo tracks mostly for many years. But my gut feeling was that a little drama from lights-down would start us all off on a mystery tour for the evening. I know now for certain that those Human Menagerie and Psychomodo album titles will be wonderful to play, backed by orchestra and choir, and I’m determined to press on with that idea. It may mean no other UK rock band shows all next year, so the tickets (2,700 if we get the Royal Festival Hall) can sell. Will probably happen in November or December, and no other band shows before it…it’ll be hard for me. But that’s a price I will have to pay – believe me, to forgo the Live experience in my home country for 12 months will be a stress. But business is business, and the costs will be astronomical, so the tickets must shift. Pride, too, will factor in all this. I want to play to a sold-out hall, and we already know a figure pushing 150 is likely to be coming from the Continent, maybe more. At Leamington, spent time with my cousin Jackie’s husband, dear Tony.  He talked excitedly about the set. Cheered me with his (the first) reaction to my slipping into The Beatles song, You Won’t See Me, out of the end of Mr Raffles, but before the refrain. “I may come back to that,” I remember saying, and when I did, the Having A Party line took on a sort of mayhem I can’t remember witnessing before.  Uplifting.

The encores thrilled the band in rehearsals, who looked at first pretty stunned that I planned to tie three dancey tracks together, running for around twenty minutes. Absolutely Sweet Marie is a Dylan song from Blonde On Blonde which I first brought into rehearsals with the original Cockney Rebel half a lifetime ago. We played it Live a few times back then. This band took to it like the seasoned professionals they are and we knew in that near airless rehearsal room that it had to be done. In among my own, I got a frisson of nostalgia, mixed with a deep respect for the man who most influenced me musically as a young lad, as I sang that song. Uplifting.

Didn’t meet Ana from the USA that night, but did the next, at The Stables, Wavendon. Ana was invited backstage after the show and took pictures. Mine were snapped on a perfectly fine Leica, but my man on the shutter button didn’t excel. They came out dark. We’ve done our best to brighten the image. Ana was fabulous. She broke out of the obvious discomfiture that came with her once we had been introduced. I can’t remember much of the conversation, and that’s because even though I seem lucid and relaxed after shows, the intensity of the performance stays within for some time. My mind is swirling with memories of the show, with thoughts of the good, the not-so good and the wrong, and how some details must be polished, worked on and discussed at tomorrow’s sound-check, or on the bus if we’re sharing one, or even now, backstage over dinner. So guests, even family, and even dear sweet Ana, hang and chat and share the relaxed atmosphere we generate back there, but I am not 100% locked in. Really, I needed to chat to her an hour or so after the show, when I’ve got control again. But I will always remember that Green Room, and her kind words and how she talked of her trip of a lifetime, and how she has lit up the Forum for many months with talk of this great big adventure. And how some of the long-term fans, good people, have befriended her, this stranger from across the big pond and guided her through the maze of transportation worries she must have harboured. You know who you are and you have my thanks and respect.

And Ana made it to North Yorkshire. What must she have thought of the countryside up there, coming from upstate New York? Harrogate was storming, we thought. Sold-out long ago, so the atmosphere was always going to buzz, and it did. Swapped Mr Raffles for Riding The Waves to (almost) end the first set, slipping out of that again into The Beatles’ track, and returning to my own song for the refrain, and like on the other two shows, the audience came with me in a raucous blow-out of “We Got The Feeling”. Louise1996 tells it well in her report on the Forum. And how’s this for tourism? Next day, with hours free before we left our Boroughbridge hotel for the Lake District, I drove myself into Knaresborough, saw the famous viaduct, felt the warm sunshine and noticed boats for hire. I took a rowing boat and spent a lone hour on the River Nidd, at times drifting, deep in reverie knowing a job had been done, but knowing still that soon it will need to be done again, and me striving to make it better each time: never, never complacent.  Met my cousin Betty’s daughter, Elaine, for the first time in many years after the show. Uplifting.

To Cockermouth in the Lake District: odd to think we had to switch back to a 60-minute festival set after all that. Not going to tot up the total of titles we played over that four days, but I was…uplifted.