Rock And Hard Places Part 13

"I'M AFRAID WE can't offer you gentlemen a full menu this morning."

We left Vancouver earlier than we probably needed to, and got across the border with no trouble, mostly because, when the guard asked if we were carrying any concealed weapons, we resisted the temptation to ask, "Why, what do you need?"

"The chef is late, you see."

We've stopped for breakfast somewhere just inside Washington State.

"But I can cook eggs, hash browns, sausages, that kind of thing."

Whatever.

She brings the food, and it smells great, and we eat it, and it tastes better. When we go to pay for it, one of those things happens that only happens in America.

"Oh no," she says, waving our money away. "The chef will be buying your breakfasts when he gets here."

We don't want to cause any trouble. Maybe the guy's car broke down. Perhaps he's ill. The food was delicious anyway. We're on expenses. It doesn't matter.

"Look," she says. "It's the only way he'll learn. You fellers have a good day."

True to our established form, Westenberg and I are late for the festival again. While the pine trees around the Washington State town of Bremerton are lovely, Kitsap County Fairground seems an otherwise uninspired choice of venue. Access to the site involves negotiating erratic ferries from Seattle, useless access roads, endless traffic jams and utterly incomprehensible road signs. After hours of blundering about what we believe to be the general vicinity of the venue, we find an important-looking gate.

"Artists only," says the guard.

Well, it's all a question of perspective. We wave every item of Lollapalooza accreditation we can find and affect the most convincing English accents an Australian and an American can muster. Amazingly, we are ushered through. We have managed to park ourselves directly backstage. We have missed Lush, again.

"Just make it up," says Emma Anderson, one of Lush's singer-guitarists. "You usually do."

Trying to gain journalistic access to bands who are not Lush at an American festival is not easy. At British festivals, it is perfectly possible, once you've got backstage, to find yourself queueing for lentil stew alongside Tom Jones and Blur. American bands, in contrast, surround themselves with people whose job consists largely of stopping other people from doing theirs. They say things like "We cannot comply with your request for an interview at this time" and have lots of keys hanging off their belts.

I ask someone with lots of keys hanging off his belt about the possibility of speaking to one or more members of Pearl Jam. "We cannot comply with your request for an interview at this time," he says. We are arguing next to Pearl Jam's astonishing tour bus, which is painted from front to rear in a mural replicating the cover art for The Eagles' Hotel California Hotel California alb.u.m. "It used to belong to Gene Simmons from Kiss," explains Mr. Keys, sounding suddenly less commanding. On cue, Eddie Vedder climbs off the bus. To the evident irritation of Mr Keys, Eddie recognises me and gives every indication of remembering me fondly. alb.u.m. "It used to belong to Gene Simmons from Kiss," explains Mr. Keys, sounding suddenly less commanding. On cue, Eddie Vedder climbs off the bus. To the evident irritation of Mr Keys, Eddie recognises me and gives every indication of remembering me fondly.

Eddie looks a wreck even by his standards, but we have a bit of a chat about what we've both been up to since I'd accompanied Pearl Jam on a memorably mayhemic Scandinavian tour six months previously (me: editing a music paper reviews section; him: rapidly becoming one of the most famous rock stars on earth). He says he hadn't realised till he'd read my piece that he'd had the same surname as me at one point in his multi-family childhood, and we agree that it's nonetheless unlikely that we're related. This is as far as we get, before Mr. Keys comes back with someone with even more keys, who hustles Eddie back onto the bus and gives me a look that could curdle milk.

"I'll talk to you later, when everyone's gone home," says Eddie. "Nice to see you, anyway."

There are, of course, official channels through which all media requests for access should be directed. Lollapalooza includes in its retinue a Minister for Information, whose job includes deciding who can talk to who, and when, and for how long. Happily, this almighty personage was, until a few months ago, a colleague at Melody Maker Melody Maker.

"Have you seen my golfcart?" asks Ted.

The production office have brought along a fleet of these nippy little vehicles for getting around Lollapalooza's vast venues. They are already proving an irresistible temptation to bored musicians. Last time I saw Ted's, Emma was chasing a cow in it.

"f.u.c.k."

I was wondering if there was any chance of talking to the Mary Chain.

"What? Oh, yeah, they're in that dressing room over there, just go and knock, though I think they're in a bit of a strop. Did you see which way she went?"

It's not been the best of days to be in The Jesus & Mary Chain. At what is effectively the Seattle date on the tour, they've been little more than a convenient portaloo break between local heroes Pearl Jam and Soundgarden. I knock on the door just as Soundgarden are starting. Jim answers, lets me in, and apologises for the mess.

"Um . . . yeah. William knocked a few things over and then went off somewhere. I'm a bit p.i.s.sed, Andrew. Actually, I'm quite a lot p.i.s.sed. You'd better have a beer as well."

Jim's laconic East Kilbride drawl sounds like someone tw.a.n.ging a loose rubber band; it would make Martin Luther King's "I Have A Dream" speech sound witheringly deadpan. Jim's really not happy.

"The thing that's wrong with this," he begins, "is that musically, at least, there's not enough variation. They ought to have had Nirvana headlining. And more than just a token rap band. There's too much heavy metal ideals and rap tokenism, man . . . it should have been more 50-50, with Public Enemy and De La Soul or whoever. And if that would have meant there was no room for us, so be it."

I don't know. I've been enjoying myself.

"Why, for f.u.c.k's sake? You can't call this alternative, surely? The headliners have been Number One for about five thousand f.u.c.king years. No, I'm not enjoying myself. I enjoy it when we're out there, playing, but all the rest of the bulls.h.i.t, all this . . . this f.u.c.king vegetarian food backstage . . . there's something too organised about this, too pinstripe-suity, too un-rock'n'roll."

I am genuinely saddened that I have to decline Jim's kind offer to "stick around and get bladdered," as I have go and find out why Ice Cube hasn't arrived yet. By the time I get outside, just as Soundgarden's finale is shaking the Mary Chain's trailer, he has.

"s.h.i.t, man," Ice Cube says. I've figured that if he didn't throttle that ghastly twerp in Vancouver when he had the opportunity and every excuse, he can't be that scary. "They found a little f.u.c.kin' residue from one motherf.u.c.kin' joint and busted us, the motherf.u.c.kers. f.u.c.k 'em, man. They jack off to that s.h.i.t."

No Christmas card for United States Customs & Excise from Ice Cube this year, I fear. Ice glowers impressively from the lounge of his bus. Someone, somewhere, is working on a short-notice lineup compromise that will involve Ministry going on early and Ice doing a shortened appearance by way of ushering on the Chili Peppers.

"Aw, s.h.i.t," he continues. "It p.i.s.ses me off, man, because I got fans out there that have never seen me before, fans who've been buying my records for years but wouldn't come to a rap concert because of all the bad press rap concerts get."

It must be a hard thing for the kind of kid who buys Ice Cube records to admit, that he's scared to go to a gig.

"s.h.i.t, man," says Ice, suddenly cheering up. "Did you see them down the front last night? These kids don't seem like they'd be scared to go anywhere, man. They're crazy! Never seen anything like it. But that's what this is about, you know? These kids are down with me, just like they're down with Ministry, and Soundgarden and Lush, you know what I'm saying? Music has a way of doing that. If musicians were politicians, we'd have no problems."

No different problems, anyway.

"This kind of stuff can change things, if only a bit, you know? A bit. It's a small dent. But it's a dent worth making."

Around some trucks and up a hill and across the catering tent and picking gingerly at broccoli that smells like it has been boiled in roadies' socks, Paul Barker of Ministry isn't so sure.

"Politically," he says, "to join this kind of thing rubs us up the wrong way. There are too many compromises we have to make, as a touring band. But, four days in, so far so good, I have to say."

Barker, half the creative core of Ministry, is a funny bloke. He leaps like a schoolteacher on any loose arguments or doubtful propositions, can't be bothered about projecting a united front and is refreshingly honest about his band's motivations.

"Money," he smiles. "Basically, six weeks of this pays for a studio for us. And we want a studio so bad. That's not entirely it, but it is 90 percent of it. We're not in this for Lollapalooza's benefit. That is, we are because we deigned to do it, but it's not the kind of thing we like doing."

Nor is Barker taken with Lollapalooza's ideological subtext, offering the admirably arrogant argument that people enlightened enough to like Ministry are already enlightened enough to be aware of the festival's pet causes.

"The next generation of politicians," he says, "are going to have grown up on punk rock. What does that tell you?"

That America is in real trouble. Americans think punk rock happened in 1989 and had something to do with The Sisters of Mercy. And besides which, the next generation of politicians is married to a woman who believes that rock'n'roll is turning our children into serial killers.

"Well, that's the only good that's going to come out of this. Tipper Gore is going to have a f.u.c.kin' muzzle put on her, because she can't be allowed to embara.s.s the presidency."

Two words: Dan Quayle.

"Well, Jesus. Who runs that White House? I think it's . . . what's the name of the dog who writes the books? Millie. She's making all the money."

I'm attempting to find my way back through the dark to see Ice Cube's truncated set when I hear a rustling in the trees next to me, followed by the shriek of a tortured engine, a squelch of rubber on mud and a familiar voice squealing, "s.h.i.t! Look out!"

It's Emma, in Ted's hijacked executive conveyance. I swiftly realise that the cart's pa.s.senger seat is the only place on the site where I'm unlikely to be run over by it, and climb aboard.

"HEY, THERE YOU are. I thought you'd gone."

No . . . at least, only to h.e.l.l on a golf cart.

"Come with me. We can talk now."

Eddie Vedder looks even more of a mess than he did this afternoon, and walks like he's trying to hide his head between his shoulders. I wonder, guiltily, how long he's been waiting here, sitting in the rain on a step outside a deserted dressing trailer. I know he said we'd talk later, but I'd have forgiven him if he'd got a lift back to Seattle with the rest of his band. We find a dressing trailer that hasn't been locked and sit on wooden benches.

Eddie still looks like the guy I met in Oslo in February, but has changed completely in every other respect. He was so infectiously energetic that talking to him for an hour was like drinking six espressos. He's as listless tonight as a flag on a calm day. He was unabashedly, recklessly romantic about the possibilities of rock'n'roll. Now, he sounds like he's been broken on a wheel.

"It's nice to see a friendly face, anyway . . ."

No end of c.r.a.p has rained down on Eddie since we last spoke. As Pearl Jam have grown from a promising new addition to the Seattle lineage to one of the biggest bands on earth, they've suffered a vicious backlash from the press and from their contemporaries, derided as careerist chancers and bandwagon-jumping fakers (the fact that two of Pearl Jam, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard, had been members of Seattle punk pathfinders Green River-pretty much the template on which every bunch of goateed northwestern grungeniks have based themselves-has been conveniently forgotten).

The record-buying public, however, have continued to snap up Pearl Jam's debut alb.u.m, Ten Ten, as fast as the world's CD plants can press it. As sales have cleared seven figures, the band have been toured into the dust, rolling out their uniquely punishing live show night after night, city after city. Everyone wants a piece of them and, most of all, of Eddie. Eddie, being Eddie, has tried to give all comers their minute of his time-he has a Boy Scout-ish belief in answering what he perceives to be the demands of his position. Six weeks ago, while Pearl Jam played in Stockholm, a souvenir-hunter broke into their dressing room and took Eddie's book of lyrics and stories, collected over the last two years. Eddie freaked out, cracked up and broke down. The European tour was cancelled the following day, amid a blizzard of press releases repeating that catch-all euphemism for every variety of road fever: "exhaustion."

"I hate to get sentimental," says Eddie now, hunched over in his chair, "but to write while you're travelling, with no solitude, is a lot harder than when you've got a bit of time to think about things, you know. And these words and pa.s.sages were really hard to come by, much more work than usual. And they were gone, and some b.a.s.t.a.r.d had them. I felt totally raped, I lost my mind. And then I got home and found one my friends-Stephanie, from Seven Year b.i.t.c.h-had died of a heroin overdose. And that . . . well, it kind of put me in a tailspin."

It's amazing, and not a little sad, what five months and a million alb.u.m sales have done to Eddie. But he's enjoying Lollapalooza, surely.

"Should be."

But.

"Parts of it I am. But today . . . you know, if there's a moment where things should be better, then I want to go and make them better. It's probably going to kill me, because if it doesn't happen, then I get really upset. Today's example was that Ice Cube was stuck at the border, so there was this . . . dead s.p.a.ce, and we should have been up there with Soundgarden doing those Temple of the Dog Temple of the Dog songs, especially seeing we are where we're are. Everyone was up for it, a perfect opportunity in the only place we'd do it. But trying to get everyone in the same place . . . it's impossible." songs, especially seeing we are where we're are. Everyone was up for it, a perfect opportunity in the only place we'd do it. But trying to get everyone in the same place . . . it's impossible."

Outside, the Chili Peppers are cranking up "Suck My Kiss." Earlier, during Pearl Jam's predictably hysterically-received set, Eddie announced that he'd be taking a personal stand against Washington State's risible "anti-erotica" law, to the extent of hanging around Tower Records in Seattle and volunteering to buy warning-stickered records for anyone under sixteen who asked him. It's the sort of thing musicians say all the time, but I can imagine Eddie doing it. I can also imagine him being genuinely surprised when it starts a riot.

"Yeah, I know. I can't keep my mouth shut, I guess, and that's what gets me into trouble. I mean, you know me, I think it's great seeing youth get out and come together and think they can change things, which they can, but . . . whatever."

I wish Eddie luck. I suspect he's going to need it. He's still coming to terms with his job, and hasn't quite figured out where the line is that divides what he can actually do and what people think he's capable of, between good intentions and delusions of grandeur. He still seems a fundamentally decent human being-he's waited here for hours to see me, just because he said he would-and I hope he doesn't lose that, or give it away without a struggle.

"If it's something important," he mutters, "I'll use my voice to speak for a bunch of people, but only if the issue is hardcore and heavy. But don't come to me about a backstage pa.s.s, or . . . if I did all that, I'd have no time left for the important s.h.i.t. Some people think singers can do anything, I know that . . . but leave us to the big miracles."

"w.a.n.kER! RUBBISH! GET off! Booooo!"

We are in a hotel in Bremerton.

"b.o.l.l.o.c.ks! Booooooo! Go home!"

In the hotel is a karaoke lounge. At the karaoke machine is a large man in a pastel golf shirt and interestingly-patterned trousers who is taking it very seriously indeed. "Purple rain . . . purple rain," he groans, like a man in the tempestuous throes of a grand, pa.s.sionate agony, or complete renal failure.

"Rubbish! Get off!"

Lush are heckling from a c.o.c.ktail-gla.s.s-covered table up the back. Westenberg and I are joining in because some genius has booked us into a hotel in Seattle, miles and miles away over Puget Sound, and Lush have kindly agreed to find s.p.a.ce for us on floors and spare beds.

"Booooooo!"

We are, any second now, going to get beaten to a whimpering pulp, of this I feel sure. At the bar, Al Jourgensen is flicking fifty-dollar notes at the barkeeper and barking "Margaritas for all my friends!" As his friends, for the moment, include anyone standing anywhere near him, I stick about. The barkeeper goes about his work with a terrified diligence, like a man defusing an unexploded bomb.

I don't think they get many people who look like Jourgensen in the karaoke bars of Bremerton. Jourgensen is clad entirely in sungla.s.ses-at-midnight black, topped off with a ten-gallon hat decorated with the polished craniums of unfortunate rodents, and is clutching a wooden staff, taller than he is, on which is mounted the skull of a goat.

17.

24 HOURS FROM TUZLA.

The Bihac Pocket AUGUST 1995.

IN WHICH YOUR correspondent goes to war for the first time, more or less by accident.

Every reporter who finds themselves out of their depth in a war zone feels, upon their thrashing limbs, the hand of the ghost of Evelyn Waugh's William Boot, attempting to drag them irrecoverably into the murky brine. (For the purposes of sustaining this metaphor, please a.s.sume that the spectre of the hapless ingenue mistakenly dispatched to an obscure African frontline in Scoop Scoop is, for some peculiar reason, a seaborne phantasm). At best, I reckon I managed to stay but a few strokes ahead of said spook. That said, there is something to be said for leaping into a situation you don't understand, in antic.i.p.ation that afterwards you'll have to write something about it with your name attached. With little in the way of received wisdoms to fall back on, you've no choice but to keep asking people the really crucial and elemental questions: When? Where? Who? Why? What the f.u.c.k is going on here? is, for some peculiar reason, a seaborne phantasm). At best, I reckon I managed to stay but a few strokes ahead of said spook. That said, there is something to be said for leaping into a situation you don't understand, in antic.i.p.ation that afterwards you'll have to write something about it with your name attached. With little in the way of received wisdoms to fall back on, you've no choice but to keep asking people the really crucial and elemental questions: When? Where? Who? Why? What the f.u.c.k is going on here?

The latter of these, where Bosnia in the mid-1990s was concerned, was always especially pertinent.

THE DAY CROATIA re-joins the war is the day the music dies.

The annual A&M (Art & Music) festival in the pretty Istrian town of Pula has been running for one day of its scheduled three when we start hearing reports that the Croatian army has launched an enormous offensive. More than a hundred thousand troops have poured into Krajina, the nominally ethnically Serbian enclave which occupies about a third of Croatia's territory along the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, and which has been operating as a self-declared, if unrecognised, independent state since 1991. To n.o.body's great surprise, the remainder of the festival is cancelled, under state of emergency laws that forbid public gatherings in open s.p.a.ces.

Photographer Phil Nicholls and I had arrived in Pula a few days previously, to cover the A&M festival for Ikon Ikon magazine. It had been going pretty well. We were billeted in an agreeable resort complex with easy access to quiet beaches. We'd spent a lot of time loafing around the bars and cafes of Pula's fairy-lit old city square. We'd even been quite enjoying the festival. magazine. It had been going pretty well. We were billeted in an agreeable resort complex with easy access to quiet beaches. We'd spent a lot of time loafing around the bars and cafes of Pula's fairy-lit old city square. We'd even been quite enjoying the festival.

There had been an interesting exhibition of cartoon art, of which the recurring motifs were bitter lampoons of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) operating, with minimal success, in the former Yugoslavia, gothic demonisations of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and laments to Kurt Cobain. There had been some slightly less interesting performance art-exactly the kind of the thing, ironically, that usually provokes critics to call fervently for a swift reintroduction of conscription.

There had also been music, performed on a stage in a courtyard in the old city. I had been prevailed upon to help judge the A&M band compet.i.tion, due to the sudden absence of one of the adjudicating panel, a writer for satirical Croatian paper The Feral Tribune The Feral Tribune. He'd vanished, either-depending on which rumour you believed-because he'd been mobilised, or because he was trying to avoid being mobilised. So I'd attempted tact about the dreary, gruff speed metal of Blockade Runner, A Je To and the promisingly named Megab.i.t.c.h. I'd managed to muster some enthusiasm for Leave, a skittish, Banshees-type concern from Osijek. I'd tried not to look too despondent during the set by whichever dismal headbangers had followed them, and I'd downright enjoyed The Holy Joes, the festival's guest stars from London.

I just wasn't too sure what to make of the rumours sweeping the site that Croatian army units were driving around town hauling fighting-age men out of their beds, that the border had been sealed, and that the Yugoslav Air Force were preparing to come to the aid of their ethnic brethren in Krajina.

ON WHAT WAS supposed to have been the second night of the festival, Nicholls and I head down to the site anyway. The roads are full of cars honking their horns while their occupants raise noisy toasts to the prowess of the Croatian army, and wave the Croatian flag, at its centre the sahovnica-the red-and-white checkerboard emblem of loony fascist Ante Pavelic's World War II n.a.z.i puppet state. News reports from the front suggest that it's a rout: the Krajina Serbs have fled their centuries-old homeland with hardly a shot fired in return, and there is no sign of the Yugoslav or Bosnian Serb military coming to help them.

At the festival site, a few dozen people are sitting around with acoustic guitars, drinking and singing mournfully. The songs are all local, or local-ish, favourites, many by still-popular Serbian band Party Breakers. This is a subtle protest-Serbian songs were banned from Croatian radio in 1990. Since then, the Serb variant of the language which used to be called Serbo-Croatian, but which is now called Serbian, Croatian or Bosnian depending on where you're standing or who you're talking to, has gained some currency around Pula as code of dissent. There's one especially bohemian squat in Pula whose residents make a point of speaking nothing else, even if this does seem a little like aggrieved Londoners trying to make a political point by affecting Yorkshire accents.

By now, the speakers and tannoys that have been hoisted all over Pula are playing nothing but Croatian radio, which in turn is playing nothing but patriotic music. This, while it is thoughtfully provided in every genre imaginable, from country to techno to powerpop, all sounds worse than the news that Bauhaus are getting back together.

The logic of this approach to programming during wartime is apparent, however: after three days of hearing it blaring from every stereo in every bar, I want to kill somebody, as well.

IT'S NOT JUST a desire to escape these infinite annoying variations on the "Y Viva Croatia" theme that drives Nicholls and me out of Pula, though they're a factor in our decision. We get a bus to Rijeka, and from there an overnight ferry down the coast to Split. We're both struck, on the way, by how normal everything looks. The beaches we pa.s.s are full of holidaying Slovenes and Czechs. The other pa.s.sengers on the boat sit up on the top deck and sip beer while the sun disappears behind the horizon. Nothing looks at all warlike until we get to Split, and to our villa in a resort complex near Trogir. These implausibly beautiful Roman cities-Split is built around the vast ruins of Emperor Diocletian's third century retirement palace-are full of German and English visitors, which is what you'd expect, but the former aren't staking out deckchairs, the latter aren't taunting them with chants of "Two world wars and one world cup, doodah, doodah," and they're all wearing uniforms. It's from here and hereabouts that UNPROFOR is directing its peacekeeping operations, such as they are.

It rapidly becomes clear to us that our decision to understand the former Yugoslavia by going to the former Yugoslavia makes as much sense as trying to a.s.sess the efficiency of a pasta factory from inside a vat of tagliatelle. If-and this is an "if" big enough to block out the sun and plunge the world into a new ice age-two people in the whole ex-country agree on why the war started and how it will end, we only meet one of them. While we spend a few days in Trogir phoning round to see if we can get a lift somewhere more interesting, my map of the Balkans gets covered in arrows, dotted lines, crosshatches, circles, squares, one sort of lopsided trapezium arrangement-in fact, everything but snakes and ladders-drawn by Croatian soldiers, Bosnian refugees, Italian journalists, Bangladeshi peacekeepers, American aid workers and the hotel telephone operator.