Rock And Hard Places Part 6

ON THE PLANE to Toronto, I'm reading the entertainment liftout of The Toronto Daily Star The Toronto Daily Star, which has Robert Smith on the cover, his face bathed in a green ink that makes him look like a QEII pa.s.senger who's wishing he'd flown after all. Inside, the Star Star's resident rock'n'roll hack has bashed out one page of cribbed Cure history and a couple more pages of the usual lazy rubbish about doom, gloom, misery and despair, all rounded off with a few of the standard jokes about Edward Scissorhands and how, gosh, Robert Smith looks a bit like him. Also included for the edification of the readership are "Ten Frightening Facts about Robert Smith." Among these lurk the revelations that "His mummy knitted him ten pairs of socks to take on the current tour" and "He has a habit of sticking his fingers in his mouth when he talks, which makes him look silly."

IN TORONTO, THE Cure are playing the Skydome. The Skydome is a vast concrete barn that can be configured to hold 80,000 fans for a Blue Jays home game, or 25,000 for a Cure gig. When weather permits, Skydome's roof can be opened to the heavens. The fact that the heavens above this gaping slit are dominated by the endlessly upright form of the CN Tower must make Toronto something of a must for holidaying Freudians.

Backstage tonight, after a performance that was perhaps more competent but rarely as pa.s.sionate as the one in Chicago, the mood, appropriately, is more subdued and, not to put too fine a point on it, sober. Members of The Cure and the support band, Cranes, sit quietly waiting for the tour buses, lost in Skydome's labrynthine tunnels, to find them. a.s.sorted press, record company types and examples of that breed who always end up backstage without anyone knowing quite how, or why, or who they are, mill aimlessly about. Thanks to the increasing road fever being experienced by The Cure's tour manager, the backstage pa.s.ses these people have affixed to their jackets don't read "Guest" or "VIP" but "Freeloader," "Blagger" and "No Idea." Mine says "Poser." Porl and Simon are playing with Porl's new toy, a sort of cross between a Polaroid camera and a fax machine that instantly prints out blurred, grainy, black and white images of whatever has just been photographed.

"See?" says Porl, pointing at a hopelessly blotched and smudged sheet of thermal paper. "It's you and Gallup."

After being hit by a tank, possibly. What's it for?

"For?" asks Porl. "Well, it's for . . . for rich idiots with more money than sense."

He goes off in search of a more appreciative subject. Smith appears with two handfuls of beer bottles and apologises, definitely more out of politeness than remorse, for the carryings-on in Chicago. "It was just a good show," he says, "and everyone was just in a good mood, and that can tend to get out of hand."

Smith suggests that we should go and sit somewhere quiet and talk about stuff before the buses find us. At no point does he put his fingers in his mouth. I forget to ask about the socks.

"It's a funny tour, this," he begins. "Everyone's been in such a good mood the whole time. Staggering! There's only been one violent row in twelve weeks, and that was really early on, when we were all still settling in."

As I saw in Chicago, The Cure kidding around and unwinding backstage could be mistaken for a Wild West all-in. An actual violent row must be something to see.

"Yeah . . . the arguments, when they happen, do get pretty intense. I mean, one-on-one, we've had few set-tos, but there's only been one big group row, which was very easily sorted out. I think it just comes from a constant reappraisal of what we're doing. The first couple of weeks were quite intense. We had a lot of MTV and record company b.o.l.l.o.c.ks which we went along with, which was a bit dumb of us, really. We used our days off very badly. Since then, we've used them wisely."

What do you do?

"Do? We don't do anything."

Smith, as he points out himself, is more constrained than most people in his position in terms of going outside for a bit of a walk, or trying to see the sights. He . . . there's no other way to put it. He really does look like Robert Smith. This isn't as fatuous a statement as it sounds: a lot of famous people, in the cold light of reality, look nothing like they do on television, or at least can get away with not looking quite like they do in magazines. The hair alone ensures that Robert Smith is unmistakeable. Robert Smith, possibly uniquely, has a famous shadow.

"Last time we were here," he says, "we were also playing stadiums, but somehow people still didn't know who the f.u.c.k we were. People in, like, Reno didn't know who The Cure were, but this time they do, and it's quite strange confronting that."

It has its points. Having previously fronted American customs to tell them that I'd come to interview bands called Violent Femmes or Hole, it was nice to be able to say something that impressed them.

"Exactly. And it's the first time that's happened. And because of that, it's still quite funny. Like, playing the Rose Bowl still just feels like . . . like a mistake, like it shouldn't be us playing there."

THAT AFTERNOON, ON CNN's Entertainment News Entertainment News, a reporter at the Chicago show accosted one of the legions of Smith lookalikes on hand and attempted to gain some sort of insight into The Cure's success. "They're great," replied the Smithette. "Really alternative."

"THE FANS . . . I dunno. Things started bothering me on the last American tour. We'd reached a certain level, and people knew where we were staying, and they'd check into the same hotels, so I'd have people camping in the hall outside my room, not just one or two but lots, sitting in the corridor and listening through the door, and it made me very . . . uncomfortable."

Smith sounds almost as if he thinks he's being unreasonable.

"But at the same time, I couldn't really go out and tell them to f.u.c.k off, because really I should be pleased. But I wasn't. So I'd just lie there and agonise over it, and it was driving me mad. So this time we're all checked in under ridiculous a.s.sumed names, our hotels aren't listed in the itinerary, so only we know where we're staying, stuff like that."

It still must be b.l.o.o.d.y strange looking out at an arena full of people all trying their d.a.m.nedest to look like you. A bit Life Of Brian Life Of Brian, I'd have thought. You know: "Yes! We're all individuals!"

"Well, we went to this funny little diner a couple of weeks ago, somewhere between Denver and St Louis, or wherever. Anyway, horrible little town, full of people who aren't particularly friendly to people who look like us. Anyway, we went in, and what must have been the only two Cure fans for miles around arrived just as we were finishing our meal-someone must have phoned them and tipped them off. And they were all dressed up, and made up, and wearing black, you know.

"I mean, I don't know why they did it, but at the same time . . . when they walked in, everybody in the place went, 'Oooh,' like they were obviously the local weirdos. But when those people put two and two together, they had a kind of newfound respect, like, 'Oh, we know this band, and these people are fans of this band.' So I think people do it for that reason, to step outside the norm. And in some of the places we're going, that must take a lot of courage. I think, really, it's just like warpaint, or tribal feathers or a . . . I dunno, a kilt, or something."

On Wish Wish, there's a song called "End," which contains the repeated line "Please stop loving me / I am none of these things," which . . .

"Yeah, in part. But it's mainly directed at me. The bit about 'All the things you say / And all the things you write' is me talking to myself. There's an irony there when I'm up on stage doing it, but I realised that there would be. I do feel quite self-conscious that people are taking it as if it's directed at them, though."

People come over roughly every five seconds to tell Robert that the bus is on its way, or about to arrive, or here now, but he doesn't seem in any hurry-it's not like they're going to go anywhere without him. He carries on talking about the tour, musing on the irony that when The Cure came out to America a few years ago to tour the epic doom-fest Disintegration Disintegration, crowds threw flowers and teddy bears onto the stage, "Whereas this time, when we've come out with a much more upbeat record, you know, 'Friday I'm In Love' and all that, we've been getting a lot of phials of people's blood and Baudelaire books." He bites quickly when I try to bracket The Cure alongside Simple Minds and U2 in a peer group of post-punk bands that have gone megaplatinum-Smith dismisses both, with a theatrical snort, as "Compet.i.tors for the t.i.tle of most foolish-looking-into-the-middle-distance band in the world."

He's also entertainingly indiscreet about his former bandmate and pending legal adversary Lol Tolhurst, gleefully reciting choice excerpts from the universally appalling reviews garnered by Tolhurst's post-Cure band, Presence ("I can't f.u.c.king wait for the court case"). In the piles of stuff being stacked onto the bus is a gift that has given to Robert by an a.s.sociate of the band: a Lol Tolhurst dartboard.

"The thing to keep remembering," says Smith, finally, "is that we're a very foolish band. And we always have been."

AS SWEET MADE his way into the photo pit in Chicago, he was approached by a couple of local kids, who wanted to know if he'd be meeting the band. When Sweet said yeah, they gave him a pa.s.sport-sized photograph and asked if Sweet could get Robert to sign it. It was, they explained, a picture of a friend of theirs, a huge Cure fan. She'd been killed six months ago in a car-surfing mishap. Sweet took the photo, and the kids' addresses.

In Toronto, when Sweet gives Smith the photo and explains the story, Robert looks utterly at a loss. After staring at it, shaking his head silently for a few seconds, he borrows a pen from someone.

"What," he scrawls across the top of it, "can I possibly write?"

And he signs his name to the bottom.

7.

APATHY IN THE UK.

On book tour in Britain AUGUST 2008.

THERE IS NO aspect of the rock'n'roll life more mythologised than touring, and I should know. Having given rock'n'roll the proverbial best years of my life, writing about music for Melody Maker Melody Maker, then a.s.sorted others, I did my little bit towards furthering the idea of touring as a splendid and enviable mobile Saturnalia. Which is to say that I lied. Not lied as in related palpable untruths, but lied in failing to pa.s.s onto readers the whole truth, which is this: tours are only fun when they're someone else's tour, in which case they're about the most fun you can have. When they're your own tour-as most people who undertake such things will confide, after a few drinks-they're an excruciating, dignity-destroying process which will steadily cause you to loathe, in this order, your most recent work, your audience, yourself, everyone, everything. I once interviewed Harry Shearer, now best known as the voice of much of The Simpsons The Simpsons, but a genuine rock'n'roll immortal due to his portrayal of ba.s.s player Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap This Is Spinal Tap, the purest essence of the touring experience ever distilled. While wrangling my tape recorder, I remarked that I'd first seen the film as a teenager, and thought it amusing satire.

"Well, thanks," said Shearer.

And then, I continued, I became a rock journalist.

"And now," grinned Shearer, "you know better, right?"

I embarked on my own tour, therefore, with some trepidation. In order to interest the British reading public in the UK edition of my book, I Wouldn't Start From Here I Wouldn't Start From Here-an account of one peripatetic hack's bewildered stumbling around the political, philosophical and actual front lines of the 21st century-my British publisher, Portobello, arranged for me a series of manifestations in bookshops and a.s.sociated establishments. Naturally, I became gripped with visions of Artie Fufkin, the hapless press officer from Polymer records, penitently inviting Spinal Tap to "kick this a.s.s for a man" after organising an in-store appearance at which even the two men and a dog of fable have failed to show.

Nevertheless, I agreed, largely out of curiosity-always the best and the worst reason to agree to anything.

IN FAIRNESS TO all concerned, it starts well. At London's Frontline club-a haven for foreign correspondents, and similar-I do an onstage interview with my good friend James Brabazon, a reading and a Q&A session. A decent crowd show up, some of whom I don't know. James is a kind and thoughtful interrogator, despite the patent truth that he's survived any number of adventures much more interesting and alarming than anything I'd even attempt. During the readings, one about Gaza and one about Albania, people laugh when I hope they will, the questions from the floor are smart and pointed, and we sell all the books we brought along, and there's no point in even trying to be smart or glib or self-deprecating about the feeling of people asking you to sign a book you wrote: it's just brilliant. The following night, I appear at the Corner Club in Oxford, and contrary to all expectation-this is, after all, a university town in August-a reasonable gathering awaits, which is to say less than twenty, but more than a dozen, which is enough that reading aloud and fielding questions doesn't just seem weird for everybody.

Nevertheless, I reflect, on the way back to London, the economics of it are insane. If I sold half a dozen books tonight-the most optimistic of estimates-that's a gross return of about fifty quid, of which about a fiver goes towards defraying my advance (although the Corner Club did throw in dinner, which was very good). The outlay to accomplish same was 19 in rail fares, and about that again on magzines and newspapers to read on the train, and coffee. I understand that it's about generating word of mouth, building an audience, and all that, and I don't mind doing it-again, it's fantastic that people turn up, and listen, and ask questions, and stick around for a drink afterwards. But a jolt of perspective is provided within forty-eight hours, with the broadcast of the episode of BBC Radio 4's Excess Baggage Excess Baggage in which I'm interviewed about the book (again, vexingly, by someone who'd regard the hair-raisingest moments in it as a rest cure-in this case, the explorer Benedict Allen): within minutes of the programme airing, in which I'm interviewed about the book (again, vexingly, by someone who'd regard the hair-raisingest moments in it as a rest cure-in this case, the explorer Benedict Allen): within minutes of the programme airing, I Wouldn't Start From Here I Wouldn't Start From Here is tenth on is tenth on amazon.co.uk's travel chart.

It doesn't last. By day's end, not that I'm checking every hour or anything, I Wouldn't Start From Here I Wouldn't Start From Here is clinging grimly to the Top 100 travel books, digging in its nails while Charley Boorman's is clinging grimly to the Top 100 travel books, digging in its nails while Charley Boorman's Race To Dakar Race To Dakar stamps on its fingers, and so the road beckons. After we'd recorded stamps on its fingers, and so the road beckons. After we'd recorded Excess Baggage Excess Baggage, Benedict Allen remarked that he'd just done a reading in Bristol, in the same shop I'm due at. I asked what sort of crowed he'd pulled. "Eight," he'd beamed. I can't wait.

SINCE I WOULDN'T Start From Here I WOULDN'T Start From Here was published in my Antipodean homeland in 2007, I've received a flattering, if bemusing, number of emails from folk younger than myself soliciting advice. I have been unsure what to offer by way of reply, as the only utterly infallible contribution I've ever felt I can confidently make to the sum of human wisdom is this: if you go home with a woman for the first time, and discover, in your exploratory survey of her CD shelves, that she possesses more than one alb.u.m by Joni Mitch.e.l.l, climb out of a bathroom window at the earliest opportunity, and run like the f.u.c.king wind. was published in my Antipodean homeland in 2007, I've received a flattering, if bemusing, number of emails from folk younger than myself soliciting advice. I have been unsure what to offer by way of reply, as the only utterly infallible contribution I've ever felt I can confidently make to the sum of human wisdom is this: if you go home with a woman for the first time, and discover, in your exploratory survey of her CD shelves, that she possesses more than one alb.u.m by Joni Mitch.e.l.l, climb out of a bathroom window at the earliest opportunity, and run like the f.u.c.king wind.

To that pearl, I can now add this: don't invite your friends to your book signings. This because that when you do invite your friends to your book signing, and no other b.u.g.g.e.r shows up, you forfeit the consolation of subsequently lying to said friends that the event was a riotous outpouring of adulation next to which Barack Obama's Berlin speech looked like Gary Glitter's homecoming parade.

Which is to say that the spectre of Artie Fufkin looms forbiddingly at Borders on London's Charing Cross Road, and he's about the only one who does. I'm parked by the till, next to a cardboard marquee bearing my name and the book's cover, and a stack of volumes awaiting purchase and signature. It's a set-up that might well work were I a much-garlanded literary t.i.tan, or a gormless, ghostwritten halfwit who plays football, or is otherwise on television occasionally. But I am none of these things. I am a semi-retired rock journalist who has written a strange book about screwed-up places, and I have neither admirers nor fans, just an agent and a bunch of mates making helpful morale-boosting comments, like for example "Do you want a hand brushing off the cobwebs?" and "How much longer before you pack it in, Mueller? We're getting thirsty." Eventually, though, three honest-to-goodness members of the book-buying public appear. In the circ.u.mstances, attempting any sort of reading would just seem odd, so we have a chat, instead. They seem nice, and afterwards I stomp into Soho with my friends, attempting to make my improvised soliloquy about the advantages of quality over quant.i.ty audible over their sn.i.g.g.e.ring.

The Brighton leg of the tour was supposed to be the basis for a proper old-school, wacky Summer Holiday Summer Holiday-variety travelogue. My publicist at Portobello, Hannah Marshall, owns a bright orange Zastava 750-a more or less automotive relic of Yugoslav communism. We had intended to drive to Brighton and back in it. However, it is raining on the day we are due to head to the seaside, and because the car is-as I understand it-constructed largely from papier-mache, straw and turnip peel, she doesn't fancy our chances. We take the train. I spend the trip half-heartedly inventing prima donna rider demands-bowls of blue M&Ms backstage, a polar bear cub to stroke during the reading and so forth. Hannah spends the trip ignoring me.

After the Charing Cross experience, I pitch up at Brighton's Borders store willing to regard anything north of total humiliation as a result. A pleasant surprise awaits. The manager, Neil, a grinning, s.h.a.ggy-haired sort in a Nirvana t-shirt, gives every impression of being someone motivated to work in bookselling by a fizzing zest for books, and he's made an effort. There are signs, posters and displays touting my tome and my appearance, and though the dozen or so people who fill the seats seem a meagre return for Neil's heroic labours, it's a dozen or so more than I was expecting. I give a short talk explaining myself and the book, and read from the chapters about Albania and Gaza. The latter-in which I do, I fear, imply that the state of Israel is in some respects imperfect and fallible-provokes a brief irruption of controversy. "n.a.z.i!" snorts one punter-the one who seems to be storing a considerable percentage of his worldly chattels in the plastic carrier bags he is clutching to his chest-and shambles off; another satisfied customer.

But there are good questions from the floor afterwards, and some books are sold, and I head for Bristol two nights later suffused with an optimism which, it proves, is as hilariously misplaced as an air horn at a chess tournament. Despite the lengthy interview I'd done with the local BBC radio station, my audience at the Borders branch on Bristol's handsome Clifton Promenade consists, in its entirety, of the parents of an ex-girlfriend. I add the entire populations of Somerset and Gloucestershire to the burgeoning list of people who'll be sorry when I'm famous, sign all the copies of the book the store has in stock so they can't send them back, and at least get taken out to dinner, and to meet my ex's parents' new dog, so it's not a complete write-off.

THE FOLLOWING WEEK, I head north, in neither hope nor expectation. An Australian, such as myself, who seeks triumph in Leeds, labours in a dauntingly long shadow. In July 1930, on his first tour of England, a 21-year-old batsman from Bowral, New South Wales, called Donald Bradman, piled up 334 runs at Headingley. "As to its extraordinary merit," declared the venerable cricket annual Wisden Wisden of this t.i.tanic innings, "there could be no two opinions." It is humbling indeed, then, to arrive for my reading at the Borders outlet on the shopping street of Briggate and discover that I have, in a very real sense, equalled Bradman's accomplishment, at least if one values each attendee at a book reading as worth 55.66 runs, and doesn't make any deductions for the fact that one is a member of staff, and another is a palpably insane transient seeking shelter from the astonishing rain, and who spends most of the time muttering into a mobile phone-a call which, I cannot help but suspect, has been going on for some while, possibly some years, and does not involve anyone else. of this t.i.tanic innings, "there could be no two opinions." It is humbling indeed, then, to arrive for my reading at the Borders outlet on the shopping street of Briggate and discover that I have, in a very real sense, equalled Bradman's accomplishment, at least if one values each attendee at a book reading as worth 55.66 runs, and doesn't make any deductions for the fact that one is a member of staff, and another is a palpably insane transient seeking shelter from the astonishing rain, and who spends most of the time muttering into a mobile phone-a call which, I cannot help but suspect, has been going on for some while, possibly some years, and does not involve anyone else.

Nevertheless, that leaves four honest-to-goodness members of the reading public whose presence has not been compelled by professional obligation or voices in their head, and I am genuinely pleased to see them (I am, following last week's debacle in Bristol, genuinely pleased to see anybody). I give my explanation of myself, and my book. I Wouldn't Start From Here I Wouldn't Start From Here is, I tell them, the first history of the 21st century: a publishing landmark. Given the tumultuous rain, the meagre attendance, and the ever-present, over-arching knowledge that I'm never going to sell a thousandth as much as Bill f.u.c.king Bryson, this feels pleasingly preposterous. I do a couple of brief readings: one I haven't done before, about traipsing around some of the less glamorous reaches of Kosovo with soldiers serving with KFOR, then the reliable crowd pleaser recalling my first meeting with Edi Rama, the extraordinary mayor of Tirana, Albania. Afterwards, a pleasant young chap called Sean wants to argue about politics for a bit. As I have nothing better to do but ink my signature into the forlorn pile of books stacked on the table, in the hope that an "autographed copy" sticker will persuade someone to part with 8.99, I'm happy to argue back. Sean takes his leave, and my scrawling is interrupted by a tall, twitching, bearded apparition in a mouldy greatcoat and deerstalker hat. is, I tell them, the first history of the 21st century: a publishing landmark. Given the tumultuous rain, the meagre attendance, and the ever-present, over-arching knowledge that I'm never going to sell a thousandth as much as Bill f.u.c.king Bryson, this feels pleasingly preposterous. I do a couple of brief readings: one I haven't done before, about traipsing around some of the less glamorous reaches of Kosovo with soldiers serving with KFOR, then the reliable crowd pleaser recalling my first meeting with Edi Rama, the extraordinary mayor of Tirana, Albania. Afterwards, a pleasant young chap called Sean wants to argue about politics for a bit. As I have nothing better to do but ink my signature into the forlorn pile of books stacked on the table, in the hope that an "autographed copy" sticker will persuade someone to part with 8.99, I'm happy to argue back. Sean takes his leave, and my scrawling is interrupted by a tall, twitching, bearded apparition in a mouldy greatcoat and deerstalker hat.

"Have I missed something?" he asks.

Not really, I tell him.

"Did you write this?" he continues, lifting one of the volumes.

I did, I confirm.

He-I swear I'm not making this up-whips a magnifying gla.s.s from a pocket, and regards the cover intently.

"I've never heard of you," he concludes.

Him and everybody else in explored s.p.a.ce, I reflect, as I plod out into the rain, back down a near ankle-deep Briggate, to tonight's lodgings at the Malmaison hotel. I order room service, and watch a DVD of a recent Australian Rules football fixture which my folks have sent me. The forces of all that is good and righteous (Geelong) vanquish the evil empire (Hawthorn). I rea.s.sure myself that this is all going to be worth it eventually.

"Eventually," happily, turns out to mean "almost exactly twenty-four hours." York is brilliant. Not just the event, but York itself. Beautiful, walkable, riddled with fantastic antique bookstores. I find a 1923 edition of Hilaire Belloc's history of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. I decide that 30 asking price is worth it, on the grounds that it serves as both a heartening totem (it is, after all, a book about conflict by someone who liked to think himself funny) and a useful dose of perspective (in that it reminds that some journeys are a rather greater struggle than the one I am presently undertaking).

When I report to York's Borders store, things look unpromising, which is to say about like I expected them to look. Just two of the seats arranged in front of the table heaped with books are occupied. The staff tell me not to worry-they've been giving this plenty, printing their own posters, building displays, mentioning it to customers, and they're quietly confident. They're also absolutely right. By 6:30, all twenty-odd chairs are filled. I read the section about meeting Tirana's mayor again, and a bit about talking to American soldiers in Baghdad just after they'd taken the city. When I solicit questions, there's an intriguing contribution from an officer's mess-sounding sort who explains that his interest was piqued because he'd also worked in the Middle East. I ask in what capacity. "I'd rather not say," he beams (later, after everyone else leaves, he explains himself further, leaving me in no doubt that he's genuine-however, were I to pa.s.s on what he relates, I'd be in the invidious and inconvenient position of having to kill all of you). Others want to know how I'd characterise my politics ("Increasingly bewildered," I answer) and there's a good discussion about the intersection of tragedy and comedy. Best of all, at least from the perspective of the author whose ego has, of late, endured a bit of a kicking, there's an actual queue for signed copies.

Nevertheless, as I contemplate the looming conquest of Scotland, I feel like I'd rather be me than Napoleon. Which is unusual.

BY THE TIME my train from York pulls into Edinburgh's Waverley station, I am ensconced in a not unpleasant fug of cheerful resignation. I'm already prepared for Scotland to go badly. A scheduled appearance at a Borders store in Glasgow has been cancelled. According to the email from the store's management, this was for reasons beyond anyone's control, but I was pretty sure I'd detected, between the lines, sentiments to the effect of "Who the f.u.c.k is he? He couldn't pull a crowd if he was paying people fifty quid a time to take his book away. Why do you keep sending us these losers? Can't you get us Paul Theroux, or Charley Boorman, or at least somebody we've ever heard of?"

As for Edinburgh, I know I haven't a hope. I've arrived in the middle of the city's annual festival, without even any official attachment to the literary component of the event-and even for big names with bottomless resources, attracting attention in Edinburgh during the festival is difficult, for the fairly fundamental reason that in Edinburgh during the festival it often feels like there are more performers than there are punters. For the duration of the festival, the normally famously staid city goes, in the most genial and least pejorative sense of the word, crazy. By which I mean that if, after the previous Edinburgh Festival I'd attended, in 2006, I'd entered some hypothetical contest to find the most bizarre one-line reminiscence of the event, my own submission ("I hosted a three-night stand at the Underbelly by England's greatest living songwriter, shook hands with Sean Connery, accidentally kidnapped a waitress and compared favourite Onion Onion stories with a former Vice-President of the United States"), though no word of a lie, would have struggled to crack the top ten thousand. stories with a former Vice-President of the United States"), though no word of a lie, would have struggled to crack the top ten thousand.

What minimal delusions of grandeur I may still be harbouring are vanquished by the experience of apprising myself of my accommodations. The only parts of the bedsheets through which it would be difficult to read a newspaper are the stains which are holding them together, the ventilator shaft outside the only window offers an intriguing suggestion of what life might be like inside a 747 engine, and the plumbing is obsolete and diabolical even by British standards. However, the festival is on, which means that they are charging my publisher for the night what they would probably, at any other time of year, be grateful to get away with charging for the freehold of the entire hotel, and its indolent, surly staff.

Still, I reflect, I shouldn't complain. I should struggle, at moments such as these, to spare a thought for the millions for whom a published book, and a subsequent publicity tour, however ill-attended, are wildest dreams plus tax. I tell myself that, in some sense, I'm doing this not for myself, but for all those thwarted authors with yellowing ma.n.u.scripts in the bottoms of their wardrobes, sheaves of rejection slips in a desk drawer-and probably, I reflect further, as I grimly roll up a newspaper in preparation for single combat with the moose-sized c.o.c.kroach who presides over the bathroom, some semblance of a settled, functional, adult life.

My only engagement in Edinburgh is at Word Power, an independent bookshop on West Nicolson Street. It is, of course, hopelessly cliched to become sentimental about independent bookshops, menaced as they are by the internet and by the chain stores I've spent the last couple of weeks visiting. It is also absolutely right and proper to become sentimental about independent bookshops, especially ones like Word Power, which compensate for their relative lack of shelf s.p.a.ce by their surfeit of enthusiasm and knowledge. The rampant nature of their optimism is attested by the twenty-odd seats they've arranged in front of the lectern.

Failing to pull double figures in Edinburgh at the height of the festival on a sunny Friday afternoon prompts, I'm pleased to discover, significantly less in the way of existential despair than tanking just as badly in Leeds on a rainy Tuesday night. After all, I can rea.s.sure myself, it's Edinburgh during festival. If I didn't have to be here, I wouldn't be here either.

8.

NO SLEEP TILL TRAVNIK.

China Drum in Bosnia JULY 1996.

MORE THAN ANY other piece in the book, this account of a little-known punk group's attempt to be the first British rock band to play in post-war Bosnia requires a glossary. Not only does it contain cultural references which are specific to the English, it contains cultural references which are specific to the sub-group of the English who hail from the city of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in northeast England-or, as these folks are known, by themselves and by others, Geordies. The stereotypical Geordie is cheerful, funny, insatiably-if not occasionally wearisomely-sociable, utterly likeable, fond of a drink and distinguished by a rich accent and picturesque dialect all but completely baffling to outsiders (indeed, many of the words attributed to the band in what follows are not so much quotations as translations). It is intended only as the highest of compliments to the stout fellows of China Drum to observe that I remember them all, in every sense that matters, as hilariously stereotypical Geordies.

So, some explanations are in order-many of which may make more sense after reading the piece, but anyway. Being Geordies, China Drum are all ardent supporters of Newcastle United Football Club, whose fans are known, en ma.s.se, as the Toon Army (Newcastle, unusually for an English conurbation of its size, is a one-club city, so Newcastle United are held to be representing "the town"-or, when rendered into Geordie, "the toon"). And, being from Newcastle or thereabouts, China Drum affect to dislike n.o.body in the world more than the people of Sunderland, just thirteen miles down the road-hence the gloating singalongs about Sunderland's football team, who had, the previous season, come off the worse in the both of the Newcastle vs. Sunderland derby matches (Freud's famous "narcissism of minor differences"-the syndrome which dictates that people tend to hate most intensely those most similar to themselves-will find a means of expression everywhere, and the recent history of the destination of China Drum's journey demonstrates that there are far more destructive vents for it than football rivalries).

Frequent reference is made, below, to attempts to recreate, in a.s.sorted carparks and forecourts along the way, key moments from something called Euro '96. This was that summer's European Football Championships, which had been held in England, and in which England's team had acquitted themselves in the manner for which they have become justly famous, i.e., fumbling, fluking and flattering to deceive through the group stages before being knocked out in the semi-finals in a penalty shoot-out against Germany. The players referred to en route all took part in the tournament: England and Geordie icon Alan Shearer; England's Paul Gascoigne, a player who might have joined the pantheon of all-time greats had his surging genius on the field been allied with the smallest soupcon of common sense off it; Gary McAllister and Colin Hendry, who had been members of Scotland's characteristically hapless squad.

England's infuriating exit from Euro '96 may have contributed to the anti-Hunnish sentiments which were expressed during the pertinent portion of our drive, but as the English rarely require much in the way of prompting to loudly remind Fritz who won the b.l.o.o.d.y war anyway, probably not (the admonishment not to mention the war, obviously delivered ironically, is a quote from the iconic 1970s BBC sitcom Fawlty Towers Fawlty Towers, and far from the only one of these coming up). The Dambusters March Dambusters March also mentioned in this context is the theme from the 1954 film about the heroics of the Royal Air Force's 617 squadron, and their dashing a.s.saults on the Ruhr dams in 1943: the tune is most often heard, these days, during the pre-match ceremonies of England vs. Germany football fixtures, when it is taken l.u.s.tily up by the England faithful to drown out the playing of "Deutschland uber Alles." also mentioned in this context is the theme from the 1954 film about the heroics of the Royal Air Force's 617 squadron, and their dashing a.s.saults on the Ruhr dams in 1943: the tune is most often heard, these days, during the pre-match ceremonies of England vs. Germany football fixtures, when it is taken l.u.s.tily up by the England faithful to drown out the playing of "Deutschland uber Alles."

China Drum split up in 2000, after three alb.u.ms and around a million times that many road miles, most of them logged in vehicles even less st.u.r.dy and glamorous than the one we drove to Bosnia. According to an email from singer Adam Lee-announced with the Geordie salutation "Aalreet!"-it sounds like they're all doing well. Bill McQueen teaches guitar, drives a truck and raises four children. Dave McQueen is also married with two kids and has what sounds like some species of grown-up job. Adam has his own landscaping company, a wife and a couple of children and a new band called Sickhoose (this translates into English as "Sick House": www.mys.p.a.ce.com/sickhoose). Phil Barton, their former manager, is married with a baby daughter, and owns two excellent record shops-Sister Ray in Soho, London, and Rounder in Brighton. You should go to them, if you're ever in the vicinity, and spend money.

I occasionally b.u.mp into Max, The Serious Road Trip's photographer, while wandering the London Borough of Hackney, where we both live. He remains a decent chap, for a Kiwi (this wholly gratuitous barb inserted by way of demonstration that we peoples of the South Seas are as p.r.o.ne to the internecine conflict fuelled by the narcissism of minor difference as the denizens of the Balkans, and of Tyneside).

THE VAN PARKED outside the rental office in King's Cross is a battered white Iveco that appears to be held together by rust and gaffer tape. The legend "Midnight Flyer" is written in purple above the front pa.s.senger door, indicating either that this van cut rather more of a dash in its heyday, or that a previous owner possessed an overdeveloped sense of irony. My first thought is that we've got roughly as much chance of flying it to the moon as we have of getting it, and us, to Sarajevo and back in one piece. In fact, I'm prepared to offer decent odds against it getting around the next corner without losing a wheel.

There is a simple reason why we've had this four-wheeled cousin of the Raft of the Medusa foisted upon us.

"I told them where we were taking it," explains Phil Barton.

Phil is the manager of Newcastle rock group China Drum. When Phil first spoke to me about this trip his band were planning, some weeks ago now, there was no mention of decrepit rattletraps with cracked windows and-oh, this is rea.s.suring-a side door that won't open from the inside. The idea was that China Drum were going to travel to the former Yugoslavia in style, in a Hercules cargo aircraft belonging to the Royal Air Force. The plan was that they would play one show for British troops stationed in the Croatian port of Split, another for the peacekeepers serving with the NATO-led United Nations Implementation Force (IFOR) in Sarajevo and, finally, one for Sarajevo's public. This sounded like great fun, a good story, and I asked to be counted in.

Days before lift-off, the Ministry of Defence contacted Barton, muttered something about "operational difficulties" and informed him that the trip was cancelled. China Drum, having announced their intentions, and having heard that people in Sarajevo were looking forward to it, and being men of their word, decided to go anyway. Feeling that I could hardly cry off just because I wasn't going to get a ride in a cool camouflage-coloured aeroplane, I said I'd go too. I have been soothing myself ever since with visions of a gleaming deluxe tour bus, replete with tinted windows, comfortable bunks, televisions, stereos, sofas and microwave ovens (I felt I could live without the jacuzzi, if necessary).

"It does have tinted windows," observes Barton. "Well, one tinted window. And a video."

The man is as incurably, ludicrously optimistic as a Somalian travel agent. Even if this thing gets us as far as the Bosnian border, which it won't, it's going to disintegrate as soon as it hits the first sh.e.l.l-hole. We might as well be trying to take Cape Horn on a windsurfer.

"Well, it's all we could get."

Still, I take it the driver knows the roads well.

"He's never been."

Jesus. The truck is split into two parts: the band's gear goes in the back, the people in the rest. There are seats for two in the front, and three rows of three seats in the back; the first of these faces backwards to allow s.p.a.ce for a small table. It might be grudgingly conceded that half a dozen people could ride in relative comfort inside for a short distance. There are eleven of us labouring under the delusion that we're going to Sarajevo: myself, Phil, all three of China Drum, China Drum's tour manager, two crew, one driver and two photographers, on a round trip of about 2500 miles. This heap will be our home, more or less, for a week.

"You could stop whining and give us a hand with this amplifier," says Barton.