NIA, Birmingham
"Hello Wembley! I said HELLO WEMBLEY!!!!!"
I'm ashamed to admit that the first time I saw a gig at Wembley Arena it was Yes, who were performing from a revolving stage in the centre of the arena. Jon Anderson was on the hub, the spindle, the axis (as you would expect), in a bright white romper suit, doing that terrible dance he does. That charlatan Tony Kaye was wearing leopard-skin tights and Trevor Rabin and Steve Howe were conspicuously absent from each others' solo sections. It was fucking terrible.
This is the lowest-impact tour I've been on. I was home in my own bed on Monday night and had a lovely day off yesterday to recover from our forty-minute set of the night before. God I needed that. Wembley Arena is another giant, smelly barn with tiny cells for its support bands to crouch in backstage. It is big though, I'll give it that.
Tonight we're first on the bill, before the far noisier Cooper Temple Clause. Unhappily, we play our half-hour set from 7 o'clock, half an hour before the tickets say the show begins. This means that a lot of people who were hoping to see us arrive as we are leaving. This is not a good thing.
More happily for us, there is a healthy number of early-risers who are there, and very enthusiastic they are too. I make a conscious effort to fully comprehend that I'm playing here (in footsteps of Yes) but it feels remarkably normal. I must be a hackneyed old pro. Hooray!
Much like R Kelly, we follow the aftershow party with an afterparty on the bus (although there is no sign of our stretch Navigator). I choose to go to bed shortly before the dancing in the street begins, but I am perplexed by a strange banging and shaking. Turns out it's Dave bouncing between the bus and a chain-link fence.
