[SCENE 1: BUS INTERIOR]
[BEN (VOICE OVER)]
Hello there. My name is Ben. My height equals a distance higher than four feet and lower than seven feet. I have two feet. My bunk is in the middle top right and I have just got out of it. Everything else is vague.
[CAMERA TRACKS FROM BUNKS TO BACK LOUNGE, SLOWLY COMING INTO FOCUS]
If you wake up in a bus which has beds in it instead of seats; and if it has several malfunctioning DVD players and a wide selection of straight-to-video vhs classics with titles randomly generated from parts of more successful films ("Terminal Desires"); and if, down the piss-reeking stairs, you can hear Alonza making tea, then the chances are you're on tour, my son. And this may also mean that you are a talented member of a critically acclaimed contemporary music group (key demographic = ladies). Or just related to someone who is [C/U FLEETING IMAGE IN MIRRORED BACK WALL]. Your best course of action is to get Alonza to make some tea for you and work it out while you drink it.
[CUT TO KITCHEN: ALONZA MAKING TEA]
You recognise Alonza immediately. He is tall and has big hands. He loves to drink tea so much that he is even prepared to make tea for everyone else, which is a rare and wonderful thing. [CUT TO SHOT OF ALONZA IN LOUNGE SURROUNDED BY MUGS] He plays bass with his big hands.[SHOT OF DAVE'S BIG FEET COMING INTO VIEW DOWN STAIRS] Down the stairs comes Dave. He is short and has big feet. He plays the drums. The door opens and there is Jim, attracted by the scent of tea. He is more or less in proportion, but with a towering intellect [C/U JIM'S GLASSES SFX COMPUTERS WHIRRING AND BEEPING]. He plays the keyboards. After him, clutching his washbag, comes your own brother, Matthew "Matt Hales" Hales, "The Reason We're All Here", "The Guv'nor Hisself", "The Master and Commander (The Far Side of the World)". [CUT TO HELICOPTER SHOT OF MATT ON MOUNTAIN, WIND WHIPPING AROUND BLACK CLOAK] And it all comes flooding back: Tonight, you are going to be Aqualung, supporting Feeder at the SECC Glasgow, playing slow and graceful music to eight thousand RRRRRock fans.
[ROLL OPENING CREDITS]
It's been a while since I spoke with you all about my job as guitarist with Aqualung. A few things have happened - did a few gigs, went to New York, Matt made a new album, went camping in Devon, but all in all I'm still the same insufferable arsewit. A few months ago Matt was invited by Feeder to support them on their first arena tour of the UK. This was unexpected, Feeder being a noisy rock band, but they were quite keen to broaden the sound of the evening, and they thought that Aqualung might just work. And it was an opportunity to play Wembley Arena for the first time, so how could we refuse? In fact, the Still Life version of Aqualung is a lot nearer to a conventional rock band than the last album's incarnation, so perhaps we can pull it off.
The SECC is a collection of increasingly enormous auditoria and conference rooms (tickets are still available for Model Railway 2004, if you're interested) and we are in Hall 3 which is a big rectangular room with a few thousand seats round the outside and a big standing area for a few thousand more. As always on the first day of a tour, there are innumerable technical problems to be solved and Feeder's crew all have the standing-out eyeballs and clipped tones of the extremely stressed. It is fascinating seeing how things are done at this level; the entire stage, lighting rig and PA are travelling to each venue and have to be set up from scratch and removed each day. There are a lot of people who have a lot of stuff to do, but I am not one of them. I climb up to the highest seats at the back of the room and watch them test the fancy screen that dominates the stage, upon which they will be projecting film and effects and close-ups from the stage. It's hard to imagine this entire room will be full of people in a few hours.
The best thing about touring at this level is the catering, which also travels with the production, for whom it is their pleasure to provide a cornucopia of breads, soups, salads, fruit and donuts. We spend most of the afternoon sitting in silence in the booming backstage area reading the papers and eating and eating. Matt decides he's going to attempt a personal record in tea-drinking and, I believe, makes it to ten or eleven cups.
As the afternoon wears on and our allotted soundcheck time disappears into history, we start to get slightly jumpy as it becomes increasingly evident that there will be very little time to get ready and we do seem to have an awful lot of things to plug in. Eventually, with about half an hour to go before the doors open, we go through the peculiar process of putting everything on stage, turning it on and making sure it's working, and then taking it all off again without actually playing anything. There is a problem with the monitors that makes Matt's voice sound like a robot, but there is no time to sort it out. We can hear the rumble of the approaching audience as we leave the stage and begin to get a bit nervous, in that powerless, oh-shit-what's-going-on? sort of way.
But the gig is fine. There is arm-swaying and even some distant singing-along. The place looks much bigger when it's full of people, and they seem to go back as far as the eye can see (well, my eyes). The Feeder audience don't seem too offended by our lack of rocking and we go off sharing the smiles of people who have got away with it.
We got a lift back to our dressing room in a little golf-cart. That was pretty cool.
Feeder sounded great the other night, in an impressively widescreen way. Aside from all the stress there is a very positive atmosphere surrounding the tour. You get the impression that Feeder are excited about it, and so they bloody should be.
Despite the positive feelings, it is still possible to become ferociously bored during the day. Arena backstages largely consist of small breezeblock rooms without any windows. There is no soft play area, no sporting facilities, no libraries in which you can advance your research on Urban Beetles And Butterflies. It's too cold to go outside, and if you did you'd be in Birmingham. Inevitably you turn on each other, especially if you are brothers.
Soundcheck, when it eventually comes around, is extremely brief, but at least we get to play a song this time. Matt is still suffering from the robot sound, though, which is unfortunate. Somehow technical problems know to home in on the most vital things. They're attention-seekers, but there is still no time to attend to them.
There seem to be even more people there tonight, and the seating curves right round to the sides of the stage. It's a strange thing to play to that many people. I wonder how it would feel to know that all of those thousands had come to see you, rather than you inflicting yourself upon them. It might be pretty close to the best feeling in the world. We get a taste of such things during Strange and Beautiful tonight - there is an almost visible wave of recognition and much cheering, but I never quite get over the feeling we're being tolerated more than enjoyed.
Naturally, afterwards I discover that everyone else had a great time and felt like we went down a storm. It happens quite often that five people can feel completely different about the same performance, so I guess the same goes for audiences.
"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.
Seagulls! The Elderley! Welcome to Bournemouth!
I grew up not too far from Bournemouth, and on one occasion we came to try out the swimming pool at the Bournemouth International Centre, which features a wave machine. It was significantly less exciting than I had imagined, especially since the sea with actual waves is mere seconds from the BIC, and there's less chance of losing your teeth on the side of it. Today there are people surfing on minature waves in the actual sea. Jim likes to surf and, as we all know, Matt is also an accomplished surfer, but sadly we forgot to pack our wetsuits.
The BIC is the kind of place which is more accustomed to hosting gigs by Lulu, and where there is an announcement on the PA that goes "Tonight's Feeder Concert will commence in five minutes", to give you time to straighten your regimental tie and drain your glass of bitter lemon before taking your seat. They have put away most of the seats, but the room is still only a quarter of the size of last night's hangar. It's cosy, in fact, and gets very very busy with Young People In Wide Jeans And Hooded Tops later on.
They are a very friendly audience and we rock them to the best of our ability. Afterwards Grant from out of Feeder drops by with some champagne, we thank each other and nod a lot. Our brief tour is over.
[CUT TO CLOSE UP ON BEN'S WIZENED OLD FACE]
BEN (V/O): I know I'll never forget those crazy days of the Feeder tour. It seems like we found out so much but learned so little. [CUT TO SLOW-MOTION FOOTAGE OF BAND ON STAGE. CUE SOUNDTRACK: BARBER'S ADAGIO FOR STRINGS]. The bonds of fellowship we forged on our journey that week, smelted in the furnaces of Arenas far and wide, hammered on the anvil of Live Performance, and honed on the whetstone of a living, breathing Audience; those bonds can never be broken. And as I look back at those six days in December, I can say to myself, "I have truly lived".
"We're called Aqualung... See you next time... Goodnight..."
[SFX: CHEERING CROWDS]
[ROLL CREDITS]