We frantically cancelled the planned gigs for August and shuffled them along a month. Syd set off for Formentera accompanied
by his girlfriend Lindsay Corner, Rick and Juliette, Sam Hutt, his wife and their new baby. Roger and Judy were staying in
Ibiza, a short ferry ride away. It was not a success: Syd showed no signs of improvement, but did display odd bouts of violence.
On one night, when a powerful electric storm was raging, the turbulence outside reflected Syd’s inner torment – Juliette’s
memory is of Syd literally trying to climb the walls.
Meanwhile back in England, we were still planning a future for the band. Roger was telling
Melody Maker,
‘We’re being frustrated at the moment by the fact that to stay alive we have to play lots and lots of places and venues that
are not really suitable. We all like our music. That’s the only driving force behind us. We can’t go on doing clubs and ballrooms.
We want a brand new environment and we’ve hit on the idea of using a big top.’ There was a vision of a way forward, but there
seemed to be no way we could achieve it.
When Syd returned from his stay on Formentera, in no better shape, we blindly plunged back into work. We managed – with some
difficulty – a few dates in September in the UK and Holland, and went to De Lane Lea Studios to record Syd’s latest, and slightly
unhinged, songs. On top of all that, we hastily prepared for our first tour of the US. We were due to open at Bill Graham’s
Fillmore in San Francisco on 26th October, but the trip did not run smoothly. Beforehand, Andrew King says he had been worrying
about everything to do with this tour. His apprehension was well placed.
When Andrew set out in advance to see the agent in New York and get the contracts for the tour, the agent nonchalantly reached
into a drawer and handed Andrew a gun for his personal use during the tour. Andrew, unfamiliar with firearms, questioned whether
it was required. ‘You don’t have to have it, kid. If you don’t wanna use it, I’ll put it back in the drawer.’ Even the toughest
end of English tour promotion never went that far.
Andrew then headed across to the West Coast. Our work permits had not arrived, which meant we would miss our opening dates.
Andrew remembers sitting in the offices of the legendarily short-fused impresario Bill Graham, listening to Bill lambaste
some hapless record company executive on behalf of Jefferson Airplane who he was managing. Hanging up the phone he then turned
his attention to this callow Brit whose band was not going to be able to turn up. ‘Bands always show for Bill Graham,’ he
roared.
Back in London, for us the situation meant waiting on a daily basis to hear if the paperwork had been completed, and whether
or not we could catch the flight out that evening. We spent endless hours waiting at the US embassy in London for the correct
visas to come through. There is a massive amount of paperwork on current tours, but even then, there was as much bureaucracy,
combined with slower and more difficult communications. There were problems with the documents as well as the arrangement
for setting up an exchange with the American musicians Sam The Sham and the Pharaohs – union rules still required an equal
interchange of British and American acts.
Bill Graham’s solution was to ring the American ambassador to London in the middle of the ambassador’s night, and he managed
to force through the paperwork. To replace us, he hired in Ike and Tina Turner, who were playing in the Bay area, becoming
the first black act at the Fillmore. Eventually, the visas finally arrived and off we went in time to make our dates at Bill’s
other San Francisco venue, the Winterland. The omens were not good. Syd was told by an anxious stewardess to extinguish his
cigarette prior to take-off,
and before her horrified gaze he carelessly stubbed it out on the airplane carpet instead of the ashtray. No wonder the PanAm
service on that particular flight left something to be desired. We arrived in San Francisco very late at night and totally
exhausted, to be greeted not by the screams of our American fan club but by Bill Graham, still furious at having been kept
hanging around.
We were also reunited with Andrew King, who was still worried. He had walked into the Winterland, a 5,000–6,000 seater, seen
the size of the place with its huge stage, and examined the powerful 35mm film projectors against which our basic 1kw Aldis
equipment would pale. The venue’s regular light shows were run as independent specialist set-ups, and were both on a completely
different scale and geared to the size of the auditorium. Andrew generously, and wisely, said we’d ‘combine resources’, realising
that we had bitten off more than we could hope to chew. In fact we’d bitten off enough to eat for several weeks.
The next day was spent desperately trying to assemble some equipment: we’d only taken the guitars, nothing else. I had assumed
a drum kit would be there. All promises of support had mysteriously evaporated. The record company proved no help at all.
A keyboard was found for Rick and a drum kit assembled. The Premier Company was English and worked through a network of affiliated
agents in the States. The local dealer was probably shattered to be asked to release his stock to a virtually unknown British
band representing Premier whose best-known endorsee Keith Moon was renowned for his appetite for destruction when it came
to tame drum kits. Consequently, I suspect he gave me all the mismatched drums, cymbals and fittings he had lying around in
the back of the storeroom – every element of the kit was a different colour.
Finally we made it to the Winterland, and the first pleasant surprise of the tour. The organisation at the venue was very
professional and the other musicians on the bill were refreshingly
welcoming and enthusiastic about what we were playing, and lacked the competitive ‘blow everyone else off stage’ attitude
we were familiar with in the UK. However, though we were billed as ‘The Light Kings of England’, the light show was, in Andrew’s
words, ‘laughable. I did feel an arse, quite frankly’.
We were supporting Big Brother & The Holding Company (the early and excellent Janis Joplin band), Richie Havens for one weekend,
and H.P. Lovecraft the weekend after. Janis was wearing the legendary fur coat presented to her by the Southern Comfort company
in recognition of services rendered. I’m not sure if that was for her personal level of consumption or for carrying a bottle
of Southern Comfort on stage in an early example of product endorsement. Roger had brought along his own bottle, and offered
Janis a swig. By the end of the show she returned it, emptied.
The audiences were closer to our UFO following than the Top Rank crowd. California, and San Francisco in particular, was the
whole centre of the hippy ideal. Unfortunately we were unable to be quite so laid-back; jet-lagged on arrival, we were swept
into a chaotic series of dates, under-financed, under-equipped and overwhelmed. And to top it all, Syd’s approach to this
important show was to detune his guitar during ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ until the strings fell off.
However, all was not lost, and a few of the dates, like the Cheetah Club at Venice in Los Angeles, were more successful. Whereas
in the larger auditoria we were not the headline act – and the other acts on the bills were tight, well rehearsed, and were
using their own equipment – in a club, as the main act, our lights would have some real impact, and we could control the overall
ambience and mood, just as we could at UFO.
The Cheetah Club show was the occasion that Syd decided his permed hair was too curly and had to be straightened before he
could go on. He sent someone out for a tub of hair gel, which he
then applied in copious amounts to correct the problem. Clad in an extraordinary pair of green boots tied up with rubber bands,
he hit the stage and once again detuned his guitar throughout the first number. In a frenzy of anger, Roger gashed his hand
in a furious attack on his bass guitar. He had been lent a pear-shaped Vox bass that lacked a cover for the strings, and so
he kept catching his hand on the bare ends. At the end of the show he smashed the guitar to pieces. Its owner, apparently
thrilled, calmly took the pieces away in a bag. Despite this, it was a great gig. The audience loved us, as did the unusual
support act, Lothar And The Hand People. Apparently there was no one actually called Lothar – this was in fact the name of
the group’s theremin, a remarkable Russian invention which produced
Dr Who-like
sounds when hands were waved in front of its antenna, and had been used by Brian Wilson on ‘Good Vibrations’. In addition,
the group also contained several very nubile young women. I seem to remember they had no instruments, but simply writhed around
to the music as the mood took them, in a rather avant-garde way.
Part of the promotion for the band revolved around television. Years before MTV, the system was for a band to appear on one
of the celebrity shows then current. The presenter, usually a popular singer of a certain age anxious to extend his career,
would sing a couple of numbers, and then bring guests on to chat, with musical interludes from the likes of us. With Syd approaching
a catatonic state, you might think this was not a recipe for success, and you’d be right. Syd was being difficult, if not
bloody-minded. After miming the song perfectly for the run-through, he would then stand there listlessly for the actual take,
while the director vainly said, ‘OK, this is the take.’ So while Roger and Rick were forced to undertake the vocal duties,
Syd would stand staring vacantly and gloomily into the middle distance. After miming ‘Emily’ in an ecstasy of embarrassment
we were led forward for a little chat. If
other guests were within microphone range they ruthlessly used the opportunity to grasp valuable camera time, butting in with
stories, jokes or inane comments.
On another show, hosted by Pat Boone, he kindly kept his other guests at bay in order to enjoy a casual chat with us. Despite
some desperate and deft footwork by the rest of us, he picked the by now very unstable Syd to converse with. The world held
its breath as he asked Syd what he liked. We trembled in anticipation while our minds flooded with endless unsuitable responses.
‘America,’ Syd said brightly. Pat smiled, the audience whooped and hollered and the rest of us broke into a sweat as we carted
him off.
Away from the television studios Syd was little better. Coming out of a meeting with Capitol Records, we stood on the corner
of Hollywood and Vine. ‘It’s nice here in Las Vegas,’ observed Syd. Later, at the Hollywood Hawaiian, a typical LA motel,
with floodlit cactuses and garish decor, Roger found Syd asleep in a chair with a cigarette burning through his fingers.
After this we’d had enough. Andrew reached Peter in London by phone and said ‘Get us out of here’. We completed our West Coast
commitments, but cancelled the East Coast leg, and flew back direct to a gig in Holland. If proof was needed that we were
in denial about Syd’s state of mind, this was it. Why we thought a transatlantic flight immediately followed by yet more dates
would help is beyond belief.
Back in England Bryan Morrison had negotiated us a slot on a Jimi Hendrix tour. This was a great opportunity to watch Jimi
Hendrix perform and actually spend time with some musicians we admired. At last we found we had some common ground with other
bands, particularly the Nice, who seemed to have similar musical leanings, but astonishing technical proficiency, and in the
case of their keyboard player Keith Emerson, later the ‘E’ of ELP, true virtuosity.
This package tour was run to a very tight schedule, the principal aim, as far as the promoter was concerned, being to make
sure that Jimi’s fans got good value for money, and that whatever else happened his slot would be on time. To check we didn’t
overrun our eight minutes, there was somebody standing with a stopwatch in the wing. Andrew remembers if we overran by even
thirty seconds, there was a stern warning, if it happened again we would be off the tour. So our longer numbers like ‘Interstellar
Overdrive’ must have been extremely pruned back. Peter Wynne Willson remembers that when the package tour had the house lights
up our lights were virtually redundant. He tried to persuade the management to insist on a rider in any contract that the
house lights should be down, and a screen and projection site provided, but that would not happen for some years.
Syd was still a loose (and hallucinating) cannon. On one occasion he failed even to get to the theatre. We realised early
on that he wasn’t going to show and managed to co-opt Dave O’List from the Nice to play. We had very little light on Dave
and we certainly played ‘Interstellar Overdrive’. I know it felt perfectly passable as a performance, and I don’t think many
people spotted the substitution.
The tour was really our first exposure to the world of rock’n’ roll as we had always imagined it. Pop stars with tight trousers
and loose morals accompanied by screaming girls with tight dresses and even looser morals. This was one of the rare – I can’t
tell you how rare – occasions that we were chased down the street by overexcited girls. I have ever since had great sympathy
for the plight of the fox, as the thunder of hooves (or teenage girls’ shoes) stampeding behind you is bloody frightening.
In this particular field sport – perhaps more balanced than usual – the role of hunter and hunted was not always clear, as
the various musicians and entourage on the package tour were also in full mating cry…The
girls were probably only just out of school, but you could see them in the hotel lobbies looking extremely cool as they spotted
who they might snare next.
There was a tour coach that everyone boarded, like a crazy school outing with all the musicians in the coach, except for the
headliners. Our recent modes of transport had become unpredictable. Some months earlier we had seen fit to purchase a Bentley
under some misconception that this would be practical transport and enhance our image to boot. Yet another car salesman had
triumphed and we experienced some exciting motoring since no garage ever really got the brakes to work properly. Roger still
dreams about this particular vehicle, and clearly remembers leaving one particular gig and being forced to negotiate a roundabout
by driving straight over the top of it. We had also rented one car from Godfrey Davis, which Andrew King had signed for, since
they would not hire cars to musicians. After we embarrassedly dropped the car off weeks late, with 17,000 miles on the clock
and rubbish piled knee-high in the back, apparently the rental company changed their rules so that not even a company director’s
signature was sufficient guarantee if the company had anything to do with the music business.