Bus Wars

How do we get around America – a country so vast that all of England would fit in its back pocket? In The Tour Bus. And being the USA, they do Tour Bus like no one else….. bigger, better, smoother, fully loaded with every conceivable modern comfort.. a gliding palace that takes us through the night along vast freeways from city to city. One night you’re in Boston and you wake up in……….anywhere.

I thought I’d take time out to describe this journey, as we travel around the USA from gig to gig.   It’s 5 weeks in now and everything is starting to blur as I try to remember individual hotels and journeys…. a W hotel there, with its amazing, futuristic lobby  in Atlanta, The gorgeous Rivington Hotel in New York, up on the 19th floor, with its floor to ceiling windows and view of 3 bridges, with traffic streaming towards us day and night like a toy cars with headlights on, far down below us and the Art Deco glamour of the Palace Hotel in Cincinnatti, unchanged for over 70 years with its amazing ballroom and marble halls…..

But through all these memories runs the tour bus, ever constant, taking us everywhere…… safe as home.

And it has become home to all of us…. from our clothes and possessions, all stored in huge drawers that glide silently out with secret handles, to DVDs bought and watched on the huge 42 inch LCD TV in the lounge and there is a giant fridge which the crew have already loaded with the liquor left from the first rider, neatly stacked in two rows.

Somedays its a floating magnificent Atlantic Liner, other days and on particularly long nights, it’s the cramped living quarters from the German U-Boat movie “Das Boot”… everyone living and bunking down together (even if these particular bunks have individual DVD players) and the noise of the engine droning relentlessly just like I imagine it would in a submarine…..watch out – here come the torpedoes.

I’ve been in some tour busses in my time..across Europe with Sputnik and across the USA with Sisters of Mercy when we toured with Public Enemy in 1990 …….and been in some amazing vehicles, but on this tour everything was surpassed.  They must have watched “Transformers” before fitting out this Million Dollar Baby.

However, let’s start with the usual bunks in the mid section for those overnight journeys. journeys for tossing and turning – because you never really sleep, you wake with bus lag. It’s the same as jet lag after a flight across the Atlantic, no matter how wide those beds are in first class.  It’s travel sleep, motion sleep and that motion continues long after you have ceased to travel.  So, no you don’t really sleep in the bunks, although for some reason the crew sleep like babies, you hear them snoring through the night, oblivious to the crunching and shuddering as the bus hits the edge of the road or travels the “worst roads in the USA – it’s the snow you see, tears em up and leaves all these pot holes”…as explained by Dave our kindly bus driver.  So why can’t he explain why this million dollars of computer controlled suspension renders English guitarist’s sleepless but somehow still gives the American crew a full cosy 8 hours so they wake bright eyed and bushy tailed ready for show time and P.A and amp battles….

But hey I’m still not complaining, this is such a trip across America..to wake up – or should I say to re-awaken for the 10th time that night, in yet another great city with new sights and streets to explore….I will never get over the thrill of it.

And then, when we  park up outside the gig, the bus transforms.. literally….. The front section, the lounge area, has a special bit at the side which at the touch of a silent switch, glides out just like the transformers, turning a narrow corridor into a big comfy sitting room, where we can watch the Satellite TV …catch up on CNN and  the History channel, “Prison lock down” or “Even more Extreme Fighting” where two guys literally smash the shit out of each other in front of the baying crowd …. Or someone slides a DVD in and we watch Tarantino films, Allman Brothers documentaries, the Motown story, or MC5 confidential.…. all in the pre gig build up – it all puts you right in the mood to rock and roll.

Then there’s the permanent broadband internet connection so you can get your email, upload those blogs or come literally face to face with back home through the wonder of Skype.

There’s a full kitchen and the aformentioned refridgerator……. although there is now no room for any food as we seem to be collecting so much liquor ..I assume that we are planning to open our own club once a suitable venue is reached – even the cupboards are filled with bottles of JD (more on this later) Vodka, Brandy, Beer – luckily there’s also a huge ice box compartment crammed with…JD, Vodka, Beer, Brandy…. yes folks it’s a dry ship. Thank God we got rid of all that healthy Yogurt, Granola and Salad that was wasting so much space way back in San Francisco – what were they even thinking?

There’s a shower room – still pristeen it seems – I think the crew must be using some kind of MP3 invisible neutron scrubber or some new Mac cleaning program downloaded to their many iPhones, Macbooks and iPods because I’ve never heard the shower splashing yet..

Everywhere is beautifully finished by craftsmen.  Kyle who owns the bus and has come along for the fun of it has taken this one step further and has fully pimped his bunk which now resembles NASA control. There are 2 Sat Nav systems, presumably in case one gets lost and computers everywhere.  At the other end of the scale, Mj is in the back room still grappling with his new cellphone, forced as the ‘Carbon’ of the band to join the communication revolution. One day it actually rings and he throws it out of the window in terror (although he’s kept the charger as a token gesture).

And then of course there is the toilet.  OK so this is where they cut corners.

All those dvd players ( I counted 12) satellites, dimmers computers, hydraulic levellers….all top dollar stuff…..it would seem that corners obviously had to be cut to bring it in for just under the million dollars… and the toilet was the first corner. They reasoned – who’s gonna need to take a dump with all this technology to keep ‘em busy……Yes, it’s a sad fact that in the age of all this technology, we can put a man on the moon but you still can’t shit on a tour bus toilet – couldn’t in the 70s when they first built ‘em and still can’t in the 21st century. Guys, surely a word to Steve Jobs (excuse the pun) would bring all us Rock Stars up to speed – the iBus with an iLoo, with storage room for 10,000 shits in one cute white pod.  Sorry to get so graphic here but please guys – let’s get working…..

Because you can picture the dilemma –  6 A.M in the middle of nowhere, you ate something dodgy the night before and nature calls.  You are of course gonna be in an excellent mood, having been sleeping on average for two hours a night for the past five gigs a week and are therefore more than happy to urgently have to sleep-slip into your clothes inside the bunk and risk sudden death in the Truck Stop Restroom (actually chaps we call it a ‘Toilet’ in Britain and we never rest there because they are still outside and its freezing).  And in these ghost stops we meet TRUCKERS and friendly though they all seem as they go about their nocturnal Trucking business, we’ve all seen Thelma and Louise, and Easy Rider and I can’t help thinking as I rush across the tarmac in search of the sign that a skinny assed fey English rocker must look like a Christmas decoration to a man who’s just trucked a thousand miles before breakfast….so I keep my head way down…..

And still this sleek golden tank that handles like a family Mercedes continues on its way.  Dave gets us everywhere safely and with constant good humour despite the long hours.  I don’t know how he does it and quite apart from his excellent driving skills, he is also an excellent story teller which makes for a good combination.

The back lounge has a floor shaking disco volume stereo – everything sounds studio quality in there. The new Raconteurs album blows out a couple of windows but it was getting stuffy in there anyway… Mj’s bunk is beginning to resemble a second hand book and record shop with a complicated plastic bag storage system only understood by the true madman…. He’s sleeping on the sofa as I write, using yet another giant tome for a pillow, this one is on the history of the Hungarian revolution (obviously boning up for the next radio interview – which is handy because they always catch us out on that one…..).

Miles pass. Gigs blur. The Bus stops and we check into the next hotel, sometimes at 2 a.m, sometimes at 8 a.m and fall into the next glorious real bed and bath. Then it’s off to soundcheck, go to radio station, talk the talk, play the gig, sign the autographs and get back on the bus. You know how in movies when you see a flame burning across the map charting your journey… Denver, Kansas. Philadelphia…. and on. The crew load liquor on to the bus and the cupboards continue to bulge with even more bottles.  Early one morning, rather worryingly I spot the crew eyeing the spare tyre compartment, figuring out that here is another possible 200 bottle storage area because for Crissakes we haven’t had one flat tyre yet…. or maybe if we ripped out the bands bunks (waste of time anyway) we could open a small after show club room, $10 entry, meet the band…… they’re forward planners this road crew…..

More miles pass.

And the bus, no matter how foul the weather, no matter how dense the blizzard, no matter what muddy rivers we cross, the bus is always ….immaculate.

Now I know why. One night just as I found myself almost drifting off, post gig, there was a sudden disconcerting silence.  The engines stopped, the lurching, bumping and roar gone, to be replaced by a gentle swishing noise.  It was 4 a.m, 300 miles from the next destination and a madman was outside a silently parked bus in the chilly night air… gently shammy leathering the chrome exterior back to showroom condition.  I went back to sleep not sure whether to be mad or proud but absolutely sure of one thing – that our tour bus is the shiniest on the road……

Now where are we……