Tour stories pt 2 of 4

Not really sure how I fell. It was the first song, rising pretty hard. Huge sound in this place. Guess I lean too hard over the monitor and go straight over. Must’ve taken the mic stand with me. It was about a 10 ft drop. I don’t remember the fall but I open my eyes on the ground at the audience’s feet. I’m surrounded by feet. The band’s kickin into the end chorus. Got to play. Guitar’s making no sound. The mic turns up in my hand. that’s all I need. no time. I start screaming everything into this last chorus,..making up for the dead guitar… like my whole fucking existence is this last chorus. The back of my head’s hitting people’s shoes. There’s a crazy Italian wolf man lying on top me. he’s roaring in my face. literally ….Roaring..In..My..Face. how he got there. he’s lying on top of me, at everyone’s feet, grabbing my collar with both hands, and roaring. And I’m screaming back. In another language. In His Face. I could be shouting any old shit, and he’s ditched words altogether all tarzan, but there’s a weird recognition that shit’s pissed us both off and it’s the same shit. My face is wet. Someone’s pouring beer onto my face from above. So now I’m squirming around trying to avoid the beer killing the microphone before the song is out, lying there, at everyone’s feet, mouth bleeding from the fall, screaming as loud as I can, and there’s an Italian wolf man with crazy eyes I’m never gonna forget lying on top of me roaring into my face…
…and that’s how the song plays out.

I walk back onto the stage holding my mic stand and guitar out like they're weapons and I’m maximus decimus meridius or something stupid like that. What a dick. But the Italians were going nuts. pretty much more than any audience I’ve known. We start playing again.

I only remember flashes from here.

I remember glimpses of Stef charging through the crowd with his guitar. Guitars can be pretty dangerous in the wrong hands. He looks fucking crazed. A space clears like a fight starting but I think it was just people getting out the way of this lunatic throwing around a half-working guitar.

I remember someone climbing onto the front of the stage and stagediving into crowdsurf.

I end up in the audience again and the wild man is still there roaring. I think that’s all he does now.

Seven guys dressed in monkey suits turn up at the front of the crowd. I wave them onstage and they rush it. I turn round and there’s bouncers bundling them away.

My finger’s bleeding pretty badly from the guitar. I feel my guitar picks slipping around, but then realise it’s stuck to my finger from all the blood.

Halfway through Trust I look over and Bryony’s climbed the scaffolding of the speaker tower on my right. She’s got this glazed look in her eyes, swinging left to right, staring out over the stage, holding the scaffold in one hand and a mic in the other, singing the song’s mantra. she’s gone to a different place. You can see it. She’s somewhere else. Some wild dusty land out there. Photographers scrabble around at the base of the tower trying to get a shot.

I got off the stage before the band finished the last song. I was trying to get to the exit. It was a thick mass of people and a long route out. Hands grabbing. Words I didn’t understand. Head down. Get out. Need air. Some girl holding her boyfriend’s hand grabs my head with her other hand and tries to kiss me. I pull out the way and she grips harder trying to turn my head and force her tongue into my closed mouth. There’s no inhibitions here.

I hear the electric guitar still playing the whole time I’m slowly trying to squeeze my way out through to the other end of the room through six or seven hundred people. I was thinking how Stef must’ve been thrashin around way longer than usual. I found out later he’d given his guitar to someone in the audience.