Guide to getting and playing better gigs
An Audience of 70,000
An unsigned band playing in front of 70,000 people? You must be living on a prayer, mate. Unless, that is, Jon Bon Jovi hand-picks you from a pile of young hopefuls and gives you a gig. Ike Bradley, bassist for Leicester's Vivid, describes how it happened for him.
"June 1996, and Jon Bon Jovi, idly day-dreaming at the controls of his private jet, has a brainwave. "Hey," he thinks to himself, "why don't I get an unsigned band to open up each of the shows on the forthcoming tour?" In the UK, a Virgin radio competition is quickly organised. My band Vivid, along side thousands of others, send a tape. As a "bubbling under" band (we'd done a couple of UK supports and were subsequently voted "Best Unsigned Band in Britain" by the readers of Kerrang), we know we've got a chance, but it's still a surprise when Virgin ring and tell us that we've to support Gun, Joan Osbourne and Bon Jovi at Milton Keynes Bowl.
TRAVELLING TO THE GIG:
We make our way to the gig having had only three hours sleep after a gig in Birmingham the night before. The enormity of what is about to occur slowly dawns on us as we are overtaken by coach upon coach of ecstatic Bon Jovi fans, their noses pressed to the windows. "Everyone seems to be smiling," I remark, nervously. "Don't worry," replies Greg, our guitarist. "Once we start playing they'll soon stop." Our entrance to the Milton Keynes "Artistes" gate is barred by a police roadblock. "We're here to play with Bon Jovi," we tell a stern faced police Sergeant. He glances at our 20 year old, ex-Leicester City Council van and then, bursting out laughing, waves us through.
The headline act's arrival differed from our own in only a few minor respects. Choppered in, the main band touched down on a backstage Heli-pad before being whisked the two hundred yards to their dressing room in a sleek black limo, replete with mirrored glass and a four motorbike, siren wailing, police escort. Swerving spectacularily around a dangerously parked Leicester City Council van, the entourage came to a screaming halt, and out jumped Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora. Good to see that success doesn't change people.THE ROADIES:
Bon Jovi's roadies are soundchecking the backline as we make our first tentative steps onto the stage, two hours before the doors open. Reassuringly, these roadies seem no different than usual; male, unshaven and better at playing drums, bass, guitar or keyboards than any of the musicians who'll actually be performing. All the American crew tend to look like bronzed soap stars. All the British crew look like Marty Feldman.THE SOUNDCHECK:
We soundcheck in front of the crew and the security staff, thus ensuring that even while soundchecking we have played to one of our biggest audiences ever. The sound on stage is brilliant, predominantly due to the monitor rig being bigger than most front of house systems and because the crew are, quite simply, the best. The doors open as we finish. Funnily enough I'm not really nervous about playing a stadium gig at this point. No. Instead, I'm shitting myself.DRESSING ROOMS:
The backstage of a stadium gig is both glamorous and exclusive, yeah? Well, if your idea of glamour is sitting in a grey Port-a-Kabin watching Joan Osbourne painting her toe nails then, yes it is glamorous. Fuelled by the stories of the rock legends of old, I was disappointed not to discover Heather Locklear slumped unconscious in our dressing room, ankle deep in cocaine. No such luck. Still, someone had left us a bowl of salted peanuts, so all wasn't lost. The dressing room was spacious, airy and furnished with two black leather sofas and a freezer full of beer. All in all, it was nicer than my flat, and a considerable improvement on the average support band dressing room, which in my experience, tends to be either a broom cupboard or an out of order disabled toilet. (Both of which are also an improvement on my flat, unfortunately.)BACKSTAGE TOILETS:
They've got five star hotel style toilets backstage at a stadium gig, right? I wish. The backstage toilet provisions instead consisted of two, rather rickety chemical toilets with the slogan "Super Loo" stencilled on the sides. Still, the one comfort with using a backstage loo as opposed to a front of house toilet is that you can at least play "Spot the Deposits of the Stars" as you gaze into the chemical goo below. Did a member of Gun blow his nose on that sodden tissue? Could that large object floating past have once belonged to Joan Osbourne? Just as every cloud has a silver lining, so every backstage toilet has a celebrity turd.THE GIG:
Seventy thousand people. Just think about it. Seventy thousand people. That's one hundred and forty thousand hands. Hands that will either applaud you if you perform well, or bombard the stage with beer bottles filled with luke warm urine if you perform poorly. Stadium stagefright. It's the worst kind. All too soon it was four o'clock and time for us to go on. As I huddled in the wings, waiting for the word to walk out, I felt my body succumb to a sickening wave of pins and needles. Christ, this wasn't nerves. I was having a premature stroke.
Despite this, I was still unable to prevent an emotional lump forming in my throat as, "Please welcome Vivid!" was announced to the crowd. Believe me, the roar as seventy thousand people simultaneously punched their fists in the air and mumbled, "Who?" will remain one of the high points of my life. Earlier in the day I had been surprised to discover Jon Bon Jovi waiting to use the backstage toilet after I had finished. Now, as I walked on stage, I couldn't help but reflect that I would be going on first and warming up for Bon Jovi twice in one day. "Are we going to have a good day tonight, or what?" announced our ashen faced singer to the crowd. Obviously I wasn't the only one suffering from nerves.
So, I hear you cry, what's it like to play in front of 70,000 people? It's brilliant. It's amazing. It's better than sex. (Mind you, I'm a crap shag so that doesn't mean all that much, I suppose.) The stage is so enormous you do feel kind of cut off at times, but the awesome monitoring easily helps to make up for this. Second song in and our singer throws his arms in the air. Thirty thousand people raise their arms in response. Wow. This is slightly better than playing the Axe and Cleaver. Inspired by the singer I sling my bass to one side and throw my arms in the air. Four people in the audience respond. Oh well. That's the difference between a singer and a bassist, I guess. After half an hour, the tour manager appears in the wings and beckons us off. It's over.POST GIG:
Leaving the stage, the singer from Gun describes our band as "tight", which is secret musician code for "shit". I briefly consider indulging in a traditional Rock God, post gig, wind-down involving cocaine, Jack Daniels and a tussle with a couple of 14 year-old females, but eventually settle for a cup of tea in the backstage marquee instead. Jack Daniels makes me feel queasy anyway, and the only 14 year old females I know are my parents' Labradors. The next thing I'm in a poky, backstreet Glasgow club, supporting a U.S. band so little known that several of the members of the band haven't even heard of themselves. "I supported Bon Jovi yesterday," I tell a bouncer. "Yeah, right," he replies, sarcastically."