Bit of a Blur by Alex James Page B

and reputations. The front-of-house sound man is usually the most sophisticated member of the crew; he’s generally a bit less sticky looking than everyone else. Sound men are always fiddling about with soldering irons. You know you’ve got a good one when he shows you a strange-looking box he’s made for making guitars louder.
    The front-of-house sound man is the senior member of the sound crew. The backline guys deal with the stuff that’s on the stage, the instruments and amplifiers. They are the rock gentleman’s gentlemen. I inherited my roadie from Motorhead. He’d given many years’ service and knew every bassline, hotel, service station and rock venue in the Western world. He was always polishing my guitar and twiddling screws on it and asking me to stop throwing it in the drums. He loved guitars. He really cared about them. I used them a bit like biros, chewing them up and losing them.
    You can’t have a show without lights so there has to be a lighting crew. Lampies are often maniacs so they have an affinity with drummers. They are feral creatures, modern-day pirates. They sail the land seeking only drugs, women and free T-shirts.
    There is a tour manager, too. He has to stop fights, get everyone on the bus and look after the money. Tour management is acknowledged to be the toughest job in all showbusiness. We seemed to get through a lot of tour managers.

New York
    After the first American show in Boston, Damon and I flew down to New York for promo, just the two of us. We were a four-piece band and I was always slightly piqued when I was left out of things. We were all constantly jockeying for position - that’s what gave the group its dynamism - but lately the other two were unbroadcastable, so they were happy to stay in bed.
    There was a white stretch limo waiting for us at the airport. It was full of booze and televisions and phones. I called my mum. I said, ‘It’s all fine, I’ve moved out of the squat. I’m in New York, in a limousine.’
    Two of my mother’s aunts were hoofers, and my father’s uncle was a jazz pianist. There were showbusiness genes on both sides of the family, but as far as my parents were concerned I might as well have told them I was joining the circus when I left college. They were always supportive, but the music industry was quite beyond their experience - theirs and almost everyone in Bournemouth. It would have been impudent to tell the careers officer at school that I wanted to be in a band. For a start I hadn’t studied music. But it was just there in my blood and in my racing heart.
    We sailed over Brooklyn Bridge and landed at The Paramount Hotel in Times Square. There aren’t many places that overwhelm quite like New York. It was hard for someone who’d been living in a squat until a week before to accept just quite how wonderful The Paramount was. It was the first great hotel of the nineties, the monumental vision of Ian Schrager, one of the people behind Studio 54, the most legendary nightclub in history. Studio 54 was where Andy Warhol and Truman Capote danced with Liz Taylor and Audrey Hepburn, while Chic and Debbie Harry drank cocktails.
    The Paramount was almost as glamorous. The staff were all hired from modelling agencies and wore designer costume; the cavernous reception area was a kind of ark in which all the best things in the world had been tastefully assembled.
    I opened the door to my room. It was dark apart from a single spot-lit rose in a ceramic phial. I’ve never seen a rose look that good, not in an English country garden. It was exhilarating just to be in that hotel. The rooms were exceptionally small but, from the pencil on the bedside bureau to the power plumbing, exquisitely starched bedding and huge fluffy towels, absolutely perfect. Everything that’s good eventually finds its way to New York. It has such immense gravity that nothing that is truly wonderful can avoid it for long. All the super-models have homes in New York; all the