Chapter 28: Touring

Road Trip

December 1985

There were several additions to the entourage; Robyn and Sally were coming, along with their two kids; and of course the other two young kids, Bruce and Rachel’s son, Robert, and Andrew and Mandy’s daughter, Debbie would be coming along. Given that all four kids were a bit over a year old, they really couldn’t be left behind, and neither Paul nor Phil wanted to be away from their wives and kids for the three weeks. I could see in the future organizing tours like this one would become more difficult as some of the members of the group had to balance family commitments. Robyn and Sally would look after all four toddlers while we were performing; it would be interesting to see how the kids handled traveling in the tour bus, but I could certainly understand why the six of them would not want to be separated from their kids for an extended period. If it was a day or two, that would be fine, but three weeks...

It was an early start on the Monday morning; the tour bus arrived at Banksia Lodge just after 5:00 a.m.; we were all ‘present and correct’, so it was just a case of putting our bags in the luggage compartment, and then we were off south towards Wollongong. The aim was to beat the morning peak hour traffic; I took the opportunity to get a few extra hours sleep. It was going to be a long day; all going well the road crew would already be on site, setting up the stage. The plan was that once we arrived at the venue – the Dapto Showground - the stage would already have been set up, and all we would need to do is make a final check of our instruments and they were set up as we wanted, run a sound check, and wait until the concert start time.

I was hoping that I would get to see how they actually assembled the stage and ran the power and audio wiring, but I guessed that would have to wait until Thursday, when we were setting up at the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra. The bus we had for our main transport was a much newer, more luxurious version of the one we had use in previous tours; the back half had about twenty bunk beds, each with a reading light, and curtains that could be pulled across for some privacy. The front half had what initially look like standard coach seating, however the seats could be rotated, so that we could face each other, while still wearing seatbelts. Not that I really took advantage of the seating, I slept – or at least dozed – most of the way to the venue.

When we arrived at the showground, the stage was already constructed; the lights set up on the overhead gantries, and heavy canvas covers over the top and sides of the structure. There were two large speaker stacks either side of the stage, and part of the way out in the audience area, a raised platform where the sound and lighting consoles were located.

“Fuck me,” Phil said. “Is this the right place? That looks like some big international act is meant to be playing here!”

“It all looks pretty impressive,” Paul said. “The stage looks HUGE!”

The coach pulled into behind the stage, the two semitrailers were parked on either side of the backstage area, the other two trucks were backed in close to the stage. One was the generator truck, the other was a truck with the dressing rooms, showers and toilets in a transportable building on the back of it. Col and Peter were there, and once the coach was parked in its correct location, we collected our bags, and made our way up onto the stage.

“You can put your bags in the dressing rooms,” Peter said. “Then I’ll give you the grand tour.”

The dressing rooms looked like someone had started with a basic construction site amenities building; placed it on the back of a flat-bed truck; and fitted out the dressing room out with closets, mirrors, make up desks and a number of easy chairs. Our stage clothes and other items were already hanging up in the closets, ready for us to get changed later in the day. Behind the big dressing room were two small shower cubicles, and two toilet cubicles. Everything we would need for our time on the road, given that we would be sleeping in the tour coach.

We were then shown how the stage had been set up; there was the large truck with the generator and power supply; I spoke to the chief electrician and asked him how it was set up.

“It’s a 70 kVA unit; 6.8 litre engine, three phase alternator that feeds a rectifier / battery / inverter system. Designed so that we can run from a utility supply, but if that should fail, or be dirty, the generator kicks in automatically, and the inverter ensures phase continuity,” he said. “You follow all that?”

“Yeah, I did two years of an electrical engineering degree, and I am a Computer Science lecturer at the School of Electrical Engineering at UNSW,” I said. “All looks pretty good.”

“Yeah, for bigger shows, with more lighting and more amplifiers, we have units going up to 120 kVA. But from here, we feed a number of breaker and distribution panels, one is just for all the lighting controllers, another for the PA stacks. This one here feeds the on-stage equipment, we have dedicated 240 volt power runs out to your equipment. Each of the equipment lines is protected with an earth leakage detector, so there’s no risk of electrocution. Before you guys do your sound check this arvo, I’ll run a full electrical test on the equipment, make sure they are all properly earthed. That’s our standard policy, we don’t want to risk any shorts, or electrocutions.”

I was pretty impressed with the thought that had gone into the design and installation of the electrical system, not just the reliability built into it, but the failsafes, and the way installing the power cabling was made simple and fool proof. I really wanted to watch the setup process now and see just how it worked in practice.

Peter and Col then showed us how they had set everything up on the stage; there was certainly much more room than we had available at some of the indoor venues in Sydney; I sat at my Rhodes; it was easy for me to move between that, my Hammond, and even Don’s Yamaha clavinova. I could get out to the front of the stage without any difficulty, we all found there was plenty of room, the power and mike cables had been securely taped to the floor, and generally run against the raise platform where they were out of the way. No danger of anyone tripping or catching a cable, and pulling over a mike.

“We’ve still got some of the lighting work to finish off and test, but what if we aim for 3:00 this afternoon to run through a full sound check?” Peter said. “Until there, you’ve got the day off. But before some of you piss off for the rest of the morning, there’s a guy I want you guitarists to meet.”

Peter introduced us to one of the electricians, Graeme Thorpe, who also served as a guitar tech, plus he had the tools and equipment to make minor repairs and adjustments to our amps. Ian knew him from previous tours, they appeared to be good mates.

“If you guys don’t mind,” Graeme said, “you can tell me how you like your guitars set up, and I can do any quick fixes, replace a broken string, stuff like that while you are on stage.”

“Sounds great, come into the dressing room, and I’ll show you what guitars I have,” I said to him.

I got my guitars out from their crate, my original red strat, the black one that I had rebuilt, and the newer powder blue one. Graeme examined each of them in turn, making comments about their condition, the strings, action, and pickups.

“That black one, that’s not original, is it?” he said. “I can see it’s been rebuilt at some stage.”

“Yeah, I got it back in early 1976, it was in pretty bad shape. All new pickups, electronics, tuners, plus refinishing the body.”

“They’re all nice, what others do you have?”

I pulled out my Telecaster, and handed it to him.

“What type of pickup switching has this one got?” he asked.

“Just the standard, neck, combined, and bridge, with the tone control active in all three positions,” I said.

He nodded his approval, at one stage, the selector switch had the first position for the neck pickup in ‘dark’ mode, where there was a lot of treble cut applied, the middle positon was still the neck pickup, but with the ‘dark circuit’ disabled, and the third position just the bridge pickup. There was no way to blend both pickups; which to me was a real negative, and the so called ‘dark circuit’ was rather superfluous, since you could achieve much the same with the tone controls on the amp.

Finally, I handed over my Maton SRS acoustic; although it did have an AP5 Pro pickup installed. Graeme examined it, and strummed a few chords.

“You have a good selection of guitars; but my question, each of the strats, you’ve got the action set up differently,” he said. “Which do you prefer?”

“I use each for a different style,” I said. “The blue, with the highest action, that’s for lead, particularly when I’m going to be playing a lot of riffs, bends, all of that. The black one, when it’s going to be purely rhythm, and the red for most everything else. The Tele, that’s if I want a tone with punch, like on the Stones ones; and the Maton, when I want a more mellow sound. The same with the amps; I prefer the sound of the Fender, with its rich reverb. The Marshall, that’s when I want power and crunch.”

“All sounds reasonable to me. Do you have any preference for strings? Brand, weight, whatever?”

“Not really, whenever I need to get a set, I’ll buy what they have on sale at Venue Music. There’s a few spares in my parts box, probably Ernie Ball, I think.”

“No worries. After I’ve spoken to the others, do you mind if I give your amps a once over, squirt contact cleaner in the pots, make sure the valves are seated properly in their sockets, stuff like that?”

“Go ahead, I normally do that once a month, but if you want to check them over, that would be great.”

I left Graeme to his job, meanwhile Fiona, Tracy and I walked the short distance to the shopping centre at Dapto. There’s wasn’t a huge amount to see there; a moderately sized shopping mall, with a large Woolworths supermarket, and a typical array of suburban shops. Since it was now about lunchtime, we avoided the various fast food outlets, and stopped at a little café – owned and operated by what appeared to be a Greek family, which in my books was a good sign. For lunch, I chose their ‘roast of the day’ – roast pork, complete with crackling, baked potatoes and vegetables, plus the mandatory ‘iced chocolate’; it was almost as good as the iced chocolate from the take-away place near Alexa’s office.

Our hunger satisfied, we walked back to where we were set up; Fiona suggested we try to get some sleep, since it was going to be a late night, so we headed to the sleeping area of our coach. Tracy suggested that she and I could ‘sleep’ together; although I wasn’t quite sure how much actual sleeping she intended to get.

“We are almost completely alone in here, well, except for Fiona, and she will be asleep soon,” Tracy said. “If we are quiet, then no one will know what we’re doing...”

“Do you think you can stay quiet?” I whispered in her ear. “Particularly when I use my lips and tongue ... And I could use my fingers as well, while I’m licking you. I seem to recall you enjoy that combination.”

“Promise? I haven’t had that for a while...”

“At least a week,” I said. “I seem to recall the other Sunday night, and you were rather loud, too.”

“Well, I can’t help it if you are just that good at licking me,” she said. “And since you reminded me, I really need it now.”

We managed to remain relatively quiet, despite my bringing Tracy to several nice orgasms with my lips, tongue and fingers, before we made love. Due to the restricted height in the bunk beds, we were limited to the ‘missionary’ position.

“Next time, what if we use my bunk,” I suggested. “It’s one of the upper level ones, and there’s more room, at least more height above the mattress.”

“You didn’t bump your head, did you?” she asked.

“Yes, I did. But not all that hard. And I only did it once! Now, a shower, to freshen up? Before the others see us, and work out what we’ve been up to.”

“I’m sure everyone knows what we’ve been up to,” Tracy said, laughing, “And I bet they don’t care, either! But let’s have that shower, maybe you can make sure I’m extra clean in some places that I can’t easily reach.”

We pulled on some clothes, and headed to the showers in the accommodation cabin; it was rather cramped trying to squeeze the two of us into the one shower; but we managed to get each other clean. Then it was back to the main sitting room, I pulled my acoustic guitar out, and practiced some of the folk music songs that we planned to play at the Three Weeds, probably sometime in February. Tracy got her guitar, and the two of us played together. After a while, Allison joined us, and played along on her fiddle. We were starting to sound fairly good; all we needed was Fiona to join in with her mandolin, and Rachel on her drum to complete the group. I was sure we would have plenty of time to practice our songs while we were on tour.

Our folk music session was interrupted by Peter telling us that he wanted to start the full sound check in fifteen minutes; I headed to the stage, set up my guitars on their stands in the place set aside for that, checked the cabling to my effects pedals, made sure I had the right leads going to the correct amp input, and arranged my set lists on top of the Rhodes where I would be able to see it at a glance. Once we were all on stage, the first task was to double check the alignment of the various spot lights; we were told to stand in various positions as the Chris, up on the lighting desk brought up each spot in turn. Then it was a microphone check; each of the vocal mikes were tested, then the drum kits, and finally the ‘line in’ inputs from the keyboards and guitar amps.

“Okay, let’s do a full check, what if we do ‘Black Magic Woman’, just as we will do it live,” Mary Beth’s voice came through the foldback speakers. “You count us in, Mike.”

I looked around, everyone seemed to be ready; Mike looked across at me, I nodded. We were all ready, I couldn’t wait to hear how the sound system sounded. Of course, the front of house PA system wouldn’t be wound up to the volume it would be during the actual show, this test was just to make sure all the levels were set correctly, there were no earth loops causing hum or other interference, and all of the microphones were working properly, including the radio pickups for our guitars.

Mike looked around at everyone, nodded his head, and started the intro. Stewie came in with the percussion, Andrew picked up the bass lead, Phil, Mossy and I took the guitar lead. After the introduction, I started singing, but the foldback sounded low, muddy, so I improvised a verse:

Turn the sound up a bit baby,
Turn the sound up a bit baby,
Turn the sound up a bit baby,
it’s like I’m at the bottom of a pit
Turn the sound up a bit baby,
I have no idea of what I’m singing.

Everyone was laughing, the music fell apart.

“What’s the problem, Will? Is the foldback no good?” Mary Beth said through the speakers.

“Yeah, my voice level was too low, all distorted and muddy. I could barely hear my singing over the backing music.”

“And you try to tell us you’re crap at writing, Will,” Phil said. “That was a bit of inspired, off the cuff improvisation!”

We paused the sound check while Mary Beth, Chris, and two of the electricians checked the cabling; it turned out that one of the XLR connectors – the one from my microphone – wasn’t seated properly in the socket, and once we were playing, the vibrations from the rest of our sound caused the connections to constantly make and break. A few minutes work had the faulty connector replaced, and we started the song again; this time the foldback sound was perfect.

“Was that better?” Mary Beth asked.

“Ad perfectum,” I said. “No problems hearing at all.”

“Okay, let’s try ‘Mean Woman Blues’, then into ‘Promised Land’,” she instructed.

For this one, Mossy and I would take the guitar lead, and sing together, Don backed us on piano. Phil took the first guitar break, Ian and I switching to a rhythm backup. This was one of the songs that I used my Tele on; I preferred the brighter tone that it produced. Somehow it seemed to suit the rockabilly style of the song. I switched to my trust red Strat for ‘Promised Land’, this was another song where having the two drummers, plus a bunch of guitarists, Don and Mike on keyboards gave a huge punch to the song. We included several breaks where Paul, Mandy and Fiona could improvise. I thought we were sounding pretty good, so when we had almost finished, I gave the sign ‘go around again’, and we stretched it out into our extended version.

“Sounding real good there, guys,” Mary Beth said. “Let’s get our Skynyrd on, ‘Call me the Breeze’, I want you all to give it everything.”

Blue Strat time; I strapped that on, made sure it was plugged into my Marshall Amp, checked the volume and tone settings, and Phil and I hit the introduction. I looked across to me left, Ian, Phil, Garry and Andrew were all lined up in a row; Tracy was on my right. Phil took the first guitar solo break; I could hear Don working it up on his Clavinova. Phil then handed the guitar solo to Ian, before I went into the second verse.

The second solo break was all Don; then over to the horns before Don took over again. We wrapped it up after the third verse; from where I was on the stage, I thought it sounded pretty fantastic.

“Okay, that was great, everything sounded good,” Mary Beth said. “Now let’s get into some slower ones, ‘Pacific Highway Blues’.”

We did ‘Pacific Highway Blues’, ‘Last Wave of Summer’, and a few others from the album; they must have been working on a few settings up at the sound desk, we then did our three ‘slow and romantic’ songs, or as Garry referred to them as ‘the panty soaking group’, ‘We’ve Got Tonight’, ‘Desperado’ and ‘Wonderful Tonight’.

“I think we’ve got everything set correctly,” Mary Beth said. “That’s it for the afternoon, unless you want to practice anything?”

“What if we run through the encore?” I suggested. “Give Chrissy a chance to hear.”

We did that set; Chrissy standing next to me and singing for both ‘Make You Happy’ and ‘Good Time’. We felt everything was sounding good, and decided that was it for the afternoon. Time to rest before the night’s show. I had just got undressed, and slid under the sheet on my bunk, when Fiona stood next to it.

“Like some company?” she asked. “Just cuddling and sleeping together, that’s all if you want.”

“Sure, get in,” I said, turning to my side so she could lie next to me.

Fiona got undressed, and slid into the bunk next to me. I turned over so we were spooning, and I had a hand resting on one of her soft, pert breasts. She sighed, and covered my hand with hers, wiggling her backside against my prick. She reached back behind her body to position my prick between her legs, pressing against her pussy.

“You know, that’s a rather dangerous position,” I whispered in her ear.

“Dangerous? For who? I’m sure you have excellent self-control, Will.”

She started rocking gently, so her moist pussy moved around, rubbing along my knob and shaft.

“I thought you said just cuddling.”

“Maybe I want my pussy to cuddle your prick,” she replied. “You know I can give him a very special, tight cuddle...”

I moved a hand down lower, between her thighs, and started to slowly rub her pussy. Fiona raised a leg slightly, so I could slide my fingers further down between her legs, and as my fingers rubbed across her clit, she drew her breath in sharply.

“And how do you expect me to remain quiet if you keep doing that?” she whispered.

“I’ll stop if you want.”

“No ... I’ll be quiet ... oh, can you slide inside me while you rub?”

I shifted my position slightly, so my prick was angled correctly, I pushed my hips forward, and using my fingers, I slid inside her. She groaned softly as my knob spread her open, and reached down between her legs, entwining her fingers in mine.

“Oh, God, that’s so good,” she whispered softly. “Can you just lie there, staying still for a minute or two?”

We lay there, joined together, our fingers brushing and rubbing around her clit. I listened to Fiona’s breathing, every so often she would moan softly, pushing back into me.

“Just move slowly in and out,” she whispered. “I’m really close...”

I rocked my hips slowly, causing me to slide in and out of her; it only took a few slow strokes before I felt her tense up and sigh softly, a sigh that was almost a groan.

“Oh yes ... that’s just what I needed,” she moaned softly. “I went two years without having that ... Now do me again, I want to feel you spurting inside me.

I started moving again, this time a little faster. I could feel Fiona’s fingers pressing against the underside of my shaft while she was rubbing herself. She was almost restraining herself from her usual running commentary, she was only murmuring softly to herself, I could barely hear her words, something like ‘yeah, fuck me’, ‘I love your prick in my cunt’ and ‘spurt inside me’. As it usually did, hearing Fiona’s ‘running commentary’ got me very aroused, it wouldn’t take much longer for me to come.

“I’m close to coming, Fiona,” I whispered in her ear.

“Yes, do it, I want your come inside me,” she replied.

Her urging was all it took; I pulled her body hard against me, pushed deep into her, and let it start. I groaned, I tried to keep quiet, but each time I spurted into her, I let out a soft groan.

“Can you keep going ... a few more ... I’m so close,” she panted.

I kept sliding in and out, I could feel my prick squeezing my come out from her; maybe when she came the first time she gushed some juices, but it was getting rather wet underneath us. A few more thrusts, and she tensed her muscles, pushed back against me, and groaned again, this time louder than the first time.

“Oh, yes! YES! God, YES!” she cried out.

I stopped moving, and held her close to me; we were both breathing heavily. We stayed locked together, not moving, for a few minutes, then I let myself roll back, my prick came out of her, and I lay on my back. Fiona rolled over, resting her head on my chest.

“Was that a good warm up for tonight’s show?” I asked her.

“Absolutely! You don’t know just how much I love doing that, Will,” she said. “And now, I guess we should see about getting cleaned up, have something to eat, and get dressed for the performance. I guess you don’t have a tissue handy that I can stuff in my pussy so I don’t drip everywhere?”

I didn’t have a tissue, so Fiona just put her clothes back on, then I got dressed, and we headed across to the showers. Once we were clean, it was time to think about dinner; Peter had arranged for some Chinese food from a local restaurant to be delivered to our dressing room. While we were all sitting around eating, Mary Beth had an update on the album.

“I spoke to Fifa earlier this afternoon, the factory started pressing the albums today; they plan to have several thousand copies distributed to the major record stores by Friday,” she said. “She said there will be a few hundred in Canberra waiting for us to sell at the gigs, so we will have to make sure we plug the album during the show. After we had finished dinner, I went across to where a public phone was, and called Lisa to see how she was going. I told her how our sound check went, and what Mary Beth had passed on from Fifa about the album. She wished me good luck for the night’s performance, and I told her I would call again tomorrow night. Then it was back to the stage, time to put on my stage clothes, and get ready for the night’s performance.

As we headed out from the dressing room, Peter told us ‘five minute, guys’, and introduced us to some of the local media ‘personalities’. They had been given ‘Access All Areas’ passes, so we had a brief chat with them, before we took our positions on the stage. I looked out into the arena, it was packed with people. Maybe several thousand standing close together, pressed up against the stage, and two or three times that number spaced out behind them. Some of the people had brought fold-up chairs with them, or had spread out blankets on the grass.

“Ten seconds, everyone,” Mary Beth’s voice came through the foldback speakers.

The main arena lights were dimmed, and the low murmuring of the crowd rose to a roar.

“We wanna show! We wanna show!”

I looked around at everyone, they all nodded or gave me a ‘thumbs up’. Time to get this show on the road. I started with the opening chords of ‘Time is Tight’, the spotlight on me started to come up. This was it, I launched into our opening song. After the introductions, it was ‘Good Times’, then the rest of the first set. When we took a break, I grabbed a bottle of cold water, gulped about half of it down.

“Man, that crowd is fired up!” Phil exclaimed. “What do you reckon? Fifteen thousand, at least!”

“Sixteen thousand, two hundred and thirty-nine,” Peter said. “At least that’s how many tickets were sold.”

“You guys sounded great out there,” Colin said.

“The light show is something else,” I said. “Chris must be working his ring off up on the lighting desk!”

After the break, it was back on stage; the lighting changed, a spotlight on me, sitting at Don’s Clavinova, and soft floods over the rest of the stage. I started playing ‘We’ve Got Tonight’; and I soon noticed a number of flickering lights in the crowd, moving from side to side. Some people had lit their cigarette lighters, and were waving them back and forward above their heads. Soon, maybe a thousand or more tiny lights were moving, it was like some fire flies were dancing to the music. I was really pleased, the decision to open the second set with a quieter piece seemed to be working.

They kept up their light show through the next three songs; then we picked up the tempo, finishing off the second set with ‘Mean Woman Blues’. As we took our break, Chrissy came up to me, asking to talk privately, so we headed back behind some of the crates.

“This probably sounds stupid,” she said, “but when you were singing ‘We’ve Got Tonight’, I felt that you were singing that directly to me. Do you think we could, I mean, could we have tonight, just the two of us?”

“Chrissy, you know that as much as I want you, while you and Mark are a couple ... How would you feel if while you were on tour, he was sleeping with someone else?”

“He probably is, they’ve probably both been shooting up together,” she replied, looking rather sad. “He’s using again, I know he is; he denies it, of course, but ... I don’t know what to do about him, when he’s clean, we are great together, but ... any time he feels stressed, he has to shoot up, and he’s a different person. I can’t handle him when he’s stoned. You and I don’t have to have sex, we don’t have to make love, I just need some company tonight, some cuddling. If you don’t ... that’s okay, I understand.”

She look so sad, so ... so alone, I feel like I was being an uncaring bastard, all because of some arbitrary rule I had.

“Okay, we can sleep together tonight, just cuddling, Chrissy. Just tonight, too,” I said.

She hugged me, kissed me on the lips.

“Thank you, Will, you don’t know just how happy that will make me”

Time to get back on stage for the final set; so far, everything had sounded pretty good, and the lights ... they were something else! Not just the standard fill lights and the steerable spots, but a bank of bright white lights that lit up all of the stage. There were light banks on the sides of the stage, too, that seemed to swivel up and down; the light patterns and colours changed in sync with the music. We started the set with our standard three-song Stones numbers, Allison and I strutting about on the stage together with ‘Honky Tonk Woman’, and (of course) the crowd went crazy when I pulled her leather mini-skirt off. We kept the sultriness going with ‘Brown Sugar’, before Mandy did her usual moody, evocative rendition of ‘Paint it Black’. The rest of the final set went smoothly, and when it was time for ‘The Load Out’, all the stage lights were dimmed, except for the spotlight about me, at the Rhodes. Near the end of the song, Chrissy slid onto the chair next to me, her microphone in one hand, the other arm around my waist. She gave me a gentle squeeze, I turned to look at her, she smiled at me, and mouthed ‘I love you, Will’.

Chrissy and I sang ‘Stay’ together, by the end the whole band had joined in; at the conclusion we all stood up at the front of the stage, bowed deeply, and headed off to the side. At least, temporarily; after maybe thirty seconds of the crowd clapping and cheering, we ran back onto the stage, and took our places for the start of the encore set. Chrissy stood on my right side, ready to sing alone with me; Phil and Ian played the opening riff of ‘I’ll Make You Happy’, Chrissy and I alternated singing the opening lines, until we hit the verse. We sang together, her arm around my waist, my arm around her shoulder, sharing the same microphone. When we had finished the song, she put her lips to my ear.