Eddy Says

Eddy Says: The Losers European Tour

By Eddy Temple-Morris | Published on Monday 13 July 2009

That’s what I’m calling last Friday in Barcelona, even though it was only one date, it was that eventful. Some of you will have witnessed the story unfold via the magic of Twitter, or Facebook, because my tweets automatically cross over to Faceache, but here’s the full story…

We had an earlyish flight, because we’d been booked for a live Losers gig in Barcelona, and had to get there for an early evening soundcheck. Tommy had to come from The Fortress Of Ultimate Darkness (Losers’ studio at his place in North London) and I came independently with my DJ bag and a lot of adaptors. Visuals Loser, confusingly also called Tom, was coming too. For the avoidance of confusion I’ll refer to Visuals Loser as Tom, and Loser 2, my other half, in the production not biblical sense, as Tommy.

I had a stressful journey across the capital, my well laid plans to get on the Piccadilly Line was scuppered at Holloway Station, which was closed because of an unforeseen problem with the lifts. By the time I got to Heathrow, Tom had been there for a couple of hours and Tommy had joined him about an hour later. “We’re in the pub!”, the text said. Christ. The time was shortly after 10am. I reminded the brace of Thomases that we had lucked out and been given Business Class tickets, so I’d see them in the lush BA lounge, where the drinks and food are free. They had already spent a king’s ransom on drinks in the terminal, so they got to the lounge like a pair of bullets.

By the time I got there, Tom was sipping his second vodka and orange, Tommy was downing something large, brown and peaty. When I inquired what it was, he told me it was his third quadruple Glenlivet. The word ‘Glenlivet’ came out in an interesting way, with roughly the right vowels and consonants, roughly in the right order. Roughly.

I’m a lightweight, and from a professional DJing background, I can’t get pissed beforehand. So I just overdosed on breakfast while the two other Losers took advantage of the free bar. Bacon rolls, mushroom rolls, cereal with fruit, toast, pastries, the works. When it was time to go to the gate the boys pronounced this was ‘the best room in the world’ and staggered past the prim lounge guards, who looked relieved when these three scruffy looking reprobates, clearly in high spirits, segued past an incoming privileged suit.

When we approached the gate I noticed that Tommy had that loveable, dumb grin that comes from alcohol. You know the one – when somebody asks you something and you just give them a lovely big grin, yes, that one…

Gate lady: “Boarding passes please”

Eddy and Tom hand theirs over, Tommy grins, sort of at her, but his eyes focusing about a kilometre through her…

Gate lady (again, to Tommy alone): “Boarding pass?”

Tommy grins some more.

Then suddenly, as the words sink in, he animates. Skintight black jeans pockets are frisked, he looks down at his bag, pulls random magazines out and shakes them, prods, cranes, then looks up at us, a bit lost. “I think I left it in the lounge”.

Around 20 boot buckles jingle as he lopes off in search of the pass. Sober as a judge, I ‘tsk’ at the remaining Tom and open Tommy’s bag for a less inebriated search. I pull out the random magazines, pens, electrical items, and, with a predictable sigh, an *unwrapped* bacon roll, liberated from the BA lounge, just there, in the side pocket, gathering lint and hairs. We did that ‘tsky’ laugh thing with the Gate lady, rolling our eyes and saying “Rockstars, eh?! Can’t live with them etc”.

By the time he came back, with the boarding pass, thank Christ, we’d missed our call onto the plane and had to wait until the hoi poloi (which we clearly also were, but with Business Class tickets) had got on. Tommy’s grin had now grown to the size of a small principality. Our late arrival onto the airbus ensured we had nowhere to put our bags, and in the resulting confusion, Tommy ended up blocking the aisle awkwardly.

“Excuse me please”, said some random passenger. Tommy gave him a grin the size and shape of Berkshire. Just the grin, he didn’t actually move.

“Oh God”, I mentally slapped my own head, as I thought Tommy was now walking the razors edge between a smiley, happy, funny man with a Business Class ticket, to one of those drunken, spoon wielding, peanut lobbing nightmares you read about getting chucked off jets and into the arms of particularly surly airport police with machine guns and tight rubber gloves.

To my relief, the door was heaved shut and Tommy’s buttocks found the right seat while his lint-encrusted bacon roll, along with the rest of his belongings, had been ushered away by a helpful cabin steward, or whatever it is that air hostesses call themselves these politically correct days.

Shortly after take off I realised, to my horror, the full weight of the situation. Two more hours, in a confined space, with unlimited free drinks. Shit. I saw more smiles from the two Toms. Mini bottles of Cava were cracked open. “We jusht got a record deal, and we haven’t shelebrated yet”, Tommy slurred, lovably. “Mmkay”,’ I, Mr Sensible, said, trying to conjure up some enthusiasm while all the time wondering how the fuck we were going to do a soundcheck in a few hours. Oh, and I forgot to mention that in the queue to get on this plane, Tommy almost got into a fight with some guy who was a bit over keen to get on the plane. I think the stupid grin saved him, combined with my telling the geezer that it was ME that Tommy was talking to when he said: “Chill the fuck out will you!”

So, we entered Spanish airspace buffered by a free lunch (and lots of free bubbly wine), landed, disembarked and became reunited with our equipment without fighting with anyone, or ourselves, which was nice.

God the flightcases were heavy. This is how I imagine a dead body would feel like to carry. It turned out there was a giant bottle of Jagermeister in one of them. Honestly, who takes a bottle of *anything* to a club that gives you *anything* you ask for?

“Beersh on the beach”, said Tommy. So a beer chaser was downed quickly and I took him to the Puerto Olympico beach while Tom tweaked his visuals. We had one of those intense, drunken conversations before he passed out on the beach, face down.

While Tommy let various Catalan sandbugs explore his nostrils, I caught up with emails and Twitter, and in doing so I found out that Crystal Fighters were playing at Razzmatazz the very same night. Result! I got in touch via the promoter, and plans were made to see each other at soundcheck and maybe hang out afterwards. Then artist liaison rang – the soundcheck had been put back. “This is good”, thought I, looking at the collapsed multi (instru)mentalist beside me. So as the sun started sinking I got him up and walked back to the hotel to let him sleep it off for a few hours. Tom and I sat down on my balcony and worked on the visuals while Tommy has lost his grip on consciousness once more. When the time came to wake him up, I could see behind his bloodshot eyes and the grin had been replaced with a grimace…

“Hi bruv… I think I need a shot of Jagermeister to wake me up”.

I mentally slap my head again and think “This is going to be a looooong night”.

I met up with Crystal Fighters in the hotel lobby, via a very nice American called Graham. I apologised for thinking the band were French, turns out they’re an international hotchpotch of one lovely yank, several Brits and a sprinkling of French/Basques too.

Soundcheck was nerve wracking, but Tommy, to his credit, has an amazing way of handling himself, when drunk, in a potential crisis situation. I think the sleep had helped focus him, but he was nervous… we both were. The empty main room looked cavernous.

“I’m shitting it”, he confessed. “What if something goes wrong?”

“Then we close the curtain and walk away”, I offered. “When was the last time you were this nervous about a gig?”

“Bull & Gate”, he said and smiled. He meant Cooper Temple Clause’s first London gig, and the legendary Bull & Gate pub in Kentish town where even I, many years ago, in a band related to The Cult, had played MY first London gig.

Dinner was amazing. I had one beer, the Toms had two or three and proclaimed it the best dinner of their lives. I had to DJ before and after, so I went straight to the club while they went back to the hotel and into the arms of that giant bottle of Jager.

As it turned out, the gig went really well. The main room was full. Losers played to the biggest crowd we’d ever played to. I played bass for the first time in decades, which felt great. Predictably, I went to bed afterwards, between 6 and 7am, while the two Thomases drank on. I was woken up some hours later by Tommy, still drunk, and somewhat playful. He had discovered, to his glee, that there were phones by the toilets in each room, so he called me to tell me the important news that he was “having a shit”. Live and direct. Thanks, Tommy.

The journey home was less eventful, other than Tommy forgetting about the half drunk giant bottle of Jager, and having it wrestled from his grip by the airport security. I almost got arrested just for trying to take a picture for my Twitter page.

The journey ended, quite beautifully, I thought, while we waited an age for our flightcases to come through: a small Asian child projectile vomited three times onto the floor in front of us, then her and her mum just glanced around, and walked on… We were then forced to play the ‘lets stay here and see who treads in it’ game. I supplied a pretty much running commentary on everyone passing, hooted as a hurried Indian man trod right into the middle of it, while I thanked the gods that it was a small child that had done the vomiting, not my hard-drinking cohorts or I.

It felt like we’d been on tour for a month by the time we got back and as I write I live in fear of an actual Losers tour. We have two singles coming out this year and an album at the beginning of 2010 so a tour will be unavoidable. I’d better call 999 now, then…

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.