Del Amitri are currently on tour in the USA, playing sold-out theatres and travelling, I assume, in comfort and style. Which befits their status and maturity. A summer of big outdoor gigs and festivals awaits.

Their drummer these days  is one Jim McDermott, a fine practitioner of the percussive arts, and wee brother of Kevin McDermott, excellent singer-songwriter, he of the KMO, the Kevin McDermott Orchestra (also featuring Jim). 

40 years ago, things were rather different. The Dels, dropped by their record company, were on a wing-and-and-a-prayer fan-funded tour of the USA, busking for beer, breadcrumbs and floorspace to sleep on. Kevin was there for fun and frolics as a support act. And I’d tagged along to make a BBC radio  documentary and write a piece for the rock weekly Melody Maker. Recently, I transcribed the cassettes I recorded that summer of 1986. The programme was never broadcast. A taster: some clips from an afternoon busking in Washington Square Park, New York, and the ill-fated gig in Hoboken that followed can be listened to here:

Anyway…

One night, we were travelling through Texas in the cramped splitter van the band had hired in Brooklyn. 

The Dels’ drummer back then was one Paul Tyagi. What follows  is a snapshot of one 24-hour period, not long before I abandoned the whole crazy enterprise in Albuquerque. There’s a whole heap of stuff on tape (including a rare interview with Michael Stipe of REM) that may surface in due course. And many more stories to tell.

***.  ***.  ***

I’ve been wearing red Converse basketball boots of which I’m inordinately proud. Unfortunately, as I’ve had those Chuck Taylors (second-hand from Flip in Glasgow; I’m repatriating American sweat) on for days now without a change of socks, they are leaching out an aroma that can only be described as dangerously toxic. It matches the emotional atmosphere in this van.

When I gingerly excavate my homecoming brogans, deciding in the end to dispose of the crusty socks in the rest area’s bins, the fumes billowing from both feet and footwear are so awful that Paul Tyagi—Del Amitri’s drummer and not someone to hold back on his opinions at the best of times (and these are not the best of times)—unleashes a howl of anguish:

“What’s that fucking smell? Who’s done that? Is that arse or feet?”

Lone Star state of mind

Context: It’s dark. Paul, Justin, Iain, Kevin, Bryan, Iain’s sister (and Paul’s girlfriend) Lynne, and manager Barbara are dozing in an otherwise deserted lay-by, rest area, unmanned truck stop—call it what you will—somewhere in the wilds of Texas. Four of us can drive (Iain, Barbara, Janice, and me) and we’re all tired and fed up. So are the non-driving passengers/artistes. as in everyone else.

But Paul is a drummer and, as drummers are wont to do, he has expressed his road-weariness loudly and percussively for many, many American miles. He’s been saying out loud what others are holding in, clenched or self-consciously oblivious. We’re all hungry, thirsty, dirty and hot. Worried, too. 

It’s the summer of 1986, and The Great Experimental Del Amitri and Kevin McDermott tour of the entire USA, from New York to California (and back) is not going according to plan. There is hardly any money. The gigs are sparsely attended. The fans organising the shows and places to stay have ranged from the generous, saintly and wonderful to the frightening, bizarre and potentially psychotic; the accommodation has ranged from snake- and locust-ridden floorspace to motels. Somehow, we have survived, and Los Angeles twinkles seductively in the future, if we get there. There is talk of prestigious club nights and even record deals. The Dels have been dropped by their previous label. Kevin, solo support act, is with Glasgow indie No Strings and a house concert in Florida has been recorded for possible release. By me. I haven’t told him yet but the tape I’ve made is no Abbey Road. In fact it’s distorted to the point of painfulness.

“Right, I’m off.”

Paul door-slammingly leaves the slumbering van, wandering off into the scrubland with his sleeping bag, inhaling deeply the aromas of mesquite and roaming coyote. I put my All-Stars outside (so many names for a pair of gutties). Binning the socks can wait until morning.

Panhandled

A Texas panhandle dawn breaks. Everyone is weary, bleary, and the kind of held-in grumpy only West of Scotland Scots specialise in. It’s time to get going. We’re off to… somewhere. But nobody can find Paul.

He’s not in the van. I lace up my shoes, reducing their perfume to very nearly acceptable standards. Where’s he gone? Search parties scour the lay-by and adjoining campsite in pairs, but we can’t find him. we’re concerned, though some members of the party are notably more concerned than others. Lynne, understandably, is very upset and worried. Not as upset and worried as she is when somebody suggests we just drive away and leave him. A suggestion which starts as a joke but in that murky, Lord Of The Flies way flowers and spreads like a forest fire, to quote a friend and deadly rival of all the musos on board, Lloyd Cole. Who’s probably playing golf in Augusta as we speak.

This is not a “leave him and report him missing” kind of suggestion. Nobody is using their iPhone to call emergency services or, for that matter, Paul, because this is 1986 and we have no mobile telephony about our persons. This is an exhausted, end-of-tether, initially humorous (but not very funny) response to the situation we’re in: penniless, starving, desperate, and completely fed up. I can’t remember who the original suggestion comes from, but there is a vote, still on that very Scottish sarcastic-but-maybe-not level: leave him or continue to search.  Barbara and Lynne (who is in tears, understandably) insist we should definitely not abandon the drummer. Ambivalence prevails. We’re in the USA, not Milngavie. You could fit a dozen Scotlands inside Texas. Maybe he’s been kidnapped by a serial killer. Eaten by bears. Do they have bears in Texas? Well, in that case, best get going…

How many drummers have been abandoned in the middle of nowhere during fraught tours? Am I being unfair to percussionists in clumping them all together as, well, noisy, opinionated, and generally socially abrasive characters? Yes. I have known some lovely drummers in my time. Kind drummers, quiet drummers, even musical ones. Which reminds me of the old Musicians’ Union agreements bands had to sign in order to perform on radio sessions at the BBC’s Maida Vale studios. They contained the words: “four musicians and a drummer”.

Smells like thrawn spirit

Thrawn. Stubborn, intransigent. That’s a good Scots word for Paul. For drummers as a genre, loosely. But it also applies to all of us on this trip, though I’m there as an observer, a reporter for the BBC and Melody Maker. I’ve been sucked into the overall thrawnness, though. Thrawn has got me this far. I have money invested  in this escapade, as the van and gear couldn’t be hired without some cash input from me. And I’ve played on stage as support to Kevin, who’s support to the Dels. Or is that still to come, in Dallas?

Paul is thrawn, somewhere out there. Lynne is thrawn, refusing to leave unless Paul turns up. The rest of the band is thrawn, fed up and determined to move on. The atmosphere is full of thrawndom. And we’re scapegoating Paul, I know, just because he’s handily Not About. Really, they should abandon me, annoying journalist, recording all this dissension and dispute and apparent failure for a doubtless snarky Melody Maker piece and BBC show. And my shoes still stink. Also my feet, despite the application of Old Spice aftershave in copious quantities.

Then Paul appears, dragging his sleeping bag behind him, jaunty and cheerful.

“Had a great night’s sleep, gazing up at the stars,” he announces, breezily. “I found an old abandoned truck and and just stretched out in the back. Are we ready to go?”

And just like that, everybody is friends again. Except they’re not. Friends Again. They’re Del Amitri and the band is  fracturing, changing, contemplating longer hair and leather instead of number-one-back-and-sides-and-a-floppy-fringe, Airtex shirts and Famous Five khaki shorts.

Desert songs

As we head out into the New Mexico desert hours, maybe days later, I determine that I’ve had enough of this. We are running extremely late, were meant to be in Los Angeles by this time, and I have an unchangeable APEX plane fare booked back to Prestwick. It’s time to jump ship, so I start trying to work out how to get from Albuquerque to Los Angeles without any money, in less than a day. If we get to Albuquerque.

On the radio, Tears for Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World is blasting out every ten minutes. Paul is tapping out polyrhythms on the back of his seat, Justin is reading Tom Wolfe, and Barbara, bless her, is wondering what she’s got herself and the band into. Kevin is mentally drawing the detailed plans for guided-missile frigates that are his professional life. He has a real job back home. he also has money. I end up borrowing $100 from Kev which, 40 years later, I still owe him. Or was it $200? The interest!

Bruce Springsteen comes on the radio. Born in the USA.

“Switch that rubbish off!” mutters Bryan.

But other ears are pricking up. Possibilities are rearing their headbands and motorcycle boots. Thrawn in the USA. For the Dels, for Kevin, everything must change and everything will. Though not pleasantly for some and not how anyone expects.

People are going to be left behind. People will vanish from the story. Including Paul.

But not just yet. Wait a minute. What’s that smell?

***   ***   ***

In Charles Rawlings-Way’s official biography of Del Amitri, These Are Such Perfect Days, Paul says this:

“One time in the deep south, the van was getting very smelly in the middle of the night, soI got out and started walking, looking for a picnic table or somewhere to sleep.I had to go some distance.I went through a field, then I found an abandoned flatbed truck, and I slept very well.But all the other guys woke up and I was gone.They thought I’d been taken by the Ku Klux Klan…”

You can read my earlier piece about the trip here.