London has been great so far. I came in a day before our first show and got settled in the hotel. That evening I met up with my friend Paul Humphreys (keyboardist and singer of the band OMD) and we went to a London pub to watch football (soccer), as they call it here. There were several games going on and my team Bayern Munich as well as his team Manchester United had a good night and advanced in their competitions.
Nils & Paul Humphreys
The next morning I met Michael Lington for breakfast. We are co-billing the nights at Pizza Express but we had never before played together. Then we went to the club and had our one and only rehearsal. It went very well. The house band was well prepared and consisted out very capable musicians: Sam Carter on keys, Julian Crampton on bass and Wesley …..on drums. The club exceeded my expectations. It had a great vibe and good sound system. After soundcheck we had a bite to eat, went back to the hotel to change and returned to the club to play. The show went over very well and we had an 80% full house on a Thursday night. Saturday is already sold out, Friday and Sunday will probably also fill up to full capacity.
The first night is always a bit nervy. A new band, new songs, different equipment, but I am really happy with how it went and it’s just gonna get better from show to show.
I had met Michael first at jam session at Spaghettini’s in the early to mid 90s. And we crossed paths several times over the years at various festivals. But it took Jimi King to get us both to London to finally share a stage and play together.
Tomorrow I will have to start thinking about laundry. Nobody tells you this, but it can be a major problem on a tour. My dirty laundry already exceeds my clean stuff. And I will definitely run out of clean socks and underwear before Berlin, unless I find a washing machine somewhere.
I’ll keep you posted
……to be continued
read part 5
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