The Go-Betweens’ Lindy Morrison: I’ll never forget playing Roskilde, when chaos hit the Hoodoo Gurus | The Go-Betweens
It’s 4 July 1987: the Go-Betweens are playing the Roskilde competition in Denmark – one in all the largest festivals in Europe; the one you wish to play. As a B-grade cult band, we’re excited. We’ve been on the highway for eons, on an infinite European tour for our fifth album Tallulah, earlier than veering to the US and Australia.
We’re booked to play at 6pm on one in all the smaller levels. I wander round the backstage village and share a cookie with one other band member. I had purchased the cookie from an ingratiating post-punk hippie. My musician mate disappears. I lean towards a tent put up. Often I see many variables, but I’m mounted. I ponder who may rescue me as time stands nonetheless. Crew, musicians and caterers stroll previous me in slomo. Finally the ritual of constructing it to the stage takes over. I discover my approach to our lot which seems like the eating room of a practice carriage. I flop beside three band members.
Bob Johnson, our long-serving supervisor, berates me for wanting like a grub. “Take a look at your T-shirt, it’s lined in stains.” I look down at my mucky white tee and I’m Eliza Doolittle picked from the avenue.
The gig is exhilarating. We play with our standard like to a crowd that stretches for ever and who will get us. And after, Chrissie Hynde from the Pretenders walks on to the stage and kisses it as a result of Bob Dylan as soon as stood there. I keep away from Geoff Travis from Tough Commerce Data – I don’t care that he dropped us for the Smiths; I’m incapable of the cleverness he expects from me. We hang around backstage with the Woodentops and Voice of the Beehive.
Fellow Australian band Hoodoo Gurus are on the invoice and drive us again to the resort in Copenhagen. Many musicians are milling in the massive, ultramodern lobby of glass, tiles and hulking pot vegetation. A big staircase descends from the flooring above, giving the room a way of grandeur.
Then a commotion. The Hoodoo Gurus’ crew are caught in the elevator on the first ground. I rush up the stairs, peering in. The Gurus’ tour supervisor is a big man and he’s struggling. I’m speaking him via it when one other crew member arrives and we stand, peering in, collectively.
“I need one factor,” says the tour supervisor trapped in the carry. “Simply get her away from me now.”
I assumed my counselling abilities had been good however they aren’t on at the present time; by some means, they elude me at the present time.
Again in the lobby, Clyde Bramley, bass participant with the Gurus, calls for that one thing be carried out. The place is that firetruck that was known as 20 minutes in the past?
Clyde is maddened. The crew in the carry are disturbed. The lobby is a mass of competing energies – the workers calming, the musicians agitating.
Clyde is finished. He picks up an unlimited pot plant and smashes it to the floor. “Get them some assist,” he bawls.
With minutes, hurtling down the stairwell, is Michael McMartin, the Gurus’ supervisor, catching Clyde in a headlock, holding him tight to his chest on the stairs until he calms.
Robert Vickers, the Go-Betweens’ bass participant, whispers to me: “I do know what that looks like?”
I ask: “What do you imply?”
He replies, face as lifeless as a lifeless pan: “The stress of touring. Late nights, early mornings, hurry up and wait, all the time making an attempt to do your greatest, I understand how Clyde feels.”
