It was a pleasure to have a call from Sailor and be asked to tour manage them this year. They had worked hard to get a fantastic fan base together all over Europe, and Europe it was that we first started on a tour of Scandinavia. It was the first band I'd tour managed where I was the youngest person. It was really very laid back, as we got back to hotels and the band disappeared to bed with hot chocolate and I headed to the bar.....
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A picture of the boys just before going on stage. Phil Pickett has remained a close friend ever since those days and I'm hoping he will tell you a few stories around this time in due course too.
Then you have the autographed record company photo.....
It was the second week of March when I started working with Sailor and their manager, Lawrence Myers. Lawrence had started in Film and had a company called GTO Films. https://www.laurencemyers.com/
I was introduced to him by Ian Wright and John Giddings who were the bands' agents at the time. It's interesting for me to remember, a lot of what followed this year was in no small regard due to my relationship with Lawrence. He asked me to partner him in setting up a European Merchandising Company for the live music business. I'll discuss and tell more of that story in the ELO tour of USA later this year.
Anyway, I helped put everything together for the tour including the hiring of all production, so we had ML Executives on sound and trucking, with Lairhurst Lighting and my friend Billy Duffield part of the crew too.
We all left for Trondheim in Norway late March and it was a great team of people with a great attitude and things all went swimmingly well.
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It was in the depths of Scandinavia somewhere very cold that I got given a telex by the receptionist of the hotel we were staying in. It said, "please call and come visit us on your return to the UK regarding Mike Oldfield tour, yours truly Richard Branson".
Well, that was a surprise and to find me in the middle of nowhere.... more on that meeting later.
Here is Henry in full flow, and he's still going. As I write this at the beginning of 2014 Henry and Phil are in the depths of Germany touring Sailor for their 40th Anniversary.
Catch up with them at https://www.sailor-music.com/
The touring plans of Sailor after the Scandanavian tour were set up for a months break before doing a two week tour of the UK. In the intervening month I had a couple of different projects on the go. First off, Harvey Goldsmith had recommended me to John Scher the Grateful Dead's agent to set up a European tour for them so I flew out to New York to have an interview with Mr Scher. Much more on that in the Grateful Dead pages.
The other thing I did when I got back from the States was to tour manage a very brief tour for Frankie Miller. It all ended abruptly due to lack of ticket sales in Germany......and so I was back to do some much more interesting things.
George in the background, trying to learn the lyrics....ha ha :) joking
Me with the tour t-shirt and my rendition of 'The Scream'
Before I came back to finish the UK tour with Sailor I had one more task ahead of me for the Grateful Dead. You can see toward the end of May I make a quick 8 day trip around France and Germany primarily. It's all part of checking the venues and meeting with the promoters in setting up the forthcoming European Tour for the Dead. So I did all that and then came back to set up and go do the UK tour with Sailor.
A momentous event occured for me on the UK section of the tour, I finally got to play in my home town. Trinity College in Broad Street, Oxford at a May Ball. How apt it was too, to play in one of the colleges I crashed when at school and just a huge music nut. Anyway off I went back home to do a recce of the college so I could tell the crew what to expect. I had to check where the truck was going to access the college and where they were to erect the tent that we would play in late into the summer's night.
Another memory of this particular night was an unfortunate collision I had with Billy Duffield in a corridor. I was wearing a big jumper I think, and anyway, we collided and he got his earstud stuck in my jumper. I nearly pulled him off his feet but the stud gave way, with quite a bit of blood following it!!!!
I finally got to stay in the Randolf Hotel in the centre of town too. It was literally a couple of hundred metres from the college.
Also, it was back as well to Torquay Town Hall, where I saw my first real show way back in the summer of 1970.
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Here above is a picture of Mike Peacock (right) and Billy Duffield. To the left, Bill Martin on room service duty. They were all the lighting crew. Dick Hayes and Gordon 'Gungi' Paterson were the two sound guys. Dick was in charge of the sound department for ML Executives at the time so we had the 'boss' out with us. Dick was the FOH engineer for The Who too.
