This European tour was unfortunatly remembered for all the wrong reasons and to this day I'm at a loss to know the answer to one big question. 'Who stood in for John Taylor for the Lisbon shows?'

You see there is a story, of which I can only tell second hand as I was not there at the time, and it's the night in Munich which ended up with two of the boys going to hospital. One, Roger because he got smacked in a club by someone nasty, the other, John, out of a stupid self destructive bit of temper. When you think about throwing the baby out of the pram, I think of a couple of incidents when JT went aa little too far. Anyway the best way to tell this particular story is for me to hand over the reins to Mandy Berrow, who quite succinctly tells the story of the disastrous night out in Munich.......

https://amandaberrow.wordpress.com/2012/09/

Oh... I have to say, if you read her other stories of the road, it was not me who left her in the hotel without a passport. I can safely say this because I was never at the Hyatt at that time and I have never been asked to leave.

Reading through my diary at this time, we all left Munch and flew home to London. A replacement bass player was hired and the band rehearsed. It was decided to go to Portugal for the last couple of shows of the tour and perform without JT. I cannot remember who the bass player was, anyone who knows please contact me, I'd love to track him down and get his side of the story, it's never been told. The YouTube clip here is some rare footage of that time in Lisbon.....

This tour of the UK was the true beginning of what was to be a roller coster ride and what I have always thought of as the Beatles revisited. The fans were fanatical, they were everywhere, and they were going to propel the band into Superstardom.

We travelled in a Len Wright coach, I remember, and it was a day coach with tables and seats forward and behind each table. I think the crew might well have had a sleeper bus for their overnight journeys between each city.

So the year was coming to the end but for us we were going to do one more big show, as headliners for the second ever MTV Awards. There is a great promo that MTV made to advertise the live show on New Years Eve. We were flown to NYC and stayed at the Meridian I believe and the whole show was broadcast from The Savoy.

I've located three of the 4 acts on this show on YouTube and of course, Flock of Seagulls does have some live footage but this one is best but I can't embed so here's the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG5KH7d88VU

A fascinating history this venue had, and in 1982 was owned by the New York promoter Ron Delsner with whom we would work with in 1984 playing at Madison Square Gardens.

A great pictorial history can be found here at https://scottymoore.net/hudson.html