The story is not a sad one, but told many times.....
Or: Why I call myself a "Lucky bastard".
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Background
It all begun back in 1994. I read in the paper that R.E.M. was going to have a concert in Norway. I thought it might be fun to attend such a big concert, since that was something I'd never done before. I kind of liked R.E.M., and I already had two of their albums. (Um..."WOW") But before I had decided to go, the tickets had already been sold out. So I forgot about the whole thing. The concert was going to take place in April '95. As we all know it didn't happen, because a certain drummer named Bill got a "nasty Boo-boo" in his head.
The concert was postponed until August, and I got a new chance to see them. I called the ticket central, and I was ready to go.......
That concert did something to me. Even if my seat was far away from the stage, I got totally overwhelmed. I knew from that day that this band was going to play a very important role in my life.
I decided to explore their music further. I bought the albums and some live stuff, but I wanted more and started investigating their history as well. I read anything I could find, and eventually I ended up not being not only interested, but rather in love with their music. I guess I didn't want to throw my whole heart into this if I wasn't sure I could take the whole concept. But I could not find anything negative about them, so I decided to really go for it and start collecting.
Time went by, I even managed to get over the shock of Bill leaving. It cost me some tears and I had hard days (with absolutely no compassion or sympathy from my family), but at least R.E.M. was not history.......
Later with Jools Holland, London 27th October 1998
In the summer of '98 when I was planning a holiday in London, I suddenly read on the Internet that R.E.M. was going to do a few promotional shows in Europe. They were going to play in London a couple of times in October, so I persuaded my travel-companion and best friend Elisabeth (who was not an R.E.M. fan at the time) to postpone the trip until then. Luckily, I've got pretty persuasion.....
We didn't have tickets for any shows, but we found out that Later with Jools Holland was the show we had to go for. We queued up there 4 hours before the show was about to begin, and at that time we were the only ones in the queue. After a while people (who had tickets) started showing up, and we asked every single one of them if they had any extra tickets. Nobody had any to spare. We were about to give up, but about 10 min. before the doors opened, a girl arrived in the queue, and she sold us two tickets for £10 each!
We could hardly believe that we managed it. The show was amazing, and very special to me since it was the first show I saw as a real fan. But to be honest, I can really not remember much of it. I was standing there, trying to realize what I was doing. I could not speak afterwards, my friend later told me that I had been "not present" for the rest of that day. But this was just the beginning of a great year to follow....
Grand hotel, Stockholm 9th November 1998
When I got home from England, I called a new found friend of mine, Stig (huge fan of R.E.M.) to tell him about my trip. The shock for me was extremely big, as he told me that he and another friend, Ole, (also huge fan) had managed to get me a fan club invitation for the concert in Stockholm. While I had been in London, they had called the fan club many times and had a real struggle to get me there, and even without me knowing anything about it! So I had to prepare to go to Stockholm just a week after I got back from London!
I couldn't get a room at the Grand Hotel where the concert would take place, but I was hanging around there most of the time anyway. The evening started with meeting a lot of other scandinavian fans in the hotel bar. The atmosphere was really tense, loaded with anticipation, and everyone was a little nervous, but excited at the same time. I was quite proud, because I was the only one who had already seen the band live that year. When we got in to the concert hall (or it wasn't a hall, rather a large room) we kind of chose different places to stand, but I decided to stand as close to Mike Mills as possible. I started in the fourth row, but the crowd moved all the time so I ended up in second row.
One of the best moments was of course when the band entered the stage and started playing Losing my religion, and the crowd went nuts. But also when they played Country feedback, which is my favorite song. I remember the feeling I had then, but I can't really describe it. Other highlights were of course Michael's koala bear story, Radio free Europe, Strange and Pretty persuasion, but the most memorable moment was during Walk unafraid. I was standing in front of Mike, hence I was quite close to his amplifier and monitor, and I could really feel the bass in the chorus of this song. And I looked at the way he was strumming his bass, and it totally stunned me. I was standing there saying "WOW" to myself, I knew he was a great bass player, but that he could make something rock like that; it was just awesome.
I felt completely different after this concert than I did after the one in London. I was really hyper extatic, and I didn't know what to do or where to go. I think the others too felt like they had a "out of the body" experience, for instance Stig was just walking around saying "AWESOME" for quite a while. But the norwegian fans gathered in a hotel room, and watched the concert on TV. Afterwards we went down to the hotel lobby, waiting for someone familiar to come by.....
And someone familiar came. We were standing close to the elevator, just talking about the concert, when we suddenly heard someone say: "Ok guys, I have one minute, so if you want anything signed or something, let's do it quick" It was Peter, and obviously he had seen us before we noticed him! He took the time to talk to us, and it lasted longer than one minute. The "R.E.M. veterans" Ole, Stig and Eivind gave him a nice frame with pictures from their earlier encounters with the band, and Peter thanked them for it. I tried to come up with something to say, but I couldn't say a word, other than asking for his autograph and a picture. It's really hard to say something sane in such situations....
(Click on picture to see a larger version)
I can recall how it was to stand there beside him. He's quite tall, and I remember thinking that his big kind-of-fake-fur jacket was very soft to touch. (Picture courtesy: Ole...)
Everyone was in a very good mood after this, and we decided to sit down in the bar and wait for someone else. After a while we noticed that Joey Waronker were sitting by the bar, and I asked him politely if I could have his autograph. He was very polite himself, and said that of course I could have it. So he signed my Up CD.
Michael came in after a while. But he was with his boyfriend or whatever, so we decided to leave him alone. So we waited. And waited. Until 2.30 am, when Mike and girlfriend came back from a trip on the town. He must have thought that it was safe to enter the hotel by now, because he looked surprised when a bunch of crazy norwegians came "running" towards him.
Some of the others had met him earlier on that day, but I came to town by train and therfore arrived quite late. I was standing a little in the background, behind Ole (who is quite tall), and the others tried to get Mike to write autographs. He looked very tired (but who doesn't at that time of the "day"?) and not very keen, but he turned them down in a polite way, saying that he had already signed stuff for them. Suddenly I realized that this was my only chance, so I jumped forward and asked "Would you just sign this for me, PLEASE?" with a very begging expression on my face. I don't know what did it, but he said "Sure, I didn't see you!" and signed my Up CD....
At about 4 am I could not stay awake any longer, so I headed back to my hotel only a few blocks away, and I am sure that I fell asleep with a smile on my face. I had never before entered the phase of "R.E.M. sleep" in such a literal way.
The next day I went back to Grand once again, to meet the other norwegians and snoop around in the hotel for a while. We met Peter in the corridor, he was on his way to do an interview. We had a nice surprise when we saw that he was in fact carrying with him the frame with pictures that Ole, Stig and Eivind had given him the day before. Peter recognized them, and said that the pictures were very nice. This was quite strange, why would he carry that with him? At least it proves that the band cares about the fans :-)
Stockholm was the place where I first saw someone who I would later get to know better, Sue Wildish (who is a PA or something). Stig and Ole had warned me about her, as she had tried to get them thrown out of the hotel restaurant when they happened to be there at the same time as the band. So I figured I had to make a good impression on her if I ever got to meet her again. And I did, about 4 months later.
The story is not a sad one....... PART II