Rock'n'Roll Breakfast

WOMAD was amazing. It’s world music festival in the middle of Wiltshire, complete with UK summer weather—this weekend, it’s either the prospect of rain, or (later) continuous showers. Luckily, it doesn’t rain hard enough to make it a mudfest and, as is usual in the UK, the weather is busy starting a thousand conversations. People are shrugging it off and displaying blitz-with-anoraks spirit.
I arrive from Australia on the Saturday morning of the festival. Outside Heathrow Terminal 2, sitting on my guitar case looking through the Grauniad I spot a pic of Amy Winehouse walking out of court a free woman on page 3, acquitted of punching one of her dancers. Also on page 3, a fooball player walking out of court a free man, acquitted of punching a man in a Southport bar. All this plus Jeremy Clarkson calling the Prime Minister a “c*nt”. Welcome to the UK. Plus ça change.
Before long a minibus whisks me to the salubrious confines of the Swindon Hilton. This pearl in Paris’ dad’s empire nestles beside a roundabout and has a beautiful view of Junction 14 of the M4. Jetlag in a wet English summer is a weird feeling—the temperature coming from Australia is the same, but the season has definitely changed.
I take a ride onsite with a group whose leader sits beside me pounding txt messages into his phone and telling me about a dangerous tour they went on in the 90s. I’m not listening that carefully until I realise he’s talking about a tour of Iraq, “between the wars”. His group were welcomed into Baghdad theatres for shows as the first band to tour Iraq after the Americans invaded from Kuwait. Up at the back of the bus the guys are smoking weed and as the white van careers around leafy green English B roads I can feel myself gearing up for another WOMAD experience by leaning back, taking in his wild story. We enter the site and pass hordes of recyclers, music fans, percussion players.
That evening, Peter Gabriel’s live set builds and builds towards ‘Biko’, which is outstanding. It’s dedicated to murdered Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova who the ‘Witness’ programme supported in her work. Have a look at their site here. There are photos of her behind him as he sings the song and it’s as powerful and as overtly political as I want things to be at a festival like this. Listening brings me back to sitting in a student room smoking cigarettes, simultaneously trying to play the bass to this song and get through Prospero’s really long speech at the start of The Tempest.
Tonight there’s a fine drizzle, but things are staying dry. I’ve been up for about 36 hours now, so I catch the bus back to the Swindon Oasis. This time I am sitting with a 14-piece band from Extremadura in Spain. They have not only played, but made paella at the Taste The World stage. This is where you get to cook your favourite meal while being interviewed by Roger the host, act like a TV chef, and play a couple of songs while whatever menu you have dreamed up is cooking, simmering, roasting or baking. I am going to go through this baptism of fire the following evening, and I have not been as nervous about any performance since putting together the WOMAD 2005 Gala Finale which featured such ‘piece of cake’ collaborations as:
- a Russian instrumental group who told me at the first meeting that they didn’t collaborate with any other musicians. They had written a special version of ‘Summertime’ for the occasion and at 4pm they said they would relax this rule if I could find a concert pianist for them to audition before 6.30. Luckily Rad came to the rescue and they debuted the piece, unrecognisable from the original, at the start of the show, as another UK deluge started…..
- a segue between two bands made up of different kinds of Muslims. Neither had ever played with the other kind before, and a religious guy was summoned to work out if playing together would be allowed. Cue for prayers and not a lot of rehearsing…..
- a Birmingham reggae band whose 9 members were all called Steve, stoned out of their minds and playing so loudly at the Gala that they scared off a gentle Indian tabla group who were waiting backstage. Two minutes before their cue to appear, the Indians had disappeared, only to be discovered crouching in trees with their hands over their ears, reciting from Holy Scripture. Meanwhile, back on stage, the Steves continued the ganja groove—drummer Steve had told me that if I held up 3 fingers meaning “3 minutes left” they would play for 5 more minutes. If I held up one finger they would play for 3, and if I managed to ostentatiously build and light a joint side of stage, they would be off in less than thirty seconds.
The next WOMAD morning dawns, with a hangover built in the Belfast shipyards. After a couple of hours of tablets, marmalade and toast, I’m waiting for another minibus to take me to the site. This time I am riding with Africans, CDs by my side. I have a rendez-vous with Jamie Oliver’s magazine at 12.30. With any luck the photo session featuring a tube of Vegemite and a Marmite pot will be forever shrouded in mystery—or perhaps you’ll see it in the next issue of ‘Jamie’.
At the afternoon performance, rain is threatening, but just about holding off. I play a set made up mostly of songs from the forthcoming album. I’ve practised them for a couple of weeks in a wee studio high on a Melbourne hill, dry and parched trees all around. Now I’m looking out at a thousand friendly faces, we’re surrounded by friendly trees and damp and beautiful countryside. It truly is summertime in England. I turn on all my effects pedals, amp, and play.
It’s not just a performance—I’ve been asked to hold a question and answer session about the Summer School as well. Improbably, this works. One guys asks for ‘Birds Of Passage’ from the third album, which I can’t remember all the words of, but love playing. It sets the rest of the set alight, really. For me, anyway. Because someone’s handing round a mic in the crowd, I can’t pretend not to hear the questions, or the requests if I have forgotten the words.
‘Whole Thing’, the song I wrote with Peter, is at the heart of my WOMAD experience, and is the highlight of the set for me. However, I realise at the CD signing that all anyone really wants to know about is my appearance at Taste The World this evening. I find the tepee tent, where Roger is surrounded onstage by a bevy of beautiful women wearing aprons. There’s a singer from Louisiana singer at the side of the stage handing out exquisite jambalaya. I later bump into her behind the tepee, she’s breastfeeding her kid and handing out sweet potato pie to everyone. Back onstage, Roger has the air of a man who knows that even though he has been interviewing musicians cooking for the past three days without a break, things could definitely be a lot worse.
My menu? I sent it in to the WOMAD office a while ago, and in their typical modus operandi of organics and email, it has well and truly entered the Real World system. Every last ingredient has been rounded up—each spice comandeered from the Orient, each vegetable torn screaming from the brown earth of old England. Every bottle of alcohol purchased from Malmesbury Spar.
Although people imagine rock tours as being situated in fancy hotels, and a hotel breakfast an enormous spread of posh food, as you and I know by now, the reality of a 21st Century Troubadour’s breakfast is very different. Foraged from a friend’s fridge, discovered in a dark corner of a downtown dive, unearthed from the back of an underground cupboard, let me present you, dear reader, with the menu:
Andy’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Breakfast….
Coco Pops & Kalua….
Granola with Strawberries Flambéed in Irish Whiskey….
Champagne with ‘The Ashes’ taste challenge—….
Marmite vs Vegemite Soldiers….
Served with a side order of Champagne and strawberries and Ceylon tea (optional)
Onstage with Roger, myself, and the bevy of beauties, is John Leckie, taking a break today from production duties and appearing today as supplementary chef (i.e. he has worked his way up from Abbey Road tape operator in the days when they really did operate the tapes, to legendary record producer on tea-making duty). John originally volunteered to make Sauce Hollandaise but backed down, deciding it was too complicated. The conversation went something like:
Andy: but you’ve produced Radiohead….
John: making Hollandaise is much more difficult than producing Radiohead
Fair enough. After trying to learn how to make the flambéed strawberry sauce for the past fortnight, I am inclined to believe him.
At the ‘Jamie’ photo session (I know, sounds like a male version of ‘Jackie’ for those of you who remember it), an Australian girl rescues an integral part of the menu by pulling a tube of Vegemite out of her washbag and handing it to me. Only yesterday, Bangkok Airport security staff tore a family-sized jar of Vegemite from my shaking hands, declaring it prime bomb-making material, and therefore putting ‘The Ashes’ Marmite vs Vegemite taste-off in serious jeopardy and sending shares in both spreads plummetting.
As a child brought up on Marmite I would have thought the Bangkok police should have charged Vegemite with ‘Impersonating a serious stock-based condiment’, or even ‘Crimes against cuisine’.
Back onstage, Lauren has somehow managed to find a bottle of Kalua. For the uninitiated this is a coffee-related liqueur and gets TTW off to an encouraging alcohol-based start. There’s an improbably large bowl full of Coco Pops sitting in the middle of the workbench and I pour in the Kalua. One taste and it’s obviously a killer cereal. Pause. A cupful of this entertaining culinary mix is handed round to everyone in the tent and, even with nerves jangling, I manage to relax just a little. I roll up my sleeves in readiness for th main event. have been making toasted granola for the past three weeks—but never for this number of people.
Some would call my granola recipe a masterpiece of simplicity, combining wholesome organics with classic universal themes. Others would say that by toasting oats in a pan with butter, masses of sugar and half a jar of honey, you can’t go very far wrong.
The frying pan has been prepared, and I am about to toss in the oats, which are already prepared in wee silver bowls—WOW THIS IS SERIOUS IT’S LIKE BEING A TV CHEF WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT I’M DOING!!! Remember the dream where you’re naked in the exam room and you can’t write anything down? That’s the kind of area I find myself in right now, except that I’m wearing an apron. After the honey goes in, the granola starts to smell good and is whisked away to be bowled by the bevy of beauties who are really running this show.
Round our way, the flambéed strawberry sauce has been a revelation over the past few weeks—ask me over and I’ll cook it for you. It will be easy, just as long as I don’t have to do it on a gas oven in a huge pan with loads of people watching while being interviewed on a Howard Jones-style radio mic and wondering when I am going to be asked to play songs and which songs I am going to play.
The butter explodes as I toss it in the pan. The sugar and lemon juice doesn’t turn to sticky goo. It’s a disastrous start, reminiscent of the embarrassing bunsen burner experiment in third form science class which ended my chemistry career. Then, because of the quantities needed to feed everyone, I put more strawberries in the pan than I have ever put in anything. With a flourish, John adds a generous amount of whiskey. I have matches and try to light it—the whole thing should have a blue flame, but I guess it’s best that this doesn’t happen, since there’s enough whiskey in the pan to sink a ship. Just when things are going to get out of hand, Hilary grabs the pan and steers the sauce towards a triumphant conclusion. There is frothy milk and fruit and within minutes everyone’s munching a breakfast of sorts.
It’s 8pm and the rain is coming down hard outside the tent. Time to turn up the alcohol content of the breakfast. Roger segues into the musical part of the evening as the girls hand out a shot of whiskey for everyone.
A few songs later (‘If You Want It’, ‘Don’t Be Afraid’ and ‘Street Scenes’) and I’m back behind the gas ring, wondering how we are going to structure ‘The Ashes’ Marmite vs Vegemite taste-off. Roger and his team have worked out a complex solution involving coloured plates, so I leave it to them. John has been busy making mountains of toast, and these are duly buttered, spread with either Marmite or Vegemite, and distributed. The verdict (a win by popular vote for Vegemite) seems to point to a breakdown in the coloured plate solution, which is a shame—I had hoped that it could have been used to solve several of the more intractable international border conflicts.
However, the result could have some bearing on who will retain the Ashes. The third test starts next Thursday, and England is getting way too confident.
As the evening draws to a close, and torrential rain cascades down from the roof of the tent, the girls hand out cute little tumblers of champagne and strawberries. Roger, John and I discuss crop circles. Another WOMAD is drawing to a close, and I can hear Ethiopian music drifting in from the main stage. The rock’n’roll breakfast appears to have gone very well indeed. I wish you could have been there.