The London Gatherings - Jan. 31st and Feb. 1st '98
By Sabine Nolte

Coming into the "Rat and Parrot" in Covent Garden in late afternoon, I was immediately approached by Philip and his friend Guy from Belgium, who had recognized my Oilers cap, and then Tee and Rod from Oregon walked up because they had heard us talking about the Internet. With a love of JT in common, we'd all arranged to meet in the pub for a pre-concert party.

Big hellos again, then we organized some tables, and the others started to flock in: locals Stewart C. and his girl friend Katy from Hungary, Bill and his wife Candida from Oxford, then Nancy from New York. At one point Stewart turned around to a couple sitting at the bar and said "Shawn?" It was Shawn and his girlfriend Julie from Cardiff, who had decided to view things from a distance first. It was great to finally have somebody to chat about music and JT with, and to see the faces of the people posting things in the Forum. Stories about meetings with JT, previous concerts, net gossip, etc. were flying around the table like buzzing bees.

Stewart told his story about meeting up with JT years ago again, and Bill reported on his recent meeting with JT before he gave a radio interview. We were still missing the three Danish boys who had said they would show up, though.

Some of us met again around the same time on Sunday, though not all of us had tickets for both shows. The time we had was way too short, but even then we made friends, addresses were exchanged, and meetings at future JT concerts dreamed up. Nancy couldn't believe that we had talked to JT, but we told her there would be a good chance for her after the concert. Tee had missed us backstage the night before and didn't have tickets for the second show, but we all talked her and her daughter into staying in town to try to get returned tickets at the Barbican. On the way there we even did a mental exercise in the tube tunnel while waiting for the train: We put all our hands together and said "You will get tickets!" ... and it worked. Never give up hope.

It had all started a few weeks before. When the dates of the European tour came out, Nancy had posted in the Forum that she had a ticket to see JT in London on February 1st. That made me call London for a ticket, too, and I asked in the Forum if anybody else was going and would like to meet somewhere for a pint or two. Then things snowballed. I knew a pub that was central but out of the way (the "Rat and Parrot" in Covent Garden), and in the end about 15 people were on my list to show up, from Belgium, the U.S., England, Wales, Denmark, and Germany.

I knew quite a few names from postings in the Forum or from e-mails I had gotten and wondered -- probably like everyone else -- what the others would be like. It might have been a bit of an unusual idea to meet up with a bunch of strangers, but looking back on it after a few months have gone by, I think it was the best thing I've done in a long time.

In London on my own for the Forum meeting and the concerts, I already met one of the forumites by accident in the Barbican (the concert venue) on Saturday afternoon. Suddenly somebody called out my name. It was Nancy from New York, who had recognized me from the description I had given her via e-mail. What a small place this London is.

The Barbican Concerts

We all went to the Barbican separately and agreed to meet at a bar downstairs during the intermission. The Barbican is a huge, ugly concrete monster of a building, but reasonable acoustics were reported from all parts of the hall even though it had taken the band (JT, Clifford Carter on keyboards, Jimmy Johnson on base guitar, Carlos Vega on drums) a while to get the mixing right.

JT played almost all the songs from the "Greatest Hits" album, plus six songs from "Hourglass." He did a very lengthy introduction to "Line 'Em Up" on both nights, explaining about the end of the Nixon administration, Nixon shaking hands with the staff ("probably for the first time, and certainly for the last time") on his way to the helicopter. Then he said something like "the next couple of verses are just your normal sensitive singer-songwriter bullshit (crowd howling), but maybe the last verse needs a little more explaining." Then he went on about the mass wedding of the Moon sect which took place in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1986.

"About 3000 people got married there, some of them total strangers. And the thing is, this spontaneous energy, fusion, spread beyond the walls of Madison Square Garden into the neighbourhood, where all kinds of people out there, maybe walking their dogs, got married for no apparent reason. Maybe that's what happened to me!"

In the introduction to "Ananas" ("My attempt at a bilingual song every twenty years or so") he apologised for his French, but assured the audience that the song doesn't mean anything in French either.

On both nights he did an extended guitar introduction to "Mexico" with Jimmy Johnson, and a lot of people in the audience had no clue which song this was leading to. For the second song in his first encore ("Steamroller Blues"), he suddenly stepped forward and grabbed a blues harp and a microphone and reeled off an intro. I was told later that he did that during the U.S. tour, too, but for me it was totally unexpected and I felt it was a bonus to see him do it.

JT also did a very long intro to "The Frozen Man" (which he called his favourite song), giving his by now famous National Geographic story. "I didn't read the article," he explains. "Just looked a the pictures and read the captions." He also talked in great length about the maritime mishap, how some bodies were found in the Canadian Arctic, and how men of science dug them up. It was great fun to listen to him, and the song was excellent -- with Carlos Vega doing a great job on the percussion.

He's performes "Sweet Baby James" so many times, and I admire him for always playing it like it is all new and interesting for him to do. In one of the concert reviews in the papers, somebody wrote about "Sweet Baby James:" "[The song is] 28 years old now, but tonight he performed as if he'd written it in the interval." This last solo was the nicest moment for me in the concerts, and I noticed that -- after all the yelling and screaming and standing ovations before -- everybody sat there in total silence with their ears pricked in order not to miss a single note.

The concert on Sunday was great, too, the mixing was even better, and the crowd even wilder. The funniest comment was when somebody screamed "We love you, baldy". JT's answer: "Bastard. Actually, it's a wig!". Then he told a little story about how he had had a vision in his dream in 1989. A voice had told him that the Berlin Wall would come down. "Well, that would be great," JT said. "Yeah", said the voice, "but somebody has to make a sacrifice." It sure brought the house down.

Some of us were fortunate enough to met JT after both shows (we lost some of the forumites in the crowd). There weren't that many fans around the backstage door on Saturday, and we were actually let in in small groups to talk to JT. I told him about the Forum meeting in the pub, and how well everything had worked out. I also bugged him about coming to Germany for just one concert, and he said that it was difficult to get a concert venue there at relatively short notice. He was soft-spoken and very friendly. I got my program autographed and was one happy camper.

After the Sunday show we all trooped to the backstage door again. There were more people there this time, so JT came out to meet the fans. We Forum folks stayed behind a bit to be the last to get autographs. We also met the three Danish boys there who we'd been missing in the pub. When there was just us left, we asked JT for a group shot with him and he happily agreed. I thanked him again on behalf of the group for taking the time to talk to us before he left. We sacrificed more beer in a pub to talk to JT, but we were happy to do so (that's Britain: last order by 11 p.m.).

A few weeks later (in early March) I met JT in Frankfurt after the concert and gave him a photo from the pub meeting sort of as a souvenir from London.

JT said in an interview on the "Live" CD-ROM that a lot of people in the audience are coming back year after year -- not just for the music, but for sort of a happening, a bonding thing. Now I know what he meant. And I also learned that JT fans generally seem to be very decent and kind people. If you are some long-time American JT fan reading this, there won't be much new here for you, but you have to understand that this was written from the perspective of a European JT concert greenhorn.

Thanks JT, for the concerts and for putting up with us. Thanks everybody for showing up and making the weekend extra special. And remember: There's more to music than just listening to it.

Sabine Nolte is a geographer living near Frankfurt, Germany.

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