HURRICANE RELIEF

ANOTHER EXCERPT FROM MY RECENT BOOK “SOUR MOUTH. SWEET BOTTOM”.

Of all the drugs musicians like to take, coke is the one most likely to shift their minds into a gear that’s unmanageable. It was at the centre of a problem Harry Cowell and I encountered when we were managing Asia and had to take them to Miami for the Hurricane Relief concert in 1992.

When we arrived at the hotel and asked for a schedule we were told the band would be opening the show, which meant playing at four in the afternoon. Worse than that, their set would be acoustic.

And here’s the problem... There was no such thing as an acoustic set by Asia. They’re a loud, amplified, electric rock band. And that’s that.

As their managers, Harry and I went off to tell the organisers it wasn’t on – ‘No amps, no performance.’

The organisers were Miami’s much adored Latin music mafia – Gloria and Emilio Estefan.

‘Right then,’ they said. ‘you can leave right now. And, by the way, we didn’t want you in the first place. It was the guys from your record company who begged us to have you on. We told them only if you open the show and play an acoustic set. Didn’t they tell you?’

Well, of course they didn’t. And unsurprisingly the guys from the record company were now nowhere to be seen. On the other hand, the four members of Asia could be seen all too easily − standing right in front of us. Seething.

They wanted to walk out − go back home at once − fuck Miami − that sort of thing. But none of that mattered much because we knew under all the anger they really wanted to play the show. Except for Steve Howe.

He was livid. All the more so because he’d found out that Harry and I already had an inkling about all this before we’d all got on the plane at Heathrow.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he yelled. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before we left London? If I’d known, I would never have come.’

Well of course he wouldn’t, which is why we hadn’t told him. Steve is a mild person and has a way of yelling that is significantly quieter than other people, but there was no missing the anger in his voice and I felt sorry for him.

In front of 80,000 people, with a band known for the high level of their amplified sound, he was going to have to play acoustically. But the gig was worth doing and he knew it. So Harry and I tried to calm him down, “You’ll thanks us later when it rains,” we told him.

Just as he was almost persuaded, a coke-pushing friend of Geoff Downes’s showed up in a triple-stretch white limo and started disrupting things even further by telling the band he could fix everything.

Steve had been around long enough to recognise creeps like this when he met them, but by now he was so incensed at us that he’d taken leave of his senses and was treating this second-rate dope pusher like some sort of leading light in the industry.

Then I amazed myself. I stepped across to the limo-creep and threatened to thump him, which isn’t at all like me, usually so keen on avoiding confrontation.

In the end, though, the result of all the shouting was that the group, including Steve, agreed to play the opening set. And it would be acoustic.

To finish the day off nicely there was a party thrown by the record company. The drug dealer turned up again and offered everyone their own personal choice of oblivion and the last I saw of him, he was trying to coax the band members into his Lincoln stretch.

I went back to the hotel alone and added half a bottle of Scotch to the evening’s mix of drinks, which is why the next morning I was under a super-hot shower letting it play on the back of my neck, nursing my brain back to good health.

The information it was giving me was that once people had finished arguing, drinking and drugging themselves, then had a good night’s sleep, woken up, breakfasted and re-drugged themselves to just the right amount − things would probably turn out all right.

Which they did.

At three-thirty in the afternoon, we arrived in a people-carrier at the stadium with Steve and the group happily planning their acoustic set. The drug dealer was nowhere to be seen and the suite of dressing rooms we’d been assigned to included those of Paul Simon, Crosby Stills & Nash and Julio Iglesias, who all came and chatted with us in the lounge. The other artists included Celia Cruz, Jimmy Buffett and the Bee Gees. And while it was all for charity, the real satisfaction of the evening for Gloria Estefan was to be able to walk out on stage when they’d all finished and top the bill.

Really, it couldn’t have been a nicer afternoon. It was sunny but not too hot. There were 20,000 happy people sitting on the grass in front of the stage, receptive but not yet drunk, and another 40,000 in the stands. And Asia played superbly. Steve’s solo acoustic slot in the middle of the set was ten minutes of brilliance. And to top things off, seven hours later, just after midnight when Gloria Estefan finally came on stage, lightning flashed, thunder roared and the heavens opened. By the time she was thirty seconds into her first number the stadium was empty, which somehow felt strangely satisfying.

Next day at breakfast the group thanked us for getting them the opening slot. Good management and good luck, always hand in hand.

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