Sunday night - The Who in Brighton - what a blast!!
First of all, I now hate everyone who rides a bike. The journey down to the coast should have taken about and hour but thanks to the London to Brighton bike ride (27,000 cyclists) we experienced the car trip from hell whereby the last 2 miles took 5 hours. We were close to tears at one point!!
Eventually we managed to park very close to the venue on the seafront, and after a much needed and extremely desperate dash to the first public toilet we saw (nice!) we arrived at the Brighton Centre. We could hear Casbah Club playing Sex Change and I wanted to see at last 1 minute if their set so we quickly found our seats (front row of the balocony) and caught about 8 bars. Seats were good!
We then slapped our guest passes on and tried to find out where we could go with them. A security guard told us they were access all areas except for the dressing rooms. That'll do me I thought!! After some searching we got in a lift to take us up to the 3rd floor backstage which was where backstage hospitality was. It was not 8:15pm and the Who were due on stage at 8:30. I wasn't going to miss a minute of their set after having taken so long driving to Brighton so we had about 2 minutes to nose around. Mistake - I turned left out of the lift and ended up on the crew area - wrong choice! Turning right I saw Simon T exit a dressing room and briefly saw the rest of Casbah Club in there having just come off stage. Harvey Goldsmith (quite small in real life) them walked past me, looked and me and just said 'they're on in 10 minutes'. So we really had to dash back to our seats - if it hadn't been for the traffic we could have alot of fun backstage I'm sure!
Back in our seats having had no chance to get a drink or anything to eat (we'd had nothing since we left home at 2:30 that afternoon), the lights went down and the Who appeared in stage. They were just utterly brilliant, looking really happy and totally relaxed. Zak hit him toms hard one at a time before even sitting down with a look like he meant business. Pete got a huge cheer when he put his shades on and they launched into Who Are You?
The gig was awesome and the new songs far far exceeded my expectations. I'm seeing the band again at Hyde Park on July 2nd. To tell the truth I'm seeing them again after that on July 3rd at Beaulieu!. Three times in 15 days is not enough!!
Afterwards we went searching for Rachel. Straight through the VIP area and out to the airstream outside. I asked the security guard 'is Rachel around?' 'Do know her?' he asked. 'Yes, she sent us these passes. So through we went and were told to wait ouside her motorhome (next to the airstream). One of her security guards asked me what my name was and then stuck his head inside her motorhome and said 'Steve Haywood's out here and want's to say hi' - next thing, 'go in Steve'.
Rachel was sat at a table and stood up as we went in shook my hands and greeted me with a kiss - seemed genuinely happy to meet one of her bloggers. We had a chat about the gig, the terrible traffic (which she got stuck in as well!!), said that she'd had a moan at Bill about organising the gig on the same day as the London to Brighton bike ride!!! We chatted some more and I thought I'd leave her to it (plus we hadn't eaten or drunk anything for 9 hours at this point!!!!).
Rachel was really sweet to see us and was so nice, very cool.
Even better, were the chips we are on the beach at the end of the night!!! Got home in 50 minutes (don't tell Mr Plod).
