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Neil's 10 claims to fame

This is really just a bit of fun. At the level I work at in the music industry, every now and again you find yourself on the sidelines of music history or on the other side of the security barrier. Sometimes it means nothing to you but means someone to everyone else - or worse - it means everything to you but nothing to anyone else. - Name dropping is terrible when you have to provide a back story to explain who the name is.

You don’t seek these stories out. Sometimes your career grows so gradually that the “big opportunities” hold no more majesty than your first gig because everything has happened gradually. Sometimes it’s important to smell the roses and collect these memories to remind you why you lift drum kits and bass amps down stairs in small pubs.

They are also great stories to exaggerate over a pint…….

I’ve avoided straight out boasts. Working with Tenement TV I’ve been in the room with some famous faces, but I’ve avoided stories that don’t go much beyond “There was this one time I was asked to record audio for an interview with Bobby Gillespie and I recorded audio for an interview with Bobby Gillespie” It was cool meeting him. He was a nice chap. The End. Anton Newcombe was kooky and weird. Lewis Capaldi was shy and hadn’t discovered his comedy persona.

I think my favourite story is not one of mine. Someone I know who will remain nameless was at a famous recording studio which will also remain nameless. Not sure how to celebrate this momentous moment, he rubbed his balls along all the piano keys so that for ever more when he saw celebrities playing the piano - they’d be touching his balls. Anti-bac people!!

Anyway. Here’s my top ten.

Bill Withers once stroked my dog

I took the dog out for a walk. I was living in Amsterdam at the time. I met my neighbour out on the walk. He was with an older American gentleman. The American complimented my beautiful dog and asked if he could stroke it. Despite his age, he didn’t have to Lean On Me as he crouched down. We chatted about inane subjects like the weather and what a Lovely Day it was. I walked on thinking nothing more of it.

About a week later I met my neighbour again and he complimented me on how calm and collected I was when I met Bill Withers the week before. My neighbour worked in the local jazz scene and had been tasked with showing Bill round Amsterdam during the North Sea Jazz Festival.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers played a show just for me once

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So I was at T in the park filming the T-Break stage . I woke up at the campsite in the height of summer with no concept. of time. I had a dead phone and I’m an early riser, so I knew it could be several hours before anyone would make up or I’d know what time it was. I decided to walk to the media area backstage, cos I knew they’d have electricity and coffee and newspapers. Turns out I’d woken up at 7am. 5 hours till doors. 7 hours until I had any work or duties.

I read the papers and checked all the festival reviews from the day before. Tied to the one stage with a filming schedule it’s like a sit of “here’s what you could have won”. Bored out my skull I filled a big cup of coffee and took a wander around the empty festival site. For scheduling or time zoning reasons I was tickled that the Chillies were soundchecking on the main stage.

I sat on the grass with a shitty coffee and a Daily Record and hoped for something pre-Californication. I got my wish when they play ‘Nobody Weird Like Me’

Moral of the story - always keep a good book in your tent.

I once played a Paedophile on Scottish telly

I used to do extra work on my down time. I still get the offers, but I’ve not been out of work enough to take any up for a few years. I was spending a day on River City - Scotland’s soap opera. I can’t say enough nice things about the working environment they had there. It was much friendlier than any set I’d been on, so I can’t recommend it enough.

I’d done a few wee bits of walking in the background etc. Later in the day they needed a female and a male to sit in the background in the doctor’s surgery with a toy baby wrapped in a blanket. Without much thought(I’m guessing), we were told “You and you come this way”. Despite the fact that there was another female closer to my age range, I quizzed my on screen love interest as we walked towards set. She’d just turned 16. The baby was closer to a year.

As I’ve never seen the episode in question, I dunno whether it made the cut or whether it kicked off an ongoing story of sex crimes in Shieldinch.

I’m responsible for everything QOTSA have ever done

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It was my first week of Uni and I was a gangly 18 yr old. I finally had access to going to gigs without arranging how to get there and who I was going with. I loved the Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan’s solo work and wanted to go to this gig so much that I bought two tickets in the hope that I could convince someone to go with me.

Apparently gravel throated heroin ballads weren’t of interest to the other gangly 18 yr olds and for the first time in my life I went to a gig on my own.

It was a wonderful(if sparsely attended) gig. Masters of Reality(Fronted by Chris Goss, producer of the Kyuss albums) were the support and then Mark Lanegan was on. Both bands consisted of members of QOTSA. I can only presume that they recorded their debut album and then Mark Lanegan/Chris Goss, said “we’re going a wee trek to Europe. Do you fancy coming?

I can’t imagine a gig on your own without a phone or a camera for entertainment between bands. I can only guess I stood drinking pints and staring at the ceiling.

The gig was great, and after it the bands milled around the bar. The meagre gathering all crowded round Mark Lanegan. Deep in the throes of a heroin addiction, he barely opened his eyes, never mind made much conversation, so I had a pint with what I thought was the hired help.

I stood and chewed the fat with Chris Goss, Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri. There may have been a famous drummer there and/or Dave Catching(he seems to have been at every other Desert Rock gig I’ve ever went to whether he was playing or not).I may have bought them a beer. My memory of telling the story is far greater than my memory of the story happening.

Once I’d decided that I was moving towards the ‘Clingy Fan’ stage I decided to call it a night. My parting words were:

“youse are dead good. You should stick at it”

The next day at University(we didn't have phones or computers at home) I googled the bands that I could remember. I’d never heard of Kyuss, but I was slightly embarrassed that I had told someone who used to be in a band with Ginger Baker that he should stick at it.

Anyway….. I think we can all agree that after my intervention, Queens of the Stone Age’ career has been on an upswing. I’d like to think that they were all close to calling it a day until they gained my support.

I’ve known Biffy Clyro longer than just about anyone

Biffy Clyro are from Ayrshire. So are we. Scots are not fast to embrace homegrown talent. They also like to tell you about having seen famous people in normal situations. This is coupled with Biffy Clyro’s unusually slow rise to fame, means that people in Scotland have had long time to develop a claim to fame.

“they used to come into the chip shop I worked in”

“I was their manager”

(they released a single on a Glasgow college label, so everyone in that year was kind of their manager)

I used to teach in an Ayrshire college and all the kids who had been to Cumnock Academy had been taught by Simon Neil’s wife. They would manage to shoehorn the phrase “Did you know Biffy Clyro’s wife taught me English?” as a conversation starter every time they wanted to procrastinate a task.

I would like to state my claim that I have known them longer than anyone else in that two thirds of the band were born in the same hospital as me on the same day. Beat that!! As to whether we tapped our new born toes in time or not is beyond my recollection - Life was kind of getting on top of me and I was going through a lot at the time.

My only real interaction beyond playing on the same lineups around Scotland in our teens was that Simon was in the same year above me at Uni doing the same course. In the few interactions I’ve had with him, he was a thoroughly nice chap.

Sidenote - I used to pass Frankie Boyle and Ruth Davidson in the street regularly - sometimes on the same day. I once did a Bikram Yoga class with Victor from Still Game.

Mudhoney once bought me a beer

One of the elements of grunge hitting when you were in your early teens in Scotland was that American bands rarely toured the UK north of London. Pearl Jam played in Glasgow after their first single, then again after their 6th album and never since. You could have seen Nirvana etc. at the QMU, but I was 8 or 9 at the time, so by the time you actually knew about any bands I loved - seeing them live was a fantasy.

The by-product of this was that you spent years elevating bands to legendary status in your own head by listening to them for years and years without access to seeing them live. Once their careers were on the wane and they were playing here, there and everywhere I was always surprised by how accessible they were. Now with the advent of social media where you get daily updates rather than an album every three years

This time I was a gangly 22 year old. I’d been living in Amsterdam for a matter of weeks. Mudhoney had returned to the live scene after a few years in the wilderness. Grunge’s hey day was over and they could ride a wave of just being good and enjoying themselves, which I get the impression they are still riding today. Having not managed to orchestrate a trip to see the “grunge nearly rans” when they played The Arches when I was 15 I was keen to take the opportunity to see them in Amsterdam.

The problem with Amsterdam is that it’s tiny, and you navigate it by bike. So for the first few months I’d check the map; Judge how far something was; Cycle for 20 minutes; Overshoot it by 15 minutes; Cycle back for 10 minutes; Overshoot it by 5 minutes. etc. By the time I got there I was only an hour early for the show. The venue is the Melkweg and at the bar side, it’s not incredibly obvious that it’s not just a bar. Gangling along trying to look as cool as I could I finally worked out it was the venue when I saw Mudhoney at the bar. I sauntered up and cooly asked if I could buy them a beer. They told me they got beers for free and bought me one. I then chewed the fat with Mudhoney and a young band called The Catheters. Despite these guys knowing Pearl Jam, they were doing a good act of being completely normal guys. They discussed the mundanity of touring and where was good for record shopping in Amsterdam. I was worried that they might speak to QOTSA and there would be rumours of me over staying my welcome in situations like this, so I moved through to the venue and enjoyed the show with a bit more of a spring in my step.

Foo Fighters follow us on twitter

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We have no idea when or why this happened. We aren’t even big twitterers. The only vague connection is that I know three bands who have supported The Foo Fighters over the years, but I can’t imagine their conversations with Dave turning to “well there’s this company that has loads of experience doing music videos for 1% of the budget you’re used to using”

Maybe he heard how much I had contributed to the career of Queens of the Stone Age.

I once asked Kelly Jones of the Stereophonics to say ‘Parallelogram’ because I thought it would be funny in a Welsh accent

I absolutely adore the Stereophonics first album. It’s the perfect album of a hard-working, working-class musician telling stories of growing up in a mining town and it resonated wonderfully with small mining towns in Ayrshire. So good was the album and the band’s work ethic, that I saw the band far too many times in 1998 and 1999. The opposite of all the grunge bands, my interest waned. I revisit that first album regularly and love it.

In 2006 Pearl jam were returning from a period in the wilderness. They hadn’t played Europe in 6 years and it felt like a lifetime. In that time I’d caught the travel bug and budget flights meant Europe was tiny for me. I thought nothing of waking up in three different countries in a week or catching a £15 Easyjet flight for a house party. When Pearl Jam announced a gig in The Astoria in London to a small crowd of 2000 people, I saw it as my opportunity to make up for the previous 15 years of only having seen them once at the SECC.

Tickets were like gold dust, but Kenneth finally came through as the best browser refresher and me and Fraser went. For some reason, Fraser decided we should wear kilts. I think he thought the band would notice him better(and ask him to join???) or he’d get laid or something.

So looking like the Bay City rollers had crashed the Kerrang awards, we tried to encapsulate all the gigs we’d missed in the 90’s into one night. The gig was wonderful, but I learned long ago that if you’re going to like Pearl Jam, you already will and there’s no point in me trying too convince you.

Not only was Robert Plant in attendance, but another person who didn’t need any convincing was Kelly Jones. He was a massive fan and presumably had hired staff to refresh browsers and didn’t need Kenneth’s assistance.

In the bar afterwards everyone was crowding round Kelly Jones and kind of taking it in turns to ask him questions about how amazing it was to be Kelly Jones. Full of ‘Pearl Jam in a small club’ euphoria and having already drunkenly tried to explain to him how his songwriting resonated in Ayrshire mining villages, we eventually thought it would be absolutely hilarious to come up with words that sound funny in a Welsh accent. The best we came up with was ‘Parallelogram’ and ‘Ratatouille’. I’m not proud.

Evan Dando used to drink in my local

Now when I say local…… It kind of became my local because we spotted him there a few times.

It was about 2003 and I was back in Glasgow for one term knowing I had a job to go back to in Amsterdam. It was a strange time. I’d outgrown University but still had to serve a period of notice if I wanted to leave with a degree. Out of sheer boredom I was going to every gig I could and sending a lot of time in bars.

At some point we went for a drink in Stereo when it was on Kelvinhaugh street. Before that it was a Western themed bar called “McChuils way out West” that did very cheap Tuesday cocktails which were basically double cream and Vodka. It is beside a halls of residence so it ensured that plenty of students were getting their calorie count for the week, and it also ensured that the club’s on Sauchiehall street were clearing up curdled milk vomit every Tuesday. Anyway… I digress.

I’ve always loved Evan Dando and The Lemonheads. They were part grunge, part folk, part country. The songwriting was great and you could convince yourself that you were maturing as a music listener. Slightly separated from the Seattle grunge stars, Evan Dando had a few years in the 90’s when he was a superstar household name. He dated Kylie Minogue and Bijou Philips and Kate Moss (according to the internet) while managing to have the persona of an introspective tortured soul separate from the mainstream(quite an achievement). So when we wandered into Stereo one day we were quite excited when he was sitting there with Eugene Kelly(The Vaselines and beloved of Kurt Cobain). I convinced Fraser that we shouldn't join them, but wasn’t averse to choosing Stereo for a pint in the future on the off chance he was there. Contrary to my expectations we saw him there several times over the next few months. We might even have said hello a couple of times. It transpired that Evan Dando was sleeping on Eugene’s floor(not sure if that mean literally) for a few weeks.

We never quite managed to capitalise on this knowledge. No one in our day to day life knew who he was. So we had to just quietly sip our pints in the knowledge that every now and then we were close to a good songwriter. Later in the year we went to see Steve Turner of Mudhoney at Nice n’ Sleazys. He was doing a kind of solo folk tour(listen here - I think its underrated) cos clearly the non-stop Mudhoney touring wasn’t enough for him. Eugene Kelly was supporting him. Clearly Eugene Kelly’s tour of Glasgow isn’t that elaborate because the next day Steve did a wee impromptu gig in Stereo to a handful of fans.

Sidenote. I friend of a friend once told me this. I don’t know if it’s an urban myth or if it’s true; Apparently one night Ronnie and Keef from the Stones went back to Cafe Cherubini on Great Western Road for a drink and a jam after a Glasgow gig. I think of it nearly every time I pass(It’s now called Banana Moon). The last time the Stones played Glasgow was 1990. I’ll leave a real journalist to investigate.

Mike McCready’s favourite part of Pearl Jam’s 2006 European tour was meeting me

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So not content with seeing Pearl Jam in a small club in 2006, they announced a European tour, and I decided that I definitely had to see them on the Dutch date, and I might as well see them on the Belgian date, and someone I’d met at the London gig was going to the Barcelona. It was the glory years of budget airlines, so before we knew it we had tickets for Arnhem, Antwerp, Barcelona, Verona, Milan, Prague and Berlin.

I was just back from a five week back packing trip round Eastern Europe, so I was limited as to how much time I could take off work, so I was flying in and out between shifts. I always travelled for work very regularly, so my work colleagues were kind of used to it. I might have bit more bleary eyed after these “meetings” though.

Arnhem was easy. Train from my house

Antwerp required a snooze on a park bench outside of a station before an early morning train to work.

Barcelona. I flew in straight from work to be handed a pint of JD and coke by Steve. We accidentally wandered backstage while trying to find somewhere to leave our bags. Jeff Ament and Mike McCready were playing ping pong with some crew and were as surprised to see us as we were to see them... We had some banter... and sadly it was before the selfie was invented.... later that night we nearly got arrested when Steve's hotel concierge called the police because he thought the two long haired men in skirts were prostitutes he was trying to take back to his room.... Quite a lot to fit into one day!

Verona was wonderful. Friday night with a square full of Pearl Jam fans in bars and a gig in an open air amphitheatre that was built in the same year as Jesus was born - pretty special.

The next day we took a train to Milan for the gig there. We spent the day wandering around Milan. When you’re there you go up the top of the Cathedral for a view over the city. When we got to the top Mike McCready was there. He recognised us from the ping pong encounter.

We sat and spoke to him for ages. Trying not to fanboy him too much while my brain tried to compute that this was the man behind all the songs of my teenage years. It was like an out of body experience. We’d get a wee wave from him from the crush at the front of the crowd at the remaining gigs of tour.

Later that year, when the fan club newsletter came out he gave a wee shoutout to all the different fans he had met while floating about all these European cities. We got a wee mention. The screen print poster is still framed in my house and I get a wee smile and serotonin kick to a short soundtrack of Evenflow every time I look at it :)

2006 finally made up for not getting to see my favourite bands in the 90’s. I’d got it out my system. I’ve popped in and out at Pearl Jam tours when they’ve come along ever since, but I’ve not needed to do 8 shows in a year again.

I often wonder how high a pedestal they would have been on if I’d seen them every year for their first decade. I wouldn't have had it any other way, it kept the romance and the magic of music fame alive in me.

and…..

Jessica Rabbit once bought me a whisky

Neil McKenzieComment