Palm Desert, CA
Oh God, it's Saturday morning, I’ve had four hours sleep and wake up with the stiffest neck from being hunched on a sofa. The room is filled with the sounds of light snoring from the two beds next to me. I can’t get back to sleep so after a while I check the blackberry and learn that the travel situation is now even worse, Johnny hasn’t been able to get to the US and my entire reason for being here at this festival has evaporated, along with the final part of the Corinne Bailey Rae feature. I’ve got hotel rooms booked for myself and Johnny for the next two nights here in Palm Desert which have to be paid for so there’s no point in returning to LA. It’s also looking almost certain that I won’t be coming home on Monday.
I leave the room and go for a walk in the parking lot. For the first time in a few days Coman and I get to have a proper chat on the phone and I sit in the desert sun hearing he’s been sunbathing back in London, as the weather’s been so good. We discuss the options for me getting home – there’s talk of naval convoys, or flights to the Middle East and then driving across Europe. It all sounds surreal, exciting and draining. If I could click my fingers and be back in our garden with him I would do it in an instant.
Afterwards I manage to get a coffee from a machine in the lobby and return to the room. Bleary-eyed and messy of head Katherine, Charlie and Duff are stirring. Duff announces that he has now "run out of pants". Time to go shopping!
I drive us over to the hotel I’m now going to be staying in for the next two nights, the Holiday Inn Express, and get them to agree that they’ll only charge me for one night of Johnny’s aborted stay rather than the two he’s booked for. Fortunately they’ve heard all about the chaos and so are pre-disposed to breaking their festival cancellation policy for once.
It’s now mid-afternoon and having not eaten since Mario’s last night we find a Mexican diner and grab some surprisingly good food. Jacqui has already had to leave to go and interview Jack White so the four of us work out the plan for the day. Katherine has been told of a Warners shuttle bus to get us on and off site from a different hotel which hopefully avoids the worst of the traffic. So we head over to the La Quinta Resort to take advantage of the free travel and are first ushered into a grand hacienda with gardens, pool, barbecues, chefs cooking fajitas and an unlimited bar. Transpires Warners have laid on some hospitality as they have a fair few bands playing. It’s proper old-school record company largesse of which we take full advantage!
We’re on site by about 6pm and in the sunshine we can see what a beautiful setting Coachella has. Fringed by palm trees and mountains, it’s in a polo club that’s transformed each year into California’s equivalent of Glastonbury – but with guaranteed sunshine. The thermometers are showing 90 degrees and around us are sunburnt, hippy love children with flowers in their hair. Well, some anyway. There’s also some scary looking Mexican biker dudes, football jocks, indie kids, geeky students, scenesters and what seem to be hundreds of girls wearing not much more than bikinis.
As the sun starts to set Corinne Bailey Rae takes to the Gobi stage. She starts with three songs from the new album which the crowd show their appreciation for, however she then plays 'Like A Star’ which gets an enormous roar of recognition and cameras get thrust into the air as people sing along.
From this moment the crowd is in the palm of her hands. ‘Feels Like The First Time’ sounds great, filmic and dynamic and she follows this with a deep dub version of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’. A rocking ‘The Blackest Lily’, played as sky turns dark behind her gets great cheers and then there’s a mass sing-along to ‘Put Your Records On’.
Since mid-afternoon I’ve been trying to get hold of Corinne’s manager and tour manager but the reception at the festival is terrible with phone calls, texts and emails taking forever to get through so I’ve had no joy in hooking up with them and saying hello in person.
Typical festival scheduling means Corinne is on at the same time as Hot Chip so I leave as she starts ‘Diving For Hearts’ and wander over to the next stage where Hot Chip are playing a fantastic set to a huge crowd, there’s at least 15,000 people, who are all dancing. We get there just as they launch into a blinding ‘Over and Over’.
At that moment I get an email from Bob, Corinne’s manager, to come to the barrier at the front of the stage to say hi so I take my leave of Duff who wants to see Faith No More on the main stage and make my way back to Corinne who’s just finishing up. I get to the front and wave at Bob but he doesn’t see me. I’m texting and emailing furiously, “I’m here!”, “I can see you”, “Am at the front”, but none of the messages get through and as the band leave the stage with Bob in tow they go straight to the dressing rooms and I’m left waiting by the barriers, without the proper pass to get to them.
It’s 8pm and I’m now alone. Katherine and Charlie are in the Hot Chip throng, Duff is in the midst of 25,000 Faith No More fans and I’ve not heard from Jacqui for hours. I wander back to Hot Chip as they play ‘Ready For the Floor’ but then they too leave the stage so it’s time to rock, just as FNM crank up the classic, ‘We Care A Lot’. A malevolent ‘Last Cup Of Sorrow’ is followed, in a stroke of genius or madness, by a falsetto version of Michael Jackson's ‘Ben’ at the end of which Mike Patton throws himself into the crowd.
After a while of standing by myself hearing old-school favourites such as ‘Midlife Crisis’ and ‘Epic’, a huge wave of tiredness hits me. It's been a week since I've had a full night's sleep, had any real time off or seen Coman and I'm missing him hugely. The jetlag and loneliness conspire quite potently and I'm so exhausted I have to sit down. I make my way to the hospitality area and find the little meeting point we'd suggested yesterday next to a smoothie stand and an ATM. Taking advantage of the moment to get some money out as my funds are dangerously low, I then sink down onto a little wall and wait for rescue like a lost child. I'm overwhelmed with a very strong desire to be at home, desperate to be back in the UK in my own home; a feeling compounded by the knowledge that even if I could go straight to an airport I would still be stranded on the wrong side of the planet.
In the shuttle to the festival a fellow passenger said they'd heard that the airports could be closed for up to nine months. Wild speculation no doubt but putting a brave face on it doesn't mean there's not a growing concern that events could spiral into an extended exile. Our travel team had emailed earlier to say they are booking me hotel rooms for next week and it may take days yet before I can fly home. Reality starts to hit big style.
At that moment, just as I’m sinking into a pit of self-wallowing, Duff appears, clutching pizza and a beer. Five minutes later Jacqui makes it to the meeting spot having been wandering by herself for three hours unable to make contact with anybody. The three of us, thankful to be back amongst familiar faces, go and see Muse steal the festival from every other act, putting on a fantastic show to a much bigger crowd then Jay Z managed the previous night. Hit after hit is pumped out, with majestic pomp and energy. Huge pyrotechnics pour from the rig during ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ while a map of Europe, our fabled unreachable continent, teases us on the screens during ‘United States of Eurasia’. They finish with a galloping ‘Knights Of Cydonia’ by which point not only have we found Katherine and Charlie, but also Miles and Elias also from Parlophone, and also stranded here too.
They tell us of a party at the Hyatt going on later but we decide that we’ll aim for the Warners shuttle bus as the fastest option to get off site. But this time they’ve shut some roads so we have a long walk to reach it. After about 20 minutes we’re finally off site and heading towards the new pick up point, walking a quite a pace. We come across a bunch of old guys on golf buggies who shout out.
“Man, you getting some exercise! How far you gotta go?”
“About 8000 miles”, replies Duff, quick as a flash.
“Man, we'll be sober by then,” announces one of them to drunken guffaws from the others.
We get to the corner of 49th and Horth, where we’ve been instructed to meet and sure enough the bus pulls up just as we arrive to spirit us back to the hospitality wonders that are still in full swing back at the hacienda at La Quinta. Various band members swing by and there’s a rock tete-a-tete between Billy Gould of Faith No More and Serj Tankian of System of a Down, much to Katherine’s undisguised delight. We sit by the pool rounding off the night waiting for a cab to pick us up and return us to our hotels. Waiting, waiting, waiting. It’s almost 4am again before I hit the hay, tired and emotional and praying that I’ll sleep for hours…
