Roadie on the road

Some years ago I decided I’d leave Ireland and travel around Europe in order to educate my mind and to back up my extreme prejudices. At least I could say I’d visited the countries and peoples that I despised with all my heart.

Setting off at the North Wall and taking the ferry to Liverpool I made my way over land and sea, scratching a living as I went. In fact, I was so broke that I spent three months filling in as the DJ on the disco deck of the B&I ferry between Dublin and Liverpool as the previous bloke had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken his neck. I took his collection of 7″ singles and made that place rock every night. You could barely move for the throngs of people singing, dancing and vomiting into handily placed buckets because of sea-sickness.

Eventually I made it to mainland Europe. I picked grapes in France and got involved in something that shames me to this day: dog fighting. Every night, under the cover of darkness, people would come from miles around to see me fight dogs. On all fours I punched Dobermans in the face, ripped the tails off pitbulls and bit the ears of Alsatians. I gave it up when they wanted me, the undisputed champion, to take on a three month old French bulldog puppy. They truly are monsters, the French.

After that I travelled through Portugal and Spain, stopping for a time in Barcelona where I entertained crowds on Las Ramblas with my awesome football skills. I did tricks and keepy-uppys and all kinds of funky things. That didn’t last too long though as a group of people respresenting some bloke in a Maradona shirt warned me off and burst my balls. My footballs. After that I travelled back through France into Italy and there I gorged myself on pizza, pasta and met a man called Mario who I described, with comedy accent, to this little Japanese tourist I met at a bar one night. I’ll get you one of these days, John Nintendo.

I smoked joints in Amsterdam, ate beer and drank sausages in beer gardens across Germany, went to sleep in Belgium because there was nothing else to do and, having been paid a large amount of money by a faceless corporation I kidnapped and ransomed Heidi when I got to Switzerland. Her fucking cheapskate Grandfather wouldn’t pay though so I pushed her down a mountain. She was all right though. She had hooves like a mountain goat and bounded to safety.

After that I decided Scandinavia was my next port of call. After sampling the delights of Danish bacon first hand I crossed into Sweden where I found work hard to come by. Purely by chance I met another Irish bloke, Dan Ryan his name was, and he managed to get me some work with Abba who were just about to head off on a tour of the Eastern bloc. They needed a new roadie after one of them had been raped and killed by a moose as he snuck off one night for a crafty wee.

I threw myself into this work with great gusto as it was a way of seeing the countries I hadn’t really planned on visiting, making a few bob and having somewhere half-decent to kip every night. I soon came to understand that Abba’s success was not only due to them writing killer pop tunes, it was down to them being absolute perfectionists in every single way. Their rehearsals were backbreaking, not finishing until everything was 100% right. I remember one time Benny castigating the other three because they were satisfied with the opening piano roll from Dancing Queen when he knew it wasn’t as good as it might have been. He made them spend another three hours sorting it out.

It wasn’t just Benny though. Bjorn would practice his guitar licks constantly and Anni-Frid and Agnetha worked on those harmonies like slaves worked on the pyramids, just with less limestone. I grew particularly close to Agnetha because not only was she a dynamite singer she had a magnetic personality. If you can imagine a magnet in the shape of a person and imagine yourself life-sized but made from iron filings then you’ll understand what I mean. I soon became her favourite roadie and as such I was responsible for her microphone.

This was quite an honour as the microphone had been especially made for her and calibrated to her voice. She told me in no uncertain terms that this had to be protected at at times and Thor help me if anything happened to it. Naturally, being a dedicated and conscientious worker, I strove to make sure she had her mic in tip-top shape every night. However, I wouldn’t be telling you this story if all went well. We had been part of a great gig in Poland before we headed elsewhere and backstage the other lads were in great form and we got to knocking back some of the local vodka, which tasted like petrol mixed with rhino skin. At the end of the gig I went on stage, as usual, and took the microphone and put it safely away.

At least that’s what I thought. The next day I went to look for it and couldn’t find it anywhere. I searched high and low, up and down, round and about and a little bit hither and thither but it was nowhere to be found. Gadzooks. Worst of all the band were playing that night in Kiev and I didn’t have Agnetha’s microphone. What the fuck was I going to do? Being the resourceful type that I am I found another mic and being so familar with hers I gunthered it up to look like the original. I knew it was only skin deep though and that she’d realise what was going on.

That night my heart sank as I watched them from the side of the stage and I could see Agnetha looking puzzled as to why her voice didn’t have the same timbre as normal. At one point she turned to look at me. Those big brown eyes were so sad – like Bambi being given a prostate exam by a man with truncheons for fingers – and I knew she knew. I felt so small and guilty. After all the trust she had placed in me I had gone and fucked it up good and proper. I tried to speak to her after the show but she waved me away without a word and I could see the tears in her eyes.

The next morning we ran into each other at breakfast. It was awkward I have to say. I tried to apologise but she spoke first.

“Twenty”, she said, “I have always been honest with you. I wish you had just been honest with me and told me what had happened. Then I could have modified my singing style to the inferior microphone and all would have been well. Why couldn’t you just be honest with me?”

“I’m so sorry, Agnetha”, I said.

“How did you lose it?”, she asked.

“I wish I knew. I had too much to drink and I just forgot what I did with it. I swear from this day on I’ll never drink too much again.”

She simply smiled at me like I was an old lady trying to cross a busy road.

“Tell me this and tell me no more”, she said, “when did it happen?”

I looked down at my feet, my face burning with shame.

“The day before Ukraine.”

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