S*T*U*F*F* Reloaded

When your tour bus bathroom has a heated floor, crocodile-skin print wood-panelled walls and a porthole revealing a virtual aquarium, you just know things are going to be OK.

In the past, I have come to associate tour buses with the curious perfume of nicotine-infused cushions and portable toilet fluid, a foul and heady concotion that stays with you long after the last gigs have faded away. But this time its a 5-month old German beauty of a bus, whose only aromatic peculiarity is that scent associated with a brand new car. It also has digitally controlled LED lighting that you can change to suit your mood, 7-foot long bunks (thank you God) and a German driver whose monosyallabic utterances bode extremely well for the tour - there is nothing worse than a talkative driver… though we still have America to go, and I suspect that yet another Vietnam veteran will show us his shotgun and tell us tall tales about the time he drove Led Zeppelin across the country. I spent a good two minutes telling Hans (the driver) how this bus was the best I’ve ever seen, how it was so beautiful and how brilliant German engineering is etc. - he seemed to be listening intently, but when I finished he simply turned around without saying anything and walked away. Excellent.

So, the first gig is done and dusted. There’s a review in The Times - four stars, though reading it, it is clear the set list needed a bit of work. We changed it for the Manchester show, shaking things up a wee bit to keep the audience hooked in, and I think it worked well. I always enjoyed designing set lists, alongside the mastery of the mighty Liam Bradley - always had a gift for it, he did - and how the curve has to be a bit like good sex - with appropriate curves in the intensity. You can make what you like of that. Air’s opening set list was a bit of a teenage fumble behind the bike sheds… I didn’t want to mention it, as I’m only “the new guy” - but once they got to play that set and realised it wasn’t quite working, they are really open to ideas.

Its one thing (amongst many) that I love about these guys… they are really the stars they appear to be, but are incredibly democratic behind the scenes. Nico got upset last night when the band were put in a different dressing room to them… and believe me, that is certainly NOT the norm - most artists will get as far from the band as possible! They really do want to create a band feel - not just in lip service - but we all stay in the same nice hotels, share the same wines, the same dressing rooms. There is next to nothing in the way of preferential treatment for JB and Nico. Refreshing.

They are such characters. I really must start keeping a book of all the things they say - combined with the charm of their French accents, some of the quirky English just makes me laugh so much. JB in particular - he’s so lovely, I can’t tell you - just a glowing presence to be around, and extremely artistic. Nico is, as he puts it himself, “so facking French”… from the stage dress of expensive shirts tucked into tight jeans to his love of food and wine, he is the perfect Parisian man. He and JB are so different, yet its clear that these differences are the key to their success.

I’m enjoying being on the road with them so much I can’t possibly tell you. Its going to be a long journey from here that takes us all over the planet - a fact that is slightly bothering me from an environmental point of view, given how bad flights are for the earth… but I haven’t resolved this in my head yet - and its hard to know exactly where we will all end up. But I do know that I made the decision to play with Air from my heart, not my head, and in that respect, I’m so comfortable not knowing what’s coming next.