APRIL 9 1988

Hi. It's the following morning. April 9. Tonight is the first night of the tour, in Bourges, or Borjay or Brrrrr or however it's pronounced, and I'm waiting for Viv to arrive. In the meantime I'm going to do this.

The last bunch of the US tour was characterized by various personality problems and stuff which we don't need to go into here. But for me it was great, wonderful, I had lots of relatives and friends show up for the shows and enjoy themselves. The last show in Uniondale, Long Island was followed by a nice party at Aunt Lucy's house, although Aunt Lucy wasn't around. We all had a real good time. The rehearsal lists and set lists are a matter of public record, and I don't have the set lists with me anyway, so I can't go into them here.

Suffice it to say, a lot of good stuff happened along with some not good stuff. For me the good far outweighed the bad. I felt it was a triumphant tour, and I think that things are going to be better here in Europe. Already Frank has put the clamp on any negative factors that might be affecting the music, and the first two days of rehearsal have gone really well.

We left LAX Tuesday morning, took a flight to Dulles and caught a connecting flight to Paris. I didn't get much sleep on the plane so I was tired, but I didn't sleep when I got to Paris either. Let me think if there's anything is particular I should mention about the flights...I don't think so. They showed a couple of episodes of "It's Garry Shandling's Show" which were very amusing, and the flight to Paris, of course, was very long, but I enjoyed it. I was sitting near Scott, we were in a middle row of three seats occupying the left and right seats thereof, and we had a grand time. Everything was fine. I showed Scott the very rough score of "Airport" which Marty printed up for me, and hopefully I'll soon be using that as a starting point for a more complete score, if I have the time, which I'm sure I won't. When I get home I plan on doing something more elaborate.

We arrived in Paris around 9:30 AM on the morning of the 6th. We landed at 8:40 but it took some time to get everyone's luggage together. We got on a big ol' bus and drove through Paris, which I enjoyed looking at, and we arrived here at the Holiday Inn at Rue de Republique. Rather than go to sleep right away, which my body hungered to do, I set out with Scott to walk about the town, and we went right away to the Bank Popular on the corner and changed our money, and then we bought some pommes frite. It took me about an hour of attempted commerce before I started to get a hang of what the currency represents. When I bought a Coke I was pretty confused and I ended up with a whole bunch more change than I was expecting. So I was a dick for about an hour until I figured it out.

We walked over to the Louvre but there were millions of people in line, so we wandered around the courtyard and had a good time. Then we went to a record store called Radio Pygmalion and they had an XTC video called "Look Look" which has the same content as the Japanese video which I've been fetishing for years. "Look Look" is apparently the real item which the Japanese import was patterned after. This video is the wrong format for an American boy such as myself but I'm happy to just have it in my possession, so just leave me alone with my glee if you don't mind.

We walked back here to the hotel and I crashed on the bed and fell asleep immediately at 3:00 in the afternoon, woke up at midnight. Fucked. Watched a little TV and called home - be interested to see what kind of bill I get for that, 'cause I couldn't figure out how to use the calling card, 'cause I'm such a dweeb - and then, yay, I managed to get another few hours of sleep and woke up around 7:00 AM.

Got up and wandered the town again. I covered quite a bit of ground, I was wandering the streets just as the boulangeries were opening for the day and I got a really nice tomato/egg crudite. Found another pattiserie and got an almondine nature, a little dessert which was purely wonderful. Back to the room for some French TV, which is very amusing, quite unbelievable in certain respects - one of the first things I saw the first time I turned on the TV was a graphic silhouette of a proudly hardened dong just prior to insertion, and this is regular prime time viewing, folks. There's a lot of American shows dubbed in, a lot of cartoons. And there's a LOT of music, almost every station has got videos going at some point, and many of the videos are quite good. Often the French approach to pop melody is a lot more creative than the American equivalent.

We got to rehearsal that day, this would be April 7, two days ago. We got there later than usual because there was still setting up going on. First we stood around outside the hotel waiting for the bus to take us to rehearsal with a couple of autograph seekers who were waiting for Def Leppard to come out of the hotel. Rick the one-armed drummer came out and obliged the autograph seekers. We got to rehearsal and waited around for a long time for Frank to show up because his flight from London was delayed. We sat around and ate and ate, and just kind of relaxed and wondered if we were going to do any playing at all, but eventually Frank showed up, and I started the guitar riff from "In France" because I thought he might enjoy that, and sure enough he did. He was over by the mixing board but when I started playing it, and other members of the band joined in, he ran across the arena and up onto the stage - you don't see Frank run very often, but he seemed to be interested in whipping the song into shape, so we got "In France" happening. We did our now-standard "Sofa" soundcheck, and then "Black Napkins," "Stairway" in a new reggae arrangement which is far superior to the old one, "Packard," "Bolero" with some touch-ups, and "T'Mershi Duween" in a sort of mariachi arrangement but much more sick than that would imply because it's sort of got a reggae beat with mariachi styling on top of it, and then it goes into all sorts of other stuff and then there's a tango in the middle, and it's really cool.

After the rehearsal the bus came and took us back to where we go, which is here, and then Ike, Walt, Paul, Chad, Bruce, Albert and I went out a-walkin', and ended up at a restaurant called Le Petit Pot, and I got a very nice gruyere sandwich, and we walked back to the hotel again and I just had a fine old time that day.

Yesterday I slept a little later than I've been, until around 10:00, then I watched a little TV and got outside in time for when the big restaurants open and tried some pizza, which wasn't great but it was kind of good. The guys there kept saying "Is it good? Is it good?" and I kept giving them the big thumbs-up and saying "superb." They wanted to know what I was doing there and I said I was on tour, and they asked with whom and I said "Frank Zappa" and they thought I'd said "Led Zeppelin," and it took me about four minutes to get them to realize that I wasn't a member of Led Zeppelin. Came back to the hotel, got ready for rehearsal.

We got to rehearsal on time yesterday, and went for a good long time, over six hours. First thing we worked on was a new horn chart which Frank had just written. He commented that he'd forgotten how long it takes to write music by hand, it was incredibly arduous, but the chart was very nice, very pungent. Then we started working on this heavy metal guitar riff which he handed over to me with Chott and Scad playing along with it - der der din dert ‘n' doh doh, der der din dert 'n' doh - and that sounded heavy, and then back into "Bolero" and "T'Mershi." He tried at one point inserting the new horn chart into "T'Mershi," and at another point he tried inserting it into "Stairway." It might end up in a number of places. Then we played "Catholic Girls" with "T'Mershi Duween" inserted into it, very interesting and good. That will hopefully become permanent. We did "Disco Boy," the "Closer You Are" medley with a horn arrangment, "Treacherous Cretins" in both 11/8 and 4/4, "Bamboozled," "In France" again, and "Nig Biz" for just a little while before it was abandoned because it didn't sound too good; he said there were other things more worth spending time on and I certainly agree with him on that point.

Then we came back in and I was quite tired so I didn't traipse around at all, just watched some TV and fell asleep. I woke up this morning. I'm watching cartoons and I'm waiting for Vivian to show up. And I think I've just about made it to the end of this side. Yes, I've done a very good job here. I'm turning this off. I hope Viv gets here very soon.

Hi, it's 10:02 AM later that day and the power's just gone out. How's that for exciting? And Scott was just here because he's made so many phone calls and he had to borrow 20 dollars. Vivian still hasn't arrived. We leave for Bourges at noon so I hope she gets here soon.

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APRIL 12 1988

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APRIL 8 1988