Summer of '92

Cooperman, Stu and I decided to do Donnington in 1992. The line-up of bands playing were a fairly good mix of old and contemporary metal bands of the time. They included (starting in order of appearance) The Almighty, W.A.S.P, Slayer, Thunder, Skid Row and topping the bill were Iron Maiden. I wanted to see Slayer, Stu wanted to see Skid Row (that's what he told me, I personally think he was there to see W.A.S.P), and Coops wanted to get pissed. I picked Coops up first as he lived local to me in south London, we'd be heading oop norf to the Midlands so it made geographical sense that collecting Stu from Woolwich would be the last pick up point for the headbanger's taxi (A red and rusty 1.6L Ford Cortina MK IV). We decided to drive up to Donnington during the night before the gig, thereby beating the traffic that would follow on the Saturday morning.
"Countryside's boring at night" said Stu as we chugged along the M1 in the dark.

It was still night time when we arrived at Castle Donnington, we had payed the parking fee for the camping area and we were ushered through to what was to become a muddy field in the not too distant future. We were all quite wide awake because of the anticipation of what we were about to witness (apart from W.A.S.P, obviously). We listened to a few metal cassettes in the car. Stuff by Living Colour, Metallica, Faith No More aswell as the new offering from Iron Maiden - the "Fear of the Dark" album.

Daylight eventually surrendered to our breakfast-time-pangs-of-hunger when we found out that the organisers would only be letting people onto the festival site after midday. They proved true to their word, as we finally marched with the rest of the metal militia (yes, I know it sounds corny, but that's what we were, man!) to the entry stalls, eager to get our hands on food, even if the grub was to be cold anaemic hamburgers. Fodder was consumed as The Almighty started up on stage. I liked this lot, they were a no-frills rock'n'roll band who graced the stage minus the bullshit. It was a thumbs up from all of us.

Then it was time to grab another burger (Ooer madam!) because W.A.S.P came on. Sod all that Chainsaw Charlie bollocks - these guys were Spinal Tap for real singing along to backing tapes. What better way to help pass their time on stage than to go around visiting all the various merchandising booths, or the 'metal market'. Baseball caps and t-shirts were bought, and then it was back in front of the mixing desk outpost for Slayer.

Donnington is very close to the East Midlands airport. The sound of the planes flying over head battles with the sound coming from the PA. Most times, the plane's noise tends to win out as everybody looks up towards the sky to witness the wonderous nature of a low flying aircraft. You simply cannot ignore the airplanes at Donnington. However, these planes were a distant eardrum buzz once Slayer came on. It's usually the last band on the bill that tends to be the loudest, but Slayer were so loud Stu got put off listening to them. It was worse for Cooperman, he ended up talking to the Samaritans! I thought they were excellent.

I decided to wander off again when Thunder hit the stage (what with soppy metal not being my thang an' all), leaving Stu to enjoy them and Cooperman to...to...where did he go during Thunder's set?

We all got back together for Skid Row. Lead singer Sebastian Bach made a right tit of himself by slipping on the wet stage and falling flat on his arse. I remember them playing a few opening bars of Metallica's "Enter Sandman" for some reason. Bon Jovi's "Slippery When Wet" would've been more apt for the singer to cover. Perhaps his slip affected his vocal performance as he was a little flat. Still, they were pretty good considering that the rain had started chucking it down at roughly the same time that the audience really started in earnest chucking plastic two-litre coke bottles full of urine in all directions. That kind of thing used to happen a lot at Donnington. I remember a girl being escorted through the crowd as they tried to make their way to get to the St John's ambulance festival HQ. Her face resembled a miniature Nile delta after Moses had gotten to grips with it. Blood red...but at least we survived without any injuries, although we were soaked and we smelt of piss.

At some stage during the proceedings, Cooperman left us for a while, only to return with a cardboard box full of twenty pints of beer. Even at our young and enthusiastic stage in life, we couldn't drink all of it (although Coops thought different). It was a good job that a few of the other festival goers were thirsty, as they ended up having a free pint courtesy of Coops.

Suddenly, The Coopmeister went missing again. Fifteen minutes later, he returned with yet another box containing twenty more pints of beer that, again, were freely passed on to other metalheads in the nearby vicinity. His generosity cannot be faulted, unlike his chat up lines. "Nice box, love...".

Rumours had been crawling along the grapevine that Iron Maiden's lead singer Bruce Dickinson was going to leave the band after their (at the time) current world tour. It was virtually confirmed when Dickinson was interviewed by the lovely Vanessa Warwick on MTV's Headbanger's Ball Monsters of Rock '92 special. Bruce moped on telling Vanessa how all childhood gangs eventually break up and disperse as they get older and wiser. This turned out to be a loosely disguised metaphor for Bruce's and Iron Maiden's career. Bruce wanted to leave - he did eventually, but returned years later when his solo career didn't do as well as he thought it would. Aswell as being a qualified and jobbing airline pilot, he's currently back with Maiden and they're all the better for it. At Donnington, they rocked big time. I'd never seen them before and I marvelled at the simplicity of the showmanship as their mascot, Eddie, got kicked to near death by various members of the band. It was a great show.

We stumbled back to the camping area in pitch black, as night time had descended upon us once again. Bugger, we forgot to pitch that tent of ours during sensible daylight hours. "No worries" said a drunken Cooperman, "we'll sort it out in no time". Stu wasn't that stupid, he decided to sleep in the car. Sorted indeed. We thought that we pitched the tent up correctly, only to be woken in the early hours by the cold rain as the tent collapsed on top of us due to the force of the rainfall.

I remember banging on the car furiously. "Stu, let me in!"

I think Cooperman slept under that collapsed tent for the night. Living rough never seemed to bother him.

Next morning we all groggily awoke. We felt physically groggy, but we were in a good mood. We left the bombed out look of the campsite and headed off in search of a service station which we eventually found. We contemplated the forthcoming day's events and tried to muster up enough enthusiasm to see it through - that night I was due on stage to play guitar for Sixties theme tune covers band 'The Adventures of Parsley'. The venue was to be held at the main village hall in Portmeirion, north Wales.

Portmeirion is a very picturesque Italian looking village which is famous as the location where The Prisoner (starring T.V's Patrick Magurkin) was filmed. The series itself was, to me, very confusing and ambigous but it eventually became a cult programme. The band were going to play top themes from "Joe 90", "Captain Scarlett", "Perry Mason" and others, aswell as Prisoner related music, after all - this was a Prisoner convention.

I can't remember the exact route we took driving from Donnington to north Wales, but I do recall driving through a dodgy looking area of Brum, then perhaps we went through Telford, finally hitting Welshpool before arriving at Portmeirion. The scenery on the journey, as you can imagine, was varied, from inner-city slum to industrial mega-complexes and then to rugged hills and the foggy damp roads of Wales.

On arrival at the gig, we eventually found Parsley (the bandleader) and explained to him that we would be requiring bathing facilities and beds for the night if I was to be fit and fresh enough to go on stage. He understood this, bless him - he probably smelt the piss that had landed on us at Donnington. All three of us were assigned the living room of a small chalet in the village that was being rented out by the bass player and the ex-drummer of the band. It was clean, comfy and it had two sofas that Stu and I quickly claimed as our beds for the night. Cooperman, being the rugged type of fellow, kipped on the floor.

Evening eventually called on all of us to gather together for the actual gig that was being held in the village hall. We had a brief practice at an earlier soundcheck, and we felt confident enough to dramatically open the set with (if I remember correctly) the theme from "Spytrap", following a brief re-inactment of one of the scenes from The Prisoner by cult TV enthusiasts.

One of the requirements of the band leader, was the compulsory wearing of the Adventures of Parsley uniform, which consisted of every band member having to don the actual outfits from the Space 1999 programme. Made from strechy, itchy crimplene, they may have looked the part but they were a tad embarressing to wear, specially if you were a bona-fide headbanger like yours truly. Just take a gander at those Lionel Blairs - very seventies they were and rumour has it that those trousers were used in the seminal Berkshire porn film "Debbie Does Datchet".

A break was had before embarking on our second set of the night with singing sensation Norbert J Hetherington, which was played in more comfortable attire of jeans and stripey t-shirts (why was I sticking my tongue out at everyone that night? Could've been worse I suppose, I could've started pointing at everyone like Eric used to do at The Albert). The audience appreciated the live music and we ended up with a positive review in "Six of One", a Prisoner related fanzine. We packed up our stuff and bedded down for the night, watching some crap TV shopping channel (remember, this type of entertainment was new and novel to us at the time) before we all started to doze off.

We awoke on Monday morning, eager to do the touristy stuff as we wandered around Portmeirion. We took in all the sights of the village itself ('quaint looking place' would be another good description) before strolling down a coastal path towards a river that flowed to the sea. We saw the lighthouse, threw some muddy sand at each other, Cooperman went for a paddle and Stu gave a blow job to a statue (the statue in question being either Nelson or Napoleon - you should've seen the look on the statue's face!). I also remember that we took a drive into Porthmadog where a lot of the locals spoke their native tongue, which was weird to experience as we never brought our passports with us. The day went by really quickly and we started thinking about the long drive back to London and we duly set off before dusk set in. It was a great weekend which we all managed to survive with relative ease. I hope everyone enjoys their cup final day.

Cooperman wearing a rather fetching seaweed syrup.

UPDATE: COMMENTS SECTION DOES INDEED SEEM BUGGERED FOR THIS POST FOR SOME STRANGE REASON. FIRST IT HAPPENED TO DICK, THEN ROMO AND NOW IT'S COME HERE - DOING THE ROUNDS LIKE A VIRAL INFECTION. NEVER MIND PEEPS, HERE'S SOME CARBON / SILICON!