The road to Belladrum

This is not a review. It’s more an explanation of why roadtrips and general madness are such a good idea. Don’t expect objectivity, or comments on sound quality and what guitar Larry used for which song. This is the road to Belladrum and beyond through the eyes of Goldmother.

A little over a year ago I didn’t do this kind of thing. There I was in my little suburban life growing my organic veg, taking the kids to school, being normal, doing normal things. That’s not a slight on growing your own veg, or taking the kids to school, but things had got a bit boring. And I’m not a boring kind of girl. Then in January I got an email. It was an email that changed my year entirely. I think you know what that email informed me of.

Since then, well, it’s all gone a bit mad. I started off with a ticket for the MEN gig in April. Through fate and madness I ended up getting to the first Hoxton gig in March. Armed with train fare, a hotel room booked and a couple of tickets, off I trotted to London. It became a defining feature of the year. Just the MEN gig wasn’t going to be enough, so tickets for Birmingham were quickly bought, the MEN gig turned into an entire weekend of James festivities. A couple of months later came another mad, last minute dash down to London for Hoxton 2. When the fellow Mums in my village started to question whether I was having some kind of mid life crisis, the only reply I could think of was that maybe I was, but at least I wasn’t on Prozac like them. I had James instead.

Then there was Glasgow. Three women, one car, and a mission to see James play 6 hours drive away. We made it, a great night ensued. Suddenly Scotland didn’t seem so far away. Hell, thought I, Inverness can’t be that much further than Glasgow, lets go to Belladrum. Stupidly, at this point my mind lost all reason, I began to imagine balmy evenings, the children playing in the setting sun….. Belladrum was a great idea… taking the kids to their first James gig was an even better idea. Tim thought it was, and who can argue with him?

Fast forward. Thursday 9^th August. I have dropped Mr G off at work, and now I’m heading northwards to the furthest reaches of this country. With two kids in the back of the car, and a journey ahead of me the satnav predicts to be 7hrs 44mins. The weather forecast is not brilliant. The car is packed with head to toe gore tex outfits and wellies. It was not what I had planned to be honest. However, the miles slip away in a pleasant haze of chocolate éclairs and plenty of singing along to James. My lovely daughter perfects her technique of screaming for no reason. Why are you screaming Amber? Because I like screaming. I can scream really loud! And yes indeed she can.

As the miles rack up I start to wonder how many people out there do this kind of thing. I begin to question my sanity. I start to feel sick from eating too many sweets. Then the motorway ends and with at least a couple of hours drive still ahead of me, it’s A roads all the way. The reality of just how far away Inverness is starts to hit me. The A9 north of Perth is the longest straightest, possibly dullest road I’ve ever driven on. Especially when you’re stuck behind a hay lorry. Going at 35 miles an hour. There’s not nearly enough dual carriageway on the A9. Nor enough snipers taking out lorries.

After getting lost in Beauly (the genius that is satnav doesn’t recognise the Belladrum postcode) we finally arrive at our destination. As I climb/ fall out the car I have a sensation akin to sea sickness. I have stopped moving at last. Now I just have a tent to put up, kids to feed, and a really long queue to get wristbands. At this point huge kudos goes out to Su and Zip, who helped me enormously, ferrying stuff from the car, helping get the tent up. A huge and much deserved thankyou.

Stuff happens inbetween Thursday night and James. My son decides he hates dark tents (so any bands playing in tents are out) and more disturbingly decides he doesn’t like loud music. My daughter decides she is unable to walk anywhere, and needs to be carried. I start to worry that by the time James get onstage I’ll just be a hunchbacked cripple. There is a bouncy castle though. I have driven 500 miles to take the kids on a bouncy castle. I question my sanity again. A drunken public schoolboy stops by our tent on the Friday night. A legend in his own imagination, he asks me which school I went too. Bless him, he was in a state of trauma because all he wanted to do was be a musician (man) but his parents wanted him to be a diplomat. They never offered that as a career option at my school strangely.

James.

The rain begins mid afternoon. Proper rain. Proper festival mud inducing rain. Armed with my wellies and lovely waterproofs I find Lisa and Mac. With outrageous luck (or alarming predictability) my husband and kids manage to find us outside the beer tent. As James – time approaches Me Lisa and Mac abandon Mr G and the kids to their wet and muddy fate. We bustle our way to the front, to claim our spot in front of Larry.

The comments started pretty soon, by fellow festival goers who as Mac so succinctly put it, blamed us personally for the death of William Wallace. I have been to many places in the world and been accused of many things because I was born in England but nowhere have I faced quite such bitter hatred. I didn’t care frankly, James were about to come on. But I could’ve done without it to be honest.

After so many gigs this year, I still haven’t lost the thrill of seeing the boys walk onstage. It still seems like a miracle, I want to pinch myself and ask if it could really be happening to me again. Larry’s intro to Born Of Frustration begins and the excitement sweeps me away, we’re all whooping away, dancing frenetically, oblivious to the rain. If it couldn’t get more frenetic, Tomorrow lifts me up beyond frenzy and Sit Down, which always seems such a cliché on paper just always hits the spot live. You can’t help but love it. The abuse starts to make a return during Chain Mail. I can’t help but REALLY dance to this song. It’s about dancing, loosing yourself, freeing yourself afterall. Some girl behind me takes exception to me having a small backpack (and I mean small) No I am not going to put it down in the mud so you can stamp on it. I may be English, but I didn’t leave my brain at the border. I carry on dancing and try to loose myself again.

Play Dead has sounded amazing this year. I’ve enjoyed it so much, as an album track I liked it, but it didn’t blow me away completely. I have revised that opinion since Hoxton 1, and it’s got better and better. Out To Get You is just always right. It makes all the grand gestures without ever becoming too cloying or sentimental. It has more perfection in one note than anything ever written by U2. And that is fact, it’s not up for discussion or debate. Unfortunately my enjoyment of it is darkened by a tap on my shoulder from annoying girl. As I haven’t let her stamp on my bag, she has unzipped it, emptied the contents out (new gore tex coat included) and trodden them into the mud. I miss a good deal of this magical song because I’m trying to retrieve my possessions out of the sodden ground. I am unimpressed to say the least. Bag safely dispatched to safer ground with Robin and Dave at the barrier, I get on with my gig.

Tim begins introducing Bubble with a dedication to Tony Wilson. While some make their appreciation known and applaud the memory of the legendary man, I can’t help but hear someone shouting ‘welcome to Scotland.’ It’s a shame, but probably to be expected from a festival crowd. Bubble and Upside are songs that get me very excited about the new album. They have everything that I want from James songs, and then more. While Bubble sounds raw and new and very unpolished as yet, it has that James quality that makes it an old friend on first airing. I was still singing ‘I’m Aliiiive’ the next morning. Upside truly does feel like an established James classic now. It’s yearning, it soars, it’s just beautiful. I lose the ability to speak with any clarity on this one, all I can say is that I’m with Jim, I love it.

Disappointingly, but perhaps sensibly, Tim looks out at the audience, sussing out his escape routes into the crowd but decides to stay on the stage for Say Something.

Next up is my song, Gold Mother. I can’t help but feel slightly proprietorial about this song. It is mine, and Larry knows it. He’s calling me up onto the stage for the customary fan dance off, Tim acknowledges this by giving me and Mac the nod. Reader, my heart is pounding. Mac is up and over the barrier. I am stuck. The barrier is very high, and as I scramble over it, pulled by security one way, my feet held onto by annoying girl, I’m starting to wonder what I did to her in a previous life. It’s not a pretty sight, I feel as inelegant as a beached whale. In Skegness. But once over the barrier, the bastard security start trying to evict me. Larry protests for me, and I scramble onto the stage before further mishap can occur. I bounce across the stage to an ecstatic Mac, who’s grinning away like you’ve never seen a man grin before. This song is infectious. For me it embodies what James are about live. It builds and grows, you never know where it’s going. On the edge of anarchy and collapse it just keeps going and gets better and better. And then Larry kicks in. Pure, pure, excellence. And I am up there. It feels damn good. I get a quick chat and kiss from Larry at the end of the song and we are escorted off to claim our backstage passes. There is a story behind all this, but you’ll just have to make your own guesses at that one…

Ring The Bells and Sometimes I hear, but don’t see. In my overexcitement I forgot I’d left my bag at the front of the stage. Money, cash, cards, phone and car keys. Everything. I’m abandoned to the moment but not that abandoned that I want to spend the rest of my life a pauper in Inverness. Numerous battles with security ensue. In the end I give in to my fate. There’s a lesson there.

My ears prick up when I hear She’s A Star, which I adore. The pared down reworking seems to suit the core of the song better, makes it more fragile and less bombastic, taking it back to the meaning of the lyrics as Tim wrote them. As it soars to its conclusion I hold my head in the air, close my eyes and just drink it all in. It is gorgeous. Even in a patch of mud outside the production portacabin.

We catch Getting Away With It, down at the side of the stage, my security battles forgotten for the moment. Another song which was good but not sensational, that’s been transformed this year.

Come Home from the side of the stage is phenomenal, the speaker is painfully close to me, I can feel the blasts of air as the sound pumps out of it. Tim lingers on the intonation of the vocals making it sound just as visceral as it first did to me 17 years ago in my teenage bedroom. Then the fireworks start. I am dancing like a loony and James are onstage playing Come Home to within an inch of its life. I am singing my heart out, the sky is on fire, this is joy, pure joy. Only James can exalt you to these levels of ecstasy. There is possibly nothing better. Well not in a muddy field with 10000 other people anyway.

Coda:

Once my bag dilemmas have been resolved, a task that required running and hiding from a vicious security Nazi I get to enjoy the aftershow. Believe me, if you’d told me a year ago I’d be stood in the rain chatting away with the band post gig, and not for the first time this year I’d probably have laughed in your face. And then laughed again. The warmth and generosity the band have shown myself and others, their willingness to put up with ‘the stalkers and obsessives’ is outstanding. Particular mention has to go to the very wonderful Larry who is a total gentleman and my hugest thanks go out to him. Mr Gott, if you happen to read this, one of those ‘Goldmotherly kisses’ in your direction right now. To answer a question he asked in a less rambling and drunken fashion, all this craziness this year hasn’t been about reliving some halcyon youth. It’s been about rediscovering fun and myself again after a long hiatus. Lots of things have suddenly started to make sense again, maybe that would’ve happened without James, I don’t know, but James kickstarted that, which makes them special and this whole year special. Watching James this year has filled me with joy and connection more than they’ve ever done. When I hear James play I feel like I’m stood on a mountaintop with the howling wind blowing through me, my spine tingles and I feel unbelievably alive. This is not a rehash of greatest hits and golden times, this is the way forward and a new beginning. For all of us. I’m looking forward to it.

I’m Alive…. Repeat to fade