Chapter VIII

Great tour! We also got the Grammy award during this tour so we couldn't attend the ceremony. I'd sent over a brief "thank you" speech through a SMS message. Some weeks later we also got the P3 gold award. Nice, but who really cares?

After this tour we had been booked on a flight to Australia. I think we might have had a week home or so. This was in the middle of the whole SARS thing, and our flight was scheduled to mid-land in Singapore which obviously was one of the affected countries. We had a brief band meeting at Heathrow airport/London about going or not... we were scared! We confess... for the first time ever we actually contemplated cancelling gigs due to fear.

Anyway, we decided to go, and once we got to Singapore, we immediately went for the bar and got piss-drunk! I was actually harassing people with mouth covers... felt like they looked upon us (who obviously didn't wear them) like we're lepers or something... well, we're still alive! Risking our lives for you guys!! Ha ha! Oz was fantastic, and one of our favourite countries in the world. Great weather, nice people... everything was just fucking fantastic!! Despite us being totally worn out and tired once we got to the hotel, we instantly jumped in the pool.

There was also a tennis match, Peter & Lopez vs myself & Mendez...we won! I got badly sunburned and red like a fucking lobster. We had a signing session booked the next day and people we're laughing at me, saying things like "Done a little bit of sunbathing camper?" in the Oz accent. Gigs we're great... 5 gigs, 4 sold out... nice! But what's up with you guys in Perth? It started as a raving success with you guys bugging the hell out of the promoters to get us over (the tour was supposed to be 4 gigs and nothing in Perth)and once we came... people we're throwing shoes, ice cubes and bottles during the gig!!! Why? No deal! The gig was great anyway and we wouldn't hesitate to come back. Just get rid of those fukkers who throw things at the door... pleazze!

On the way back home we had one day off in London (for the 654th time) where we celebrated my birthday.

In fact, all of us "got older" on the road this year. Next day we had another festival gig scheduled, Inferno festival in Oslo/Norway. It was cool. I hung out with all the people from the Norway metal scene. Fenriz has a tattoo saying "Old AC/DC"... pretty fucking great!

Then we finally had a few weeks off again. Although, not for long. There was another leg of the North American tour to be done in support of "Deliverance". This we did together with Lacuna coil. Another batch of great people. That tour was overall really great, although we could all feel that the touring life was beginning to rub off on us. We were all starting to become really tired.

Touring is weird... you wake up, have a smoke, drink coffee, eat a slice of wonder bread with turkey and ham and weak mustard, wait around for a couple of hours, do the sound check, wait around for more hours, maybe have a walk round the city (wherever you're at), dinner, sleep a little, prepare, showtime, beer and a smoke, meet fans, more beer, drinking and listening to music with the guys and crew, sleep. It's like this everyday, you do around 2 hours of real work each day. The rest is basically slacking! But it wears you down so much it's unbelievable, and it's so addictive that it's uncanny. When you're out, you long to get back home, and when you do, you can't wait to get out again. We spent more than 2/3 of this year on a tour bus! It's now officially become "what we do"!

During this North American tour we'd slowly started to rehearse the "Damnation" material for the upcoming tours in support of that album but also due to a TV appearance when we got back home. TV4 is one of the biggest channels in Sweden, and we'd been invited to play 2 tracks in the morning TV special, Basically I had a cab pick me up outside my house at 4 in the morning. I had a cold so I wasn't singing so well, but we played alright I think. It was our first and maybe, only TV appearance. Well, you never know.