Monsters of River and Rock by Adrian Smith

Author:Adrian Smith [Smith, Adrian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753554098
Publisher: Ebury Publishing
Published: 2020-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

In 2008 I was on the road again, this time for the Somewhere Back in Time tour, which had us travelling through North America for two months. Looking at the tour itinerary I saw that we had a day off in Vancouver, British Columbia. Plans were drawn up for a trip out sturgeon fishing as the Fraser River, famous for the species as well as big salmon and trout, runs only 50 miles east of Vancouver.

Now, the first thing is that you don’t want to be messing around trying to fish for sturgeon on your own. They run big and inhabit the sort of places that would need a sturdy boat, and an equally sturdy guide. So after a quick look around on the interweb, I found ‘Fred’s Guiding Service’. From the website, it looked like it was a professional-looking outfit with a small fleet of jetboats and a roster of guides. When I called them up, the lady on the phone said their staff were all very experienced and all but guaranteed I’d catch a sturgeon. Even if I wasn’t in the charge of old Fred himself, I’d still ‘have an awesome trip’. Awesome indeed. Mind you, in North America, everything seemingly has the potential to be awesome.

Trip booked, it was just a matter of hiring a car to drive the 50-odd miles from the hotel to the river. A quick call to the car hire company and it was job done.

Before the trip, the show in Vancouver was memorable on two counts. Firstly for the enthusiasm of the fans: they were amazing and really spurred us on. Sometimes during some of the older songs that we’ve played a million times, you can slip into autopilot, but with an audience like that it makes the whole thing come alive and feel fresh again.

Yes, I was enjoying myself on stage that night, hamming it up and showing off. Then, in the middle of ‘The Trooper’, while moving back towards the drum riser without looking, I tripped over Dave Murray’s guitar lead and knew I was falling. This is a moment all rock stars dread. You know it’s going to happen to someone in the band during the course of the tour, but will it be you? I’ve been ‘over’ a few times in my career and it always feels the same, like it’s happening in slow motion. As you realise you are going to fall, it’s ‘Oh shit!’ and down you go.

Of course, the more bombastic the show, the greater the embarrassment. In Vancouver, having been ‘giving it the big ’un’, my mortification was acute.

Now, when someone takes a tumble onstage, unless it’s an obviously painful one, the remaining upright band members – as per tradition – gather round to laugh and point. That night, I just lay there and kept playing until a gap in the music allowed me to get up and carry on. Only now I felt like I was wearing a large hat that said ‘I’m a Prat’ in big letters.

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