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A WEEKLY DIARY EXCLUSIVELY WRITTEN FOR MIRABELLE MAGAZINE
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1973 January February March April MAY June July August September October November December |
A WEEKLY DIARY EXCLUSIVELY WRITTEN FOR MIRABELLE MAGAZINE
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5th May 1973
I never have been much good at writing letters, but now I'm going
to make a big effort. So I'm sending along the first letter,
which I wrote after this fantastic party...
Dear Mirabelle,
Aren't friends wonderful!
It seems I've been away from home for so long. Tonight all my lovely friends got together and gave me just the best welcome home party ever. I always have a really great time travelling, and meet all sorts of fascinating people, also I usually manage to take a few of my favourite people along with me, but there are still people I miss, and it's really fantastic to see them all together in the same room having a good time.
It was so wonderful to see all the brightly coloured clothes and make-up... especially after travelling across Siberia for almost two weeks. Things are so colourless and cold in that part of the world and there just aren't any pretty things to buy even when you can afford them. The people are just like people anywhere though, and I think they got a kick out of my red hair and the Kansai clothes I was wearing. I suppose I might have come as quite a surprise to them! I would have loved to know what they were saying about it all.
Tonight at the party I wore a red and yellow satin costume. It's one of my lounging outfits, so you won't get to see it on stage. Kansai has made me so many fantastic costumes for my tours, and so has my childhood friend, Freddy, who is the other person who makes and designs clothes for me. You should have seen his girlfriend, Daniella, tonight at the party. Freddy had dyed her hair deep purple in honour of the occasion!
In Habalofusuku all the girls were running after my platinum blond photographer Lee, calling my name. We didn't know how to tell them he wasn't me, they seemed so determined in their mistaken identity of Lee, too determined to take a good look at him. It was really very funny at the time.
None of us have mastered the Russian language yet, though I'm making great progress in my Japanese. I was so surprised to think that people knew about me in such a remote part of the world. I really hope to do a concert in Russia some day. I'd love to give pleasure to those people who see so little of our Western art. I hope they would like my music.
I'm supposed to be telling you about my party, but I keep getting side-tracked! So now back to the party... Sue Fussy, my hairdresser, baked such a lovely cake with red and blue streaks and 'Welcome Home Aladdin Sane' written across the top. I do love the way people enter into the spirit of the occasion! I wish you could have seen little Zowie playing with the champagne corks and flirting with beautiful Mary Hopkin. I think Zowie enjoyed the party as much as anybody - probably more if anything! We couldn't bear to see him go to bed and miss out on all the fun, so we thought he must stay up and help to celebrate. Mick Ronson from my group and my wife, Angie, did such a fabulous funky dance to an Iggy and The Stooges record. In fact, the more I think about it the more I realise that it's great to be back home. Especially if one is lucky enough to have such incredible friends.
Well, it's been a very long trip and a very long and wonderful night. Zowie's been tucked in for hours and now I must get my beauty rest. I hope you've enjoyed this little glimpse of my friends and my party and I wish there were houses big enough to invite the whole world, but since this is the closest I can come to that, I give it to you...
12th May 1973
You know, learning a language isn't easy, but when you visit a country, with a tradition so beautiful as Japan and you want so much to absorb the flavour of that beautiful land - you just push and discipline yourself and carry your little pink phrase book everywhere with you, then bore everyone you meet with your Japanese greetings and your endless counting from one to ten until little by little you begin to develop the same feeling for the words as you hold for the country in your heart.
At least that's they way it is for me - me and my blossoming romance with Japan. And speaking about blossoming, they cherry blossoms were in full-bloom in Kyoto, the ancient capital of Japan, when I performed there and they are such a beautiful sight to behold - especially against such a great setting as this lovely city.
Angie and I managed to squeeze in a whole afternoon of sightseeing there before boarding the train for Tokyo, and then from the train window we saw the most famous sight of all - the mighty and majestic Mount Fujiyama - standing so proudly high above the delicate Japanese landscape. I felt so good and so lucky to have the chance to travel as I do and to experience all these worldly wonders in such a direct and simple way. As each experience becomes a part of me, it can't help but flow back to you in my songs. Oh, you may not hear me speak specifically of Mt. Fuji or the cherry blossoms of Kyoto, but you will hear some of the influence and the feelings which they left in my heart and my mind forever.
Of course when you do get a chance to travel around this world as I do, the feeling that emerges most, the one that proves itself over and over, the most important feeling of all, is that we are all one.
We may not look quite the same as the people of other lands or speak the same language, but we are members of the same human race with very much the same human needs. And though we live on so many different levels on this one tiny planet, we all have a share in the brotherhood of man.
Angie and I have begun to take little Zowie everywhere with us now, so that he may have the chance to see and develop his own feelings about the world in which we live. He had a fabulous nanny in Japan who dressed him up in the most adorable little Japanese kimonos and he even had a go at chopsticks, though I think it will take him a little more practice before his technique is perfected enough for a formal Japanese dinner! The thing that thrilled him most was seeing his dear old dad on a stage for the very first time in his life. Angie and the nanny brought him to the theatre in Tokyo and they sat right in the first row where I could see them jumping up and down and clapping their hands wildly. It made me feel so proud and since Zowie didn't understand the words, and neither did the Japanese audience. I made all my movements very large and very intense and though I was singing the lyrics, it was just the sound of the words and the music and my elaborate movements to which they related and responded so well.
Japanese theatre is based so heavily on movement and while I was in Tokyo, I had the honour of attending a performance by Tomaso Boru, Japan's most popular Kabuki star. After the show we met and he told me so many fascinating things about the traditions and the development of Japanese theatre, and he showed me how to apply the beautiful Kabuki make-up.
It looks like I am running out of space which is a great pity as there are still so many things I want to tell you about my incredible trip to Japan. I think I'll save them until next week, so until then I will take my leave,
19th May 1973
Last week I was telling you all about Japan, and how I had the honour of attending a performance by Tomasa Boru (in case you've forgotten he is Japan's most popular Kabuki star), after which we met and talked, and he showed me how to put on the Kabuki make-up.
The next evening he came to my concert, and what an evening it turned out to be!
This time the audience really went wild, so I took off my favourite white costume, the one that Freddy made for me with the big red lightning streak on the back, and I threw it into the audience and thousands of hands were reaching up to get it. Meanwhile, almost no one noticed that I was standing there on stage dressed only in my pink underwear with a few rhinestone studded scatter pins splashing down the front. Well, when they realised what I was, or should I say wasn't wearing, they all just stormed the stage. I got so scared 'cause there just seemed to be so many of them and then suddenly they began disappearing right before my eyes - and I was safe.
I didn't realise until long after the show that the whole floor right in front of the stage had collapsed and what actually happened is that everyone just sank about three feet, putting them below stage level and therefore out of sight. Miraculously, no one was hurt and I managed to escape.
The next day Angie and Ronno (Mick Ronson) and I visited the Imperial Gardens at the Emperor's Palace and took part in the ancient and exquisite tea ceremony.
We were served some very light and very weak greenish tea and tiny, thin wafers by a most delicate and graceful Japanese lady who knelt, bowed and curtsied and moved with grace and at the pace the whole country must have at one time moved.
The Asian 'flu sure slowed me down for a while in Tokyo. I stayed in bed for two whole days and then got up, fever and all, to do a show. I thought I was going to collapse at the end of it, and couldn't even go back on stage for my encore.
Angie made me promise to rest all the next day while she went out to buy me a beautiful red silk kimono for my long journey back home to England.
The next day she and the baby flew home and I (who don't like flying very much - except in spaceships!) boarded the ship, Felix Nzerjinski, at Yokohama which took me to Nakhodka where I caught the Trans-Siberian Express. Though it was raining very heavily when I left Yokohama, thousands of fans and friends showed up at the pier to bid me farewell.
Now it's late and I too must say farewell but not goodbye just... sayonara (that's the Japanese words for love and kisses!).
26th May 1973
I thought that this week I would begin to tell you about my trip through Russia. Russia is such a fascinating country, that I was very excited at the prospect of being able to see some of it for myself, and, just as I expected, the trip was a wonderful experience. Of course, I had formed impressions of Russia from what I had read, heard and seen in films, but actually going there, seeing it for myself, and meeting the people, made it into an incredible experience which I will never forget. So now I hope I can give you some idea of my impressions.
Travelling with me for the whole of this trip were Geoffrey MacCormack (my conga player), Bob Musel (a UPI reporter) and Lee (my photographer).
Our trip started on a boat, the Felix Nzerjinski, which left from Yokohama in Japan and went to Nakhodka, the seaport town on the far east coast of the USSR. That part of the journey took us two days, and I must say, I really enjoyed it. The boat itself was wonderful, and very 'plush'! I found myself giving a short concert for the other passengers. We hadn't planned anything, but it seemed a good idea, it was nothing very grand, I just accompanied myself on the acoustic guitar. I think they loved it, it certainly seemed that way from their response.
In Nakhodka we boarded the train. It was really fantastic - I wish you could have seen it! It was an old French train from the turn of the century, with the most beautiful wood veneer, decorated oval mirrors, and velvet couches. Really it was like something out of a romantic novel or film.
I'm always at home on any train, but this one was very comfortable! It was really one of the nicest trains I've ever come across, and by now I think I can say that I've travelled on a lot of very different trains. I was looking forward to a long and very pleasant journey through Siberia, but, unfortunately, there was a disappointment in store for us. One day later we found that we had to change trains, in Khabarovsk, just before the long eight-day journey through Siberia, and this new train was nothing like the old one. It was simple and practical, and very clean, but we had set our hearts on the beautiful, romantic French train!
Siberia itself was incredibly impressive. We rode for days and days across relatively untouched wilderness - great forests, sweeping plains, and glimpses of people living a very simple, peasant life, getting a living from the land. I could never have imagined such expanses of unspoilt, natural country without actually seeing it myself, it was like a glimpse into another age, another world, and it made a very strong impression on me. It was strange to be sitting in a train, which is the product of technology - the invention of mankind, and travelling through land so untouched and unspoilt by man and his inventions.
So that is what we saw outside the train, as for inside the train - we had these two fabulous attendants on our particular car, called Danya and Nadya. They served us tea when we woke up, and for that matter they served us tea all day long - the tea is truly delicious, really incredible.
We all grew to be very fond of Danya and Nadya, they were so charming, and always smiling and cheerful. I used to sing songs to them, often late at night, when they had finished work. They couldn't understand a word of English, and so that meant they couldn't understand a word of my songs! But that didn't seem to worry them at all. They sat with big smiles on their faces, sometimes for hours on end, listening to my music, and at the end of each song they would applaud and cheer! They were a wonderful audience - it was a real pleasure to sing to them.
I've got lots more to tell you about Russia, but I'll save that for next week.
| Created: April 1998 © Paul Kinder | Last Updated: 10/7/98 |