53. Duff In Europe

OK, so they don’t know how to put together a decent burger
and everyone seems so pale and dour but, hey, we’re pale and
dour too so we fit right in with Europe from the get-go, no problemo.

The first shows are in Germany and Holland then we move East back to the UK, home of bad teeth and all those great bands we grew up listening to. The English are one loveable, fucked-up race, as is evident in Slash.

I like them, they invented punk and they know how to drink - boy do they know how to drink – and they like us right back ten-fold. They show their appreciation by throwing shit and spitting on us.

The UK shows are with this band Faster Pussycat. They’re real funny, prissy little assholes who’ve clearly never been to the same school of hard knocks from which we all graduated with diplomas.

We tell them that they should drop the ‘Faster’ and ‘Cat’ from their name, that way people know what they’re going to get when they buy their ticket. Nottingham, Manchester and Bristol are a sub-zero blur:

bad backstage food, hangovers and seedy after-hours clubs where they put us in VIP booths and feed us warm beer while we’re over-run with spotty skanks with bad teeth and loose drawers; our kinda girls!

Four days later we’re in London to play The Hammermsith Odeon where Bowie performed Ziggy and Motorhead recorded that killer live album. We open with ‘Easy’ finish with ‘Rosie’, kill ‘em.

After the show we have a full day to recover and chillax so we all make plans to go see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, do the tourist thing, you know? But because we all wake up in different beds in

different parts of town it’s all we can do to get ourselves back to our hotel to pick up our passports, finish off whatever drugs are left, check out and hot-foot it over to Heathrow airport for the flight back home.

Our four-month US tour starts in three days.

Oh boy.