Now, a 3.30am lobby call is usually a pretty cruel blow. However, in a wonderful demonstration that two wrongs sometimes do make a right, the London-NYC jetlag has me up and about and feeling fine before the alarm even goes off.
It’s all in the name of Good Morning America, of course. The band are performing on air at 8.30am – which means getting set up and soundchecked obscenely early, but it does give us pretty much the whole day to ourselves once it’s done.
The morning of the GMA show, is Chris’s birthday. As a treat, he’s relieved of soundcheck duties. Singing at 8.30am is hard enough. Soundchecking at 6 would just be unkind. This leaves the studio with a problem, though. They want to do “camera blocking” during soundcheck. This means that someone must be found to stand in for Chris so that all of the camera folks can learn the songs and plan their moves.
Will’s drumtech Bash is chosen to doppelgang Mr. Martin. This is partly down to the fact that he’s a very similar height and partly down to the fact that he’s a natural showoff and can’t resist. There’s also the fact that he spent last night at Madison Square Garden and came pretty much straight from there to load in here at 1am. If anyone’s in the right frame of mind to rock out for the cameras, it’s him.
Of course, we’re not the only ones who’ve been up since some ungodly hour. Outside the windows behind the band are some gloriously bonkers types who’ve braved the cold to show support. Good on ya folks!
Come stage-time, the fellas rip into Yellow with impressive gusto given the hour. It’s funny, Yellow’s been around longer than I’ve been working for the band, so it’s always been like part of the furniture for me, but lately I’ve loved watching them play it all over again. Four fellas making a glorious noise and looking as though they’re loving every minute of it.
That’s not to say that Charlie Brown and Paradise were any less high octane in their performance this morning – as you can see for yourself on the clips online.
Then all of a sudden it’s over. We’re jumping into cars and heading back “home” after a day’s work well done. Out the windows NYC is heading into work and starting their day.
Forever out of sync…
R42
