One of the most dangerous days in our life was seeing Bon Jovi supported by Extreme in 1993 at Irvine Meadows, in Southern California. We nearly got shot. The day had started well enough at Heathrow Airport. We boarded a flight to Los Angeles, as we often did back then. 13 hours in a tin can, Lord there’s got to be a better way. It’s exhausting. The only way is to give yourself up to it. Don’t get impatient, just lean into it. I found doing that made it pass by painlessly enough.
But it messes with your head. Because of the time difference you take off at 10am and arrive in the morning. Your whole body doesn’t know if it’s night or day as you queue up at passport control. We hired a car at LAX, that was the first mistake. We arrived in a heatwave, it was so hot after a cold, winter’s day. The car guy drove up in a traditionally humongous vehicle. I’m not a car guy so I don’t know what it was. The air con was on full when we got in, so much so, it was freezing cold, which added to our general discombobulation. Now, I don’t drive - never got the hang of it - so Dawn drove this beast out of LAX airport car park, jet lagged and right into oncoming traffic.
Oops. We were so jet lagged that we didn’t even panic as cars headed towards us. Instead, we wove across three lanes of bumper to bumper head on traffic into the fast lane on the right side of the road, then into the inside lane. Smooth. It all seemed quite normal, as if everyone did this.
We continued on our merry way. Aided by the slow speed of the traffic compared to the UK, all the way up onto Sunset Boulevard, checking into the Sunset Motel. How we made it, God only knows. It was to get worse. You know how it is, when you’re jet lagged this badly, you wake up a bit and think you’ll just plough through until bedtime and get onto an even keel. Delusion.
So we say those fateful words, ‘I feel alright’ and we go to a ticket outlet. I especially wanted to see Extreme, loving the Pornograffiti album. Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre was about 40 miles away, down the 405 in Orange County. Easy enough you’d think and we negotiated it, pulling into the vast parking area, realising for the first time that everything was made easy for the car driver in a way it wasn’t back home. Remember, this is our first time in LA.
We took a position half way up the hill of this bowl and enjoyed the bands, which I remember very little of because both of us kept falling asleep. Of course we did. Then the show was over and it was dark. We found our way onto the 405 for the 40 miles back to Sunset Boulevard. Deciding slow was good, we went at 30 for about 20 miles, both totally zombied. I was beyond tired, holding my eyelids open with my fingers. Dawn actually nodded out more than once but kept the car going in a straight line.
It took ages to get back to Sunset but because it was just basically a straight line, we managed it. But it was a bit winding and more complicated driving up Sunset to the motel car park which was underground. We felt pretty good that we’d managed the drive as we turned into the car park. Hold on, this looks different. This isn’t our car park.
Too right it’s not, it’s some apartment’s car park, protected by armed guards, one of whom, in every cop show style, stands in front of the car, arms outstretched, both hands holding a gun at us. I wind down the window as we come to a halt, ‘don’t shoot, we’re English and jet-lagged’ I shout apologetically. I later learned that an English accent melts many a Californian’s hearts. Fortunately, we don’t look like typical trespassers, and he seemed to accept my grovelling apology, pointing at an exit with the gun, which we take, shouting thank yous. We were 500 yards short of where we should have turned. When we arrived back at the motel, we reflected on how we’d nearly died twice that day. All in pursuit of rock n roll.
