Backstage in Edmonton

Edmonton, Canada, October 27th 2003 (e-mail to close friends)

Subject:Damm
Sent:Monday,October 26th, 2003 8:48PM

When I got off bed this morning in Edmonton in a luxury room in a very nice hotel, I looked in the mirror in shock and I thought "Good Lord".
I am staying at the *********** hotel, same hotel the Peppers are staying at. It was this morning that I analyzed the situation after the events of last night. I went down to the lobby from the 6th floor where my room was. The elevator door opened to the marble tiles of the reception desk, and there was Louie, Flea and John Frusciante. I go up to Louie first thing and he seems happy to see me. So he hugs me and says "Barbara" and I completely forgot about Flea and John. Flea looks at me and says "good to see you again". He really meant it. And all I could say is "Is it?". I'm such an idiot sometimes.
Anyways, Louie forgot John and I already knew each other and introduces us, and John says hi, and I ask him "you don't remember me, do you?", and he says yeah, that I'm the girl that gave him the shirt and he apologized for how tired he was in June when we talked. What a sweet and amazing guy. He's such a child. So, they look like they're rushing and Louie says "We're going to the movies right now, do you want to come?" So next thing is that we're totally squashed in the taxi, I am in between John and Louie, Flea in the front seat and the girl who gave me the flight ticket to Canada for only 100 bucks, is on the other side next to Louie. We rush into the movie theatre and we go and see Kill Bill, the latest Tarantino movie. It was so great. Louie says we have to sit boy-girl-boy-girl-boy, so I sit in between John and Louie and Flea doesn't give a shit and sits in the row in front of us. And two very tall Edmontonians come and sit right in front of John and I, huge guys blocking the view, so John, logically, moves 10 sits to the left! It was so funny to see them watch the movie. Flea was screaming "holy shit" when the school girl was about to beat the shit out of the main actress whose name I just can't remember right now. The wife of Ethan Hawk. How could I forget her name... Anyways, at the end of the movie it was like being with small kids.The end credits start rolling and they sit fascinated watching them. And John points out to the screen and says "there he is", just like a little child, and I say "who?" and he says it's his lawyer. Louie comments how Hollywood people watch all the credits to see all of their friends names in the screen. So we take a cab back, after I had to stuck the enormous bag of pop corn up my ass because nobody wanted pop corn. So in the taxi Flea goes on how people in Japan are going to love that film because of the blond chick kicking ass. So I go up to the room, John is in the elevator with us, and we talked about something I can't remember, I step off on the sixth floor and he says "give me a hug" How sweet! I adore John, he's undescribably sweet. Then I want to go back because I have Flea's birthday present and Louie is coming down the hall. His room is just across ours, so he shows up into our room and then says that maybe we should go to his room because he might get phone calls. Of course all this time I was wondering where Anthony was, and as if Louie had read my mind he said that he stayed in Vancouver because he wasn't feeling well. But he's coming today. And then we hung out and I saw his kids pictures, such cute kids!, and drank water because he's a recovering alcoholic. So he asks how am I going to make it to Calgary next day and I say that I have no idea. So he says that they might be able to give me a ride, but he needs to ask the boys to see if that's fine with them. So then we all go to sleep. And I haven't seen Anthony yet. We're still in the hotel, the show will be in a few 6 hours. I can't wait. Heh, Louie said that John is not the most sexual person. How funny is that. Gotta go now. Barbie the girl

Subject: Re:Damm Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 12:19 PM

Louie offered a ride to Calgary today. He called at 2 am to my room when I was sleeping, and then he says "oh, go back to sleep". Hmmm. Yesterday's show was incredible. Louie told me to wait in the hotel lobby at 5 before the show, so I figured, I am going to have a ride to the show. I did. I sat in John's and Anthony's tour bus (Flea goes in the other bus and Chad just flies) next to John who was lying on his bed playing the guitar and talking and telling me all kinds of nice things. It was like my own private JF serenade and it was rapture at its most. We entered the venue parking lot and there were this couple of girls with a "we love the RHCP" and started screaming like hysterical and John just bursted out laughing. Everyone laughed. When I arrived to the venue, Bill (the head of production) jumped all over me "What a fucking surprise Barbara!" (or something similar in a very funny Spanish). The guy hugged me like a puffy teddy bear, then it was Lisa, the production assistant, who I thought didn’t really like me. She was like "hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" and I just couldn't believe it. She was so nice, so I asked how her father was and she said that much better and thanked me for asking. Then we were just hanging out around, said hi to everyone and got fed. It's just so nice, I was going to buy something from the vending machine and Bill comes up and says "girl, girl, girl, there are plenty of drinks in the production office". Then he makes me come to his office and makes me sit to try his chair. It's a vibratig chair. Heh. Well, then I was inside the band's dressing room for a while but I decided to get out, and John comes after me and says "Barbara, you can stay here" but I tell him I've been around way too much, so he smiles and turns around. Anthony was going to arrive to the venue from the airport and I never saw him coming. But he was incredible at the show. It was such a good show. Today we're off to Clagary and Louie said he was going to ask the boys if it was ok to give me a ride. I can't believe it. And Flea is just a bit funny sometimes. Hmmm. Off to Calgary. Barbie the girl.


Next entry I will transcribe the bus conversation I had with John :)

To be continued.

Albuquerque, NM june 21st (final part)

So as tempting as it was to remain in the bus the whole night, it was the last show of the tour and in spite of the exhaustion and AK's bed looking cozier than any other bed in the world we jumped out of the bus and hanged out in the heat awaiting the show.

It was a sad day. I was suffering from an emotional concoction of disbelief and excitement and exhaustion and early nostalgia of the times that were being and soon will no longer be. Sigh.
We laughed at Snoop's lyrics for the last time and spoke to his roadies for the last time. And while we were trying to figure out which side of the stage we would be taking I ran into AK while he was making his way to the stage, the show about to start, and he smiled to me and held eye contact and we both went our way.
We decided to take Flea's side for some reason because we were mostly always on John's side which is where most of the "side stage action" takes place.
It's on John's side that the band goes on stage and gets off, where Louie is standing watching over the band, bringing them their tea/water/towels/whatever they may need. This night there were barely any people sidestage.

So I think I didn't enjoy the show much and besides, something happened to Anthony's earpiece that he was pissed off most of the show to the point he just ripped it off and threw it away. I had never seen him that angry on stage before.
But to me the highlight of the show was almost at the end when Flea looks at me (I was standing quite close to Tracy, his tech) and he comes and stands right in front of me, staring at me in the eyes and plays his bass for me! He went on for like a minute or so, I think I was crying, it was such an incredible moment...
When the show was over they had built a big catering tent and had drinks inside for the crew and guests, so we went in to drink a little water and we just wanted to thank and say good bye to everyone who took such good care of us.
We sat down in one of these round tables and the girl sitting next to me asks me if we got the backstage passes through a contest or if we knew somebody, so I said we knew somebody. She had the same kind of passes we did so I asked her if she won hers and she said she knew somebody too, so I asked who and she said she was Flea's sister. That was sooo funny. She was such a sweet down to earth girl.
Then while I was speaking to her, Flea walks in with this Harry Potter plastic glasses on (he looked so cute!) and comes to talk to his sister who is standing near me. He's talking to her and when he spots me he introduces me to his sister and tells her that we've been going to all the shows.
He looks at me and asked me if I liked the show and then he says "Thank you for coming to all the shows". I couldn't have been more utterly elated. I love Flea. I wanted to hug him for ever and ever and forever more. I think I told him "thank you for the music" or some cheesy/lame line like that. Then I was wondering whether his glasses had erm… well… glass but it was just the plastic frame and then he told me that they were Harry Potter glasses because the book had just come out and he asked me if I knew Harry Potter, so I said I did and he told me that his daughter loved it. What happiness. Then he gave me a hug before he kept talking to his sister.
After that, Louie came over and had a little talk with him too and said they were leaving in the afternoon next day.
Then we left the tent and I saw Anthony, almost in the shadows, getting on his bus. He wasn't part of all that "after show festivity" in the catering zone, he didn't even walk in there, just took his food into his bus.

Next day Geli and I were at the Albuquerque airport on our ways home. Geli was going to spend some Summer days in California and I was going back home to Mexico. We saw Gage standing in the drop-off area and went to talk to him. He was waiting for Chad and Anthony. When they arrived Chad and Gage went into the airport and Anthony came over. Can't really remember what he said, but he looked just so beautiful. He went up to Geli and said to her "oh, come on give me a hug" and Geli, German as she is, gave him this semi-‘I’m-not-bothered-hug.

Then he hugged me. He held me long in his arms and I do remember I was hugging tight and sincerely. Oh my God.
No words can describe that moment.

I said the deepest thank you very much I could have ever pronounced, close to his ear while we were still hugging.
Then we went through the security scan and they held Gage, Chad and Anthony in a room and the airport police was inspecting their laptops. That was weird. As I was crossing the metal detector they made me take my sandals off! and when I was on the other side Anthony asked me if I was hiding some potential Mexican weapon in my shoes. I laughed a lot and we continued walking and talking until he said he had to wait for Gage and Chad who were still in that room.
I told him I had to go and made my way to my gate.
I sat down in the waiting area in my gate and observed them walking around the airport, just like average people. Nobody noticed them and I was quite shocked because I thought people were going to jump on them. Only 3 teenagers who walked past them noticed and one of the girls was noticeably excited and went up to say hello to them. And that was that. I was numb for the longest time, sort of in an emotional comatose state. Then the nothing.

When I got home, after a couple of days of plain rotting on the couch in a rather "this really didn't happen" state of mind, I got an e mail from Geli. She said she and Louie and John were in the same flight to California, and she finished her e mail saying "and guess what John was wearing"...
After that I kept on rotting in the couch for another month or so, wondering how was I supposed to live my life the way I lived it before after living it through all of this.

To this day, this experience as a whole remains one of the most intense moments of my existence, one of those things that make life so worth living and just so passionate and exhilarating that drive your heart mind and soul to the edge of a blissful insanity , up and down from the south hemisphere of the Earth to the next contiguous galaxy and back times 11 and through all these materialized angels and human entities, sharing it all, the joy, the absolute happiness and delirious anxiety and even the lowest of lows where you sweat life from each and every pore of your body. I will never forget.

And still not over.

To be continued...

News

ANTHONY IS GOING TO BECOME A DADDY!!!!!

Albuquerque, NM, june 21st (part 5)

So many things happened in Albuquerque...
So, before even getting to talk to John, we were on the bus with Anthony just before he went to get his Ozone. He was wearing a white tank top and grey shorts and flip flops. He seemed much different than the day before. Even his facial expression was different and he looked at me from head to toes.
"You´re wearing a see through" he said with a strange look.
"What?" I thought.
I was wearing a knit-army-green-long-sleeve-jumper that had some holes in it which made it a bit transparent. I was wearing a jumper in a very hot weather and a long denim skirt and knee length boots.
After 3 weeks road tripping America, it was the only clean pieces of clothing I had left. That and my underwear. I think I told him that it was the ventilation system of my jumper, to which he asked why was I wearing a sweater in such weather. I told him that when we left Colorado it was cold (and in fact I had been cold during the night) and I thought it was a better answer than saying I didn´t have any other clean clothes anyways.
"Don´t you check the weather channel?" he asked.
I didn´t reply to that. We woke up at 7 am, had a quick shower, 3 coffees and drove for 6 hours from Denver Colorado to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It didn´t cross my mind to check the weather in Albuquerque to pick my clothes even if I had any clean items left.
I seemed to be pretty wrapped up and he seemed to be very inquisitive about it.
Ever since, I have only told this to my friend Geli since she went through all of this with me, but for a long time I suspected Mr. Kiedis wrote "Eskimo" inspired in our encounters during that tour. In the lyrics he mentions the people and things we talked about, like Jesus Christ, Bush, the literature references (Oscar Wilde, but we talked about another Bristish poet, William Blake) the busted knee bit, and the most obvious reference to my homeland "somewhere in Mexico".

Right after this day in Albuquerque, the Chili Peppers would go home to L.A. and work during the Summer in a couple of songs to put out with their Greatest Hits album later in the Autum, and eventually, would release the single "Fortune Faded" with two B sides, one of which was "Eskimo". So when I got myself with a copy of the "Fortune faded" single and heard the lyrics to Eskimo my heart almost jumped out of my chest. The timing of the release made sense to me to think the lyrics might have something to do with our conversations. I have never found out surely though because I'm uncertain of when they actually recorded the song.

Back to the tour bus, "Round 2" was a little bit of a shock for me. Although my friend Geli did warn me a couple of weeks before that "guys talk" just like we girls do, I never really thought of Anthony as a "regular guy" for whatever reason, but the truth is that he's as much of a guy as the guy next door, and indeed, like Geli said, "Guys talk too". Anthony knew what I had been talking about and who I had been talking to on the tour, and I was in disbelief when he enquired about me talking in Spanish to his tour manager. I just couldn't help laughing. I had this hilarious/amusing mental picture of a world famous mature rockstar gossiping in a totally teenage style with the guys around about "the girl doing the documentary" and how she said something to Louie in Spanish. It made my entire year.

I asked him what he was going to do when he went home.
"I am going home and the first thing I'm gonna do is kiss my dog, he's gonna jump all over the place like a big freak, he's 105 pounds and he gets about this high off the ground, just pshhh, and then I'm gonna go swimming in my pool which is clean with ozone instead of chlorine, just like me, and then I'm going to visit my friends and ride my vespa, my motor scooter, and go to my favorite eating holes"
B: What kind of food?"
AK: Real food. Real living food. So I'm going to do that and then I'm going to settle in the comfort of my own bed, my own pillows and my own sheets.

At a point I was so incredibly exhausted I kind of lost my will to ask any questions and just let the conversation go wherever it might, but he did all the asking then. He asked if we "have sugar daddys" and "who is funding your operations and paying for your femenine products" and just kept having a laugh about pretty much everything. He asked if we were sharing the driving and if we had strange tendencies whilst driving long distances in a small vehicle and all that silliness of the sort.
This time we didn't have as much time to talk, but then the most amazing and unexpected thing happened as he was ready to leave. "OK, I'm gonna go and do my thing. You're all welcome to stay here, the door will be locked so you'd be here the whole night but... you might want the rest"

To be continued.

Some Denver pictures (june 20th 2003)

I've always thought this set of photographs have a sort of papparazzi feeling to them.

It was such a sunny and beautiful day but what I remember clearly was me feeling freezing cold. Mr. Kiedis was beyond any coolness I could have ever possibly imagined.

Albuquerque, NM, june 21st 2003 (part 4)

JF: I just don't want to listen to that album
B: You don't.
JF: I know how it would sound to me, it would sound totally unbalanced, you know, despite Rick Rubin's balanced production and Flea's talented song writing and all that I know that Dave Navarro, as far as just a band chemistry they were just off balance because I'm the one that by me being in the band puts that balance there between the four of us. I'm extra sensitive to how off that was with Dave Navarro, you know, it's just... it was off. (looking at me and smiling widely) Sorry.

B: OK (laughing)
JF: I mean, I'm not putting it down, it's just like what I said about God, it's like, if you like that album I'm glad you like it for you, you know, but I don't have to...
B: No! I just really, really wondered, I mean the thing is that I feel like there's a very, very special chemistry between Chad, Flea you and Anthony that has no comparison, and and then it felt like... for instance her (pointing at my friend Geli) she can tell you because she was like "I love this album" she loves, like... I have to tell you she wasn't really...she's is not really into the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Geli: Now I am, now I am.
JF: (looking at me) What does she like?
B: (at Geli) What do you like?
JF: You are because of this tour?
G: I am because of this tour.
JF: Oh because of this tour.
B & G: Yeah
G: I think the singles aren't exactly the best songs on the albums, you know what I mean?
JF: Yeah
G: Like the stuff you hear on the radio is not the best of the album.

JF: Yeah...my friend Ian was saying that to me recently, he was saying it's kind of like... you have that sometimes when good people are popular, what they're known for isn't really what they're best at, you know, I guess that's just the way it is when you're dealing with the masses (he laughs) but it doesn't bother me because for the people who go after... That's how I am, I'm always a big fan of B sides, you know
G & B: Yeah!
B: They're the best.
JF: To me the B sides that we had after slash record so far, I like them better than anything on the record, you know, and the other B sides I think I like even better than those, and that's how I am with Nirvana, with Nirvana it's the same thing I don't like their hit songs and they're one of my favorite bands and, like "Smells like teen spirit" is the only hit song that there is that I really love a lot and mostly the songs that I really love of them were like, B sides and you know, songs that were hidden in albums and stuff, same thing with Oasis and same thing with REM.
B: You like Oasis?
JF: Mmhmm, but I especially like B sides where there's more than their records. (Sighs) I don't like their new record. I liked the first couple of records.
B: I really never liked them.
JF: Yeah. I don't blame you.
B: I just don't...
JF: No, I don't blame you.
B: I just think their personalities are something...
JF: Yeah, you're right, you're right.
B: ...awful. Maybe I'm wrong because I really don't know them personally...
JF: No you're right, they're idiots. But they write some good songs.
(I laugh)
They're idiots with good songs.
B: They're always like fighting and I think they're just trying to make a show out of...
JF: You're preaching to the choir.
B: hmm?
JF: You're preaching to the choir, I agree with you but I still think they've written some good songs.
B: Have you been to Mexi... you have been to Mexico but have you seen anything about Mexico?
JF: Not really.
B: No? Not a place that really fascinates you...
JF: Not really, but I'm just not like that, I'm not a person who is into places, you know, I like my living room, to me that's the place that I'm the most fascinated with and if I can get a recording studio together that'll really be the place that I'm the most fascinated with, you know, I'm not the kind of person who goes on a vacation or goes visits a place.
B: Sorry, there's an ant in your pants
JF: You wanna know about my scars... Oh an ant (he flicks the ant).

B: So you just like your living room.
JF: Yeah, and recording...
B: ...Music.
JF: Yeah, I like wherever me and my guitar and my cds and my records are.