You all know the story
of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
Tall, thin bloke gets rid of a plague of rats from the
town using a tin whistle and a bit of charisma by
drowning them in the River Weser. He then asks
the council for the 1000 guilders he was
promised. The Mayor offers him 50 guilders and
tells him to piss off, the rat problem was no
more. Our furious hero, puts his pipe to his
lips and leads all the children of the town, dancing
and laughing into a door which magically opened in the
hillside. They were never seen again.
The moral of this story is clearly...If you make a
bargain, keep it. Pay your just debts, and never
break a promise.
Haré Georgeson were booked by Beatles Ireland to
perform at their convention in Dublin on bonfire night
2000.
It was a very early start for the band, we had to be
at the Sea-Cat terminal in Liverpool at some ungodly
hour to make the crossing to Dublin. It's November,
and the weather is atrocious. Stenna Line
announce the cancellation of their Sea-Cat service, as
the seas are much too rough for the crossing.
This is a real drag. We decide that as
professionals, we will drive the 120 miles to Holyhead
in 3 cars , where we will catch the regular ferry boat
across to Dun Loagaire, if it is possible to make a
gig.... we will do it, in spite of the great
inconvenience. There would be just enough time,
the boat would get us into port at 7.30pm, we were
supposed to be playing at 9.00pm.
The journey across the Irish Sea was horrendous, most
of us were sick at least once, but we arrived in
reasonably good spirits. The boat took quite a
long time to disembark but we were eventually met by
the Beatles Ireland representative at about 8pm.
Just enough time to dash across to the venue in Temple
Bar to play our set.
We were shown to the dressing room and we started to
get our guitars ready. There was something not
quite right and there seemed to be some sort of
politics going on with the organisers. One asked
to see me in private...."erm..there is a problem
with the venue.... we have to get out"
I thought this very odd but went along with the
suggestion that we take the gig over to the hotel
about half a mile away. So the 6 of us,
struggled with all our gear and walked over to the
hotel in a torrential downpour of rain. When we
arrived, we were soaked through. I felt
particularly sorry for our backing singer, Paula, who
looked like a drowned rat.
We were talking between us, trying to work out why we
had had to leave the previous venue. We could
only conclude that it must be something to do with
money.
At the hotel, there was a definite air of "what's
going on?" We were told that we would now
be performing around midnight. When 11 o'clock
came, I was once again secretly summoned to a room
where all the organisers were congregated. The
representative of The Beatles UK band was there and so
was Bob Bartey I think. We were told that they
couldn't pay us our fee and said we didn't have to go
on if we didn't want to, but if we did, they would pay
us at a later date. I went back to the band and
broke the news. 2 members of my band were
bullshit and said that they didn't want to go on,
especially after all the effort we had made to get
here and the extra cost of fuel for the ride to
Holyhead. I was also really cross about the situation,
but pointed out that there were a couple of people who
had made the journey from England just to see us....it
wasn't their fault...as we were here we might as well
perform, if only for them. We did the show!
It always seems to be the way that musicians are the
last to get paid. People who organise events
have an obligation to make sure all their finances are
in place before they start booking acts, not hope that
they will sell enough tickets for an event to be able
to pay their bills. Try going into a bookmakers
and placing a bet without handing over the
stake. Whichever way you look at it, we were
robbed, and I hold all the organisers personally
accountable.
Late the following day we were back on the ferry,
pissed off that we had been ripped off, but we all had
a good time between ourselves, it was a very happy
group in that way.
As for Beatles Ireland.... they never did pay
up. They did not even have the courtesy to reply
to any of the e-mails that were sent to them.
Ignorant people. I wonder what their Patrons
would think, and where is the Piper when you need
him? There are still rats around!!
