UP IN ARMS

UP IN ARMS II Non-Pig Biggies Flip Their Wiggies

Tony Paris

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Outside Dallas’s Reunion Hall, the green lights of the mammoth sports arena’s upcoming attractions signs flash: “British Invasion Tomorrow 8 PM.” Yet inside the brick and steel building the “Invasion,” a/k/a the Ronnie Lane Appeal for ARMS, is well underway in the form of rehearsals. For some, that is.

Jimmy Page, looking angelically disheveled wearing a “What, Me Worry?” grin and a blue and white pin-striped suit too many years too big for him,.is being led from the backstage area into a waiting van to be

shuttled back to the confines of a hotel room. His face yellow and unshaven. Page looks like what you’d expect from the guitarist who’s been a self-imposed exile since the late ’70s and the breakup of his group. Led Zeppelin.

Not 20 yards away. Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman is engaged in a hot game of ping-pong with promoter Bill Graham while other members of the entourage have found a basketball and are shooting a few baskets nearby.

It’s a very relaxed and unassuming atmosphere surrounding this wealth of talent that has gotten together to make music to aid fellow musician Ronnie Lane. Indeed,

everyone involved acknowledges at some point in the conversation how friendly and happy everyone is. There are no egos to contend with, no money for each musician to take home at the tour’s end, no superstars onstage^-just a group of musicians contributing their time and effort in hopes of helping a friend deal with multiple sclerosis. If it were not for the booming sound of some unintelligible song that the musicians in the arena proper are working on. starting and stopping it again and again, it would be easy to believe this gathering was just some guys down at the local rec room.

But onstage are Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Chris Stainton, Simon Phillips and Fernando Saunders. Finally satisfied with the raveup they’ve been working on, the group plays ‘‘Stairway To Heaven” to a recognizable finish and then take a break.

This aggregation of musicians—along with Joe Cocker, Who drummer Kenney Jones, Stones drummer Charlie Watts, keyboardist James Hooker, vocalist Paul Rodgers, percussionist Ray Cooper, Andy FairweatherLow, Jan Hammer, producer Glyn Johns and a hustling group of managers, stage, sound and lighting personnel as well as a few assorted friends—arrived in Dallas on Thanksgiving Day. Since then it’s been nonstop rehearsals at a nearby soundstage complex divided into two camps; Clapton,

Cocker and Fairweather-Lo.w with the rhythm section of Wyman, Watts, Jones and Cooper in one room; and Beck, Page, Rodgers and Hammer with their rhythm section of Phillips and Saunders next door. Keyboardist Stainton alternated between the two, having drawn up the musical charts and arrangements for just about every song in the three hour show.

As these Sunday evening rehearsals of the numbers to be performed by the larger, combined ensembles wear on, however, it’s obvious Clapton is the overall musical director, adding a stabilizing effect on the entourage and working out any problems in the material. Back onstage with the rhythm

section he shares with Cocker, Clapton, again joined by Beck, leads them through “Layla,” stopping countless times to show Wyman a chord progression here or Beck a note there. They continually retrace one passage, Clapton finally moving on with, “We’re getting hung up on this, let’s get back to the song.” With everyone having figured out the song, more or less, they start into it once again as Beck bashes out his parts with reckless abandon, the rest conscientiously playing along trying to study their parts.

Next, Clapton and Beck lock riffs in what sounds like Page’s guitar wails from “Dazed And Confused.” At which point Cocker walks onstage and the sounds are quickly recognized as the opening lines Page laid down on Cocker’s 1969 reworking of Lennon and McCartney’s “With A Little Help From My Friends.” Cocker gives his voice a rest after the previous days’ rehearsals and mouths the words to the song. With that Woodstock show-stopper which now sets the theme for this four-city tour wrapped up relatively quickly, Beck, sensing a chance to stretch out (or perhaps one fleeting moment of nostalgia), launches into “The Train Kept A-Rollin’ ” with the rest of the musicians joining in. It’s one song this group didn’t perform in concert, for as Bill Graham is later to observe, “These are not some people whose best days are past. They are all living very much in the present,” and contributing as such musically.

Backstage after the second night’s show, there is a sense of accomplishment and pride emanating from all the musicians who had been onstage.

Kenney Jones, who had played in the Small Faces with Lane, describes it as “magic. It’s a magic feeling onstage. We’ve all known each other for many years and it’s the first time we’ve actually worked together onstage. That’s part of the buzz of doing this. I mean, it’s for a good cause, but we’re enjoying every moment of it. Everyone’s dropped their egos and are getting along famously. We’re all probably a little bit in awe of each other anyway-^and through our separate careers we’ve all been through a lot. And here we are, all on the same stage.”

All of them were on the same stage for the same reason. Jones pauses, then thinks about it when he first heard the news of his former band-mate having MS. “I was very upset for him. It doesn’t hit you at first, until you see him slowly waste away. Then, suddenly, every time you see him, a little bit more of him doesn’t work. That hurts.”

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Yet Joe Cocker has noticed one thing about Lane, which has probably helped Lane in the past six years since he first discovered he had MS as much as any of the treatments or therapy.

“He’s still got a great sense of humor, amazing,” the gravelly-voiced performer observes. As for the show itself, “I think there’s some very good music coming out of it. If you were up there on that stage and could feel all that energy, especially ‘With A Little Help’ with four drummers, I never experienced anything like that. It’s like a train going down the track.”

Cocker admits he was a little uneasy joining on the American leg of the tour. “I felt a bit edgy about joining the whole outfit; if I could live up to it...”

What does he mean?

“C’mon, man, there’s some heavy talent out there.”

Yet it has worked, Clapton’s guitar playing accentuating Cocker’s voice.

“I was really apprehensive at first about that,” he remarks, “because I thought there would be a lot of purists out there who were going to say, ‘That ain’t right.’”

Because Clapton is a blues guitarist?

“That’s what I mean. I’m more a soul singer than a blues singer, but, I mean, Eric’s adapted over the years, too, hasn’t he? He does ballads.”

What does Cocker think has made it all work?

“I think because we all get along really well as people, which is surprising. There’s no stars, no moods. Which is a surprise, really.”

Did he expect the audience’s tremendously positive response when Ronnie was brought out to sing “Goodnight, Irene”?

“I’ve got to say, that was Eric’s idea. Ronnie didn’t want to go out there, but the multiple sclerosis thing is basically what this tour’s been put together for. And I don’t think getting Ronnie out there is trying to bring any pathos into it, he’s just a great geezer. And it’s good to let kids see just what multiple sclerosis does.”

Seeing Lane assisted onstage by Clapton, seeing Page give Lane the thumb’s up sign for strength and hope and seeing 20 thousand people applauding him does bring it all home; the reason why everyone has undertaken this tour.

What does it all mean to Lane?

“A busman’s holiday, I Suppose,” Lane cracks with an impish grin, his sense of humor shining through. He’s just been wheeled into a backstage dressing room to talk, and is being helped out of his wheelchair and onto a sofa. He contiriues, a bit more serious, “Well, it’s great, it’s fantastic that it has come over here, that it’s got this far. Really. I intended originally for it to get a hyperbaric oxygen chamber for London, and that was that. But the musicians, they really enjoyed playing with each other. I provided the excuse and they wanted to bring it over here and put out the same vibe in America about what ARMS is doing in England. You know, maybe life is worth living.”

Does it bother Lane that many people at the shows aren’t aware of MS and ARMS but have bought a ticket to see the talent onstage?

“It’s not so much that they’ll know when they get here, but maybe they’ll know after they’ve seen me. Maybe they’ll bother to find out. Not a lot of people want to know about such a thing. I can’t say I...I can understand it. I’ve been the same. It wasn’t until I got it that I realized.. .it’s a strange disease and the attitude towards it is strange, even from the doctors and the...” he trails off, then reconsiders.

“Maybe the doctors and the medical people don’t think that their attitude is strange, but from where I am standing, their attitude is not good at all. It’s not very impressive, you know. They don’t know about it and all they can offer you is a wheelchair. And they sat ‘Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Stress is no good. You’re gonna get crippled. You’re gonna be a cripple for the rest of your life, but don’t worry.’ Now that’s a bit of aSsuppance, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t it? Or is it just me?”

It is a puzzling attitude alright, as puzzling as Lane’s future. Yet in many ways, though = physically much weaker and smaller look^ ing than his friends onstage, he is much J stronger than all of them put together, o There’s a gleam in his eye, a spark of achievement regarding these concerts where the others look more in amazement at what they have set out to do. Lane leans slightly forward on the sofa to discuss what is in store for him.

“I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve got a long way to go, but I think with the help of this hyperbaric stuff, I’ll be able to get this disease under control. What’s the matter at the moment, there was a time when it was completely controlling me, and, uh, it was terrible. But now I kinda feel I’ve got it coming around my way. And when it comes around my way, who knows what’s going to happen. I’ll go as far as I can, mate.

“What’s really weird,” Lane continues, “is “I that doctors are still saying this hyperbaric ^ oxygen stuff is a load of baloney and it doesn’t help at all. Yet, without me taking it, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be able to speak to you ’cause my speech...I sounded like a drunken man all the time, and I hadn’t had a drop. And they all said I was no good. Now isn’t that strange?”

Lane doesn’t know why the hyperbaric oxygen treatment has worked for him, nor why many doctors steer away from it, but he is happy that rock ’n’ roll is bringing this matter to light,

“I mean, I like to think positive,” he confesses as he is being helped back into his wheelchair, “and, I think there’s got to be a reason why I got this, you know? There’s got to be a good reason.”

A medically explainable reason?

“Nah, a spiritual reason.”

Karma?

“That’s what I like to think, yeah.”

If that’s the case, there’s a lot of good to come from these concerts.

“This is what I hope. This is what I’m hoping,” Lane shakes his head in agreement, “All right, mate, I’ll see you later,” he says in a positive tone.

He waves as he is wheeled out of the roorrt.