Paul Franklin being unhappy on OES tour

[Rail King]

If we go by Ed Bicknell's recent interview, the On Every Street tour must have been a terrible experience for most involved. Paul Franklin, he says, maybe had the hardest time of them all -- if it's true, he even took sleeping pills so he didn't have to interact with anyone on the rare days off.

I wonder why that was. Chris Whitten also said on this forum how miserable many band members were on that tour, and that Mark wasn't very appreciative of their contributions, but he also says that Mark was full of admiration for Paul Franklin. So why would it have been Paul, of all of them, who had such a hard time? Was everyone else envious? Or did he simply not fit in, being from Nashville and all ...?

If anyone has any insights into this, please share. I've always loved Paul Franklin's contributions to Dire Straits' and Mark's music, I've heard/seen a couple of interviews with him, and can't imagine why you wouldn't get along with him.

[herlock]

Paul Franklin is a virtuoso, and seems to be a very nice chap.
This being said, he was overused at any rate on the OES tour, to the point that some songs are spoiled and even unlistenable. Pedal steel on TR is just atrocious !

[Love Expresso]

People can be homesick, generally sleep bad in different Hotels every night, different weather/climate, just not used to touring which we know from MK is tough and not for everyone. It must not automatically have something to do with the vibes in the band.

LE

[Love Expresso]

Paul Franklin is a virtuoso, and seems to be a very nice chap.
This being said, he was overused at any rate on the OES tour, to the point that some songs are spoiled and even unlistenable. Pedal steel on TR is just atrocious !

In your opinion, not generally spoken. I thought it was used perfectly well and in also perfect balance with Sax and MK's guitar. Unlistenable and overused are words that come to my mind however when I think of the brass boys on that Whatsoever Tour.

LE

[herlock]

Paul Franklin is a virtuoso, and seems to be a very nice chap.
This being said, he was overused at any rate on the OES tour, to the point that some songs are spoiled and even unlistenable. Pedal steel on TR is just atrocious !

In your opinion, not generally spoken. I thought it was used perfectly well and in also perfect balance with Sax and MK's guitar. Unlistenable and overused are words that come to my mind however when I think of the brass boys on that Whatsoever Tour.

LE

Well, ok, matter of taste. I found the brassies sounded fab on WAM for instance (but overused in GH, SAN, SFA...).
As for pedal steel, I think it really shined when it was discrete (on SOS and on TOL for instance), but on songs like TR it was just too much. Just like salt in the soup: with no salt at all it is a bit tasteless, but with too much salt it is unbeatable 😊

[dustyvalentino]

Just a guess, but my understanding is that Paul is essentially a Nashville based studio musician.

I’m not aware of him touring, except NHB and DS but I could be wrong.

My theory would be he had a great time on the small scale NHB tour, having fun without pressure and with Brendan and Steve.

So he agrees to go on the OES tour out of respect for MK as a musician and the allure of going on a rock stadium tour with one of the biggest acts on the planet.

But things sour, by this time MK’s marriage is falling apart, he’s an ogre (Phil Palmer’s word), the tour isn’t selling as well as hoped and it ends up not being what he expected at all.

[stratmad]

Probably a big mix of many things.
I've been wondering about the "American" factor, although I'm not sure if it played a role. Sometimes life can be difficult in teams where Brits and Americans work together, although you'd think it's one language, one culture. Same with Germans and Austrians, in my experience. Maybe it's the same with French people and Canadians from Montreal, and  people from Spain and Mexico. You somehow assume that everyone thinks and functions in the same way, and you're not even aware that you were brought up in two different cultures, and you don't even realise that there's some hidden conflict going on. Hard to describe.
Maybe it's not a factor after all in this case, because half the solo band are Americans.

[Jules]

I remember that Chris Whitten mentioned in a forum that Paul Franklin was afraid of being losing too much sessions in Nashville while touring with DS, probably fearing that other Pedal Steel player would take his future sessions when he would be back.

Obviously there was nothing to fear about!

[Rail King]

People can be homesick, generally sleep bad in different Hotels every night, different weather/climate, just not used to touring which we know from MK is tough and not for everyone. It must not automatically have something to do with the vibes in the band.

LE

Sure, that would be reason enough, and the socializing (or fear thereof) may not have played a role. I'm only asking because Ed Bicknell said so.

[Matchstickman]

Chris Whitten also said on this forum how miserable many band members were on that tour, and that Mark wasn't very appreciative of their contributions, but he also says that Mark was full of admiration for Paul Franklin. So why would it have been Paul, of all of them, who had such a hard time? Was everyone else envious? Or did he simply not fit in, being from Nashville and all ...?

To me, it always seems odd to hear and watch Mark call Paul "the greatest pedal steel player in the world", say "Yeah, Paul!" after the Walk of Life solo, and really, genuinely seem more appreciative of him than of most other players he has ever played with. Nice for Paul, less so for the rest of the guys on stage 

[stratmad]

I wonder if they ever considered just stopping the whole thing half-way through. That would have meant a financial loss, probably, and a great loss for the fans, of course. But maybe it would have been better for the musicians.

[Mossguitar]

I wonder if they ever considered just stopping the whole thing half-way through. That would have meant a financial loss, probably, and a great loss for the fans, of course. But maybe it would have been better for the musicians.

That could have meant legal cases for breach of contracts and for causing economical losses. And if I understood Chis right, it wasn’t that bad for everyone. John, the keyboard twins, Danny and Chris White seemed to love every bit of it, and when the shows started, everyone was professional and did their best.

[Knut]

It seems ridiculously unprofessional to let it go on like that without doing anything about it, though. You'd think there were some people management skills SOMEWHERE who could make sure that if someone had a bad day, it wouldn't affect the rest of the band negatively. If the "bad day"-guy was Mark himself, in particular, at the age of 40+ with years of experience you should really know better than letting your shit drag your mates down.

[Jules]

I wonder if they ever considered just stopping the whole thing half-way through. That would have meant a financial loss, probably, and a great loss for the fans, of course. But maybe it would have been better for the musicians.

That could have meant legal cases for breach of contracts and for causing economical losses. And if I understood Chis right, it wasn’t that bad for everyone. John, the keyboard twins, Danny and Chris White seemed to love every bit of it, and when the shows started, everyone was professional and did their best.

Yes, according to what Phil Palmer says in his book, he only accepted the OES tour because Eric Clapton's manager told Clapton's musicians that after Eric lost his child, they should accept any work as there was very little chance of work in the near future, but then Clapton decided that the best way to cope with his lost was being busy and called all his musicians again, Palmer tried to cancel the DS contract but he was told that he would have big legal problems as the contract was already signed, and he had to do the OES tour instead of the Unplugged Clapton record and the following tours...

[stratmad]

I wonder if they ever considered just stopping the whole thing half-way through. That would have meant a financial loss, probably, and a great loss for the fans, of course. But maybe it would have been better for the musicians.

That could have meant legal cases for breach of contracts and for causing economical losses. And if I understood Chis right, it wasn’t that bad for everyone. John, the keyboard twins, Danny and Chris White seemed to love every bit of it, and when the shows started, everyone was professional and did their best.

Yes, Phil Palmer only accepted the OES tour because Eric Clapton's manager told Clapton's musicians that after Eric lost his child, they should accept any work as there was very little chance of work in the near future, but then Clapton decided that the best way to cope with his lost was being busy and called all his musicians again, Palmer tried to cancel the DS contract but he was told that he would have big legal problems as the contract was already signed, and he had to do the OES tour instead of the Unplugged Clapton record and the following tours...

Of course there's always a heap of legal stuff to consider, and as a "hired" musician you wouldn't normally pull out of a tour, for obvious reasons.
But you can always get out of any contract, unless you happen to be Robert Johnson (😈)...
MK, John and Ed could've stopped the whole thing in a controlled fashion when they saw it wasn't going well and everyone was just suffering. Tours get cancelled for all sorts of reasons, and there might even be an insurance to cover part of the costs. But for some reason they decided to go on and finish the job, or maybe they didn't even consider stopping.
I was just wondering why they did. Maybe it's a British thing to just soldier on, maybe they didn't want to disappoint the fans, lose their reputation ("hardest-working band in the world"), or whatever.
It's maybe just something that wasn't usually done in the 90s. Today it would be a different thing. A lot of people (not just artists) just pull out of jobs, marriages or things they are supposed to do because they feel it's too much for them.