OES rehearsal and preparations

[diremania]

Can anyone or does perhaps Chris W, elaborate on how the specific rehearsal for the OES tour go? I’m
Into the specific details regarding how the rehearsal was planned and conducted over the notorious three month time, during the summer of 1991?
Does anyone know the details?

Sorry if this allready has been covered in another thread

Txs
DM

[Chris W]

My memory is hazy.
I think it was a mix of trying out songs, like one or two times through, so mark could see how they felt and if they were something he wanted to work out in detail. I guess someone like me who hadn't played the songs before was given a live tape to revise from.
Also, songs that were definitely going in the set - classics plus the OES songs. They were just worked on in detail. Like down to the specific arrangement.
Calling Elvis evolved into the 15 minute epic over several days.
Mark was the finale arbiter. Alan and Guy were like musical directors suggesting ideas and reminding mark how a song was previously played.
I remember playing a few songs a couple of times and mark saying no, he didn't want to play them on the tour.
Of course, throughout the first leg (UK and Europe) we were still adding songs, taking songs away.

There was definitely an 'orchestration' type approach, very little improvised. Do this tom fill here, play that crash there.
Only the solos were improvised.

[diremania]

Thanks Chris. That’s was the kind of details I was curious about.

[wayaman]

Thanks Chris. I guess that was so much long ago than you wouldn't have anything from that time, like those tapes or sheets with the setlists used for those sessions.

I remember reading in Palmer's book about MK having Danny playing shakers for hours until he decide to take out some of the content of one of them and being that the chosen.

I guess there would be many stories like that.

[dmg]

Thanks Chris.  These little details are gold to die hards like us! 

Can you recall any songs rehearsed that never made it into the set?

[Chris W]

Not really. A few songs were tried, played once, and never tried again.

[GuitarChris]

Thank you very much, Chris!

I have got a question to the Romeo and Juliet guitar solo at the end of the song of the "On Every Street" tour.

Unfortunately, this beautiful solo is not included in R&J at the "On The Night" CD. I have heard versions of R&J from 1991 where Mark had played it and at the versions of 1992 I have heard it was not played anymore.

Do you know why Mark has stopped playing it?

[noizpop]

That solo is exactly the reason for me to prefer BIA’s Tour R&J, beautiful piano ending on OES tour, but less brilliant IMO.

[Chris W]

I thought there was always a solo.
It was switched to Paul F. So the solo was there, but played by Paul on pedal steel.
Checked both OTN DVD and Basel.

[diremania]

Chris: do you remember how this, allegedly exhaustive rehearsal periode went? i.e. did you show up 6 days a week, from 10-18 at Bray studios, did you get "homework" for the day after rehearsal or was it some kind of surprise what Mark wanted to play and in which order? Did you rehearse with full sound/light, changes at all time, or how was it organized?

[Chris W]

Like I said, memory is hazy.
It was just the band in a hot dark room for quite a long time.
5 days a week, yeah, probably 10am-6pm, although these things are always fluid, some days shorter, others longer.
I seem to remember I didn't know what we were going to do each day. Maybe some days I was told the evening before to check out a song for the next day. Can't remember.
Towards the end, maybe the last week or last two weeks, we set up in a bigger room with the full production - monitors, PA and lights, so the crew could work on their set up.

None of this was that extraordinary to me.
Paul McCartney had his own rehearsal space. We had finished his new album, then set up in the rehearsal space. We probably spent a month just jamming, trying out songs from his repertoire, all the while making videos for the singes of the album, plus at least one documentary, plus magazine interviews. We kind of rehearsed for Paul's tour for 4-6 months, while doing tv appearances, interviews, videos and documentaries.

[drparkinson]

Thank you Chris for your answers so far.

Can I please ask you a few more questions relating to this time - if you can remember!

There was an MTV special that had some 1991 rehearsal excerpts of Calling Elvis and Planet of New Orleans:



Can you remember if these songs were filmed in full and if any others were also filmed?

There were 4 songs recorded for a Timothy White radio show broadcast in the US in March 1992:



Can you remember when these were recorded? Was it also during the tour rehearsals in the UK or was it done later in the US for the radio show?

Also, regarding the at the time "unreleased" songs played on the early part of the tour - Think I Love You Too Much and The Long Highway - it has been rumoured but unconfirmed that these may have been recorded for the On Every Street LP. 

Can you remember pre rehearsals if you were played any studio versions of these songs to learn from or if it was mentioned at the time that they or any other tracks had been recorded for the OES lp and left off (or not used as b-sides)?

I appreciate it was a long time ago to remember such details, but thanks in advance.

[Chris W]

I thought the MTV interviews were filmed at the production rehearsals just before the tour, but the fan interviews are from outside Wembley Arena, Sept 1991, so I think it was all shot around the Wembley shows. The weather would confirm this.
Funny that John says the tour "has a much better vibe than the Brothers In Arms tour", better band etc...

[Chris W]

I can't remember recording the US radio show.
I also can't remember what we were given to learn I Think I love You Too Much etc...
Being a quite simple rock blues, we might have just played it by ear the first time through.
I 'auditioned' for DS by playing along to the album cuts at Air Studios as they were mixing the album. I don't remember playing anything that didn't end up on the album.

[Robson]

I've always liked the version of Iron Hand from this session for Timothy White better than the album version.