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on the 21st August 1990 They say this tour was jinxed. I think think they may have been right. Though it certainly wasn't just Mac who were jinxed. When you decide to do something like this at that very point of excitement, nothing can make you stop. Oh yes, you can wait for seven hours, you can starve yourself, you can push yourself to the verge of dehydration all for Stevie. You can have blisters, sunstroke and sunburn, oh yes, you can have an argument with your friends, have heart failure as you run across pitches and arenas but you don't mind as it's all for Stevie. You do it because you know that for two and a half hours you're going to be able to stare longingly at how her. It doesn't matter what you have to go through, your body can take it and your brain very sensible knows how to block out Physical pain, uncomfortableness and Gary Moore fans. And to think this must happen to concertgoer everywhere. How anyone's managed to survive concerts such as these without even a whiff of Valium is beyond me. At the Flanders Expo, things somehow managed to be much worse. We obviously queued, we dehydrated, we got burned, etc, etc We took flowers and pressies and wormed our way right to the front. Then we waited and waited and boiled and waited until Gary Moore came on and twiddled his strings. At quarter past ten, the curtain came down and the music started. I could see Stevie's silhouette, her hands out to her side, her hair carefully arranged on her shoulders. The curtain lifted to the rafters and everybody screamed, what else could we do? "In The Back Of My Mind" passed quickly. I can't even remember it now. "The Chain" was the more prominent because of Stevie, boogieing and head banging. All the things she hasn't done for years. Her first song was of course "Dreams", but it somehow didn't register, neither did "Isn't It Midnight" or "Oh Well", perhaps i hadforebodess of what was to come. Then "Rhiannon" at last. I wondered to myself how many years i had waited to hear it live. It was great but not brilliant. MaybeI'vee reached a stage whereI'vee expected too much from Stevie. After all, she's doing the best she can. After the joys of "Rhiannon" came the misery. Stevie had made a quick exit, Chris mumbled something to the effect that they all would have to leave the stage as John had hurt his finger. Mick as spokesman came to the microphone to verify this, saying John would need an injection so he could carry-on playing. They left us waiting in the dark amongst the crowd's expectant banter, all foreign to my ears. And then, from the corner of the stage, we saw Stevie's clothes been taken away and we knew in our hearts it was over for us. Mick sidled sheepishly to the microphone and announced the worse but deep down inside , we already knew. He said they'd be back in September which was too late for my sister and i, we would be back home by then. We clapped Mick, after all it wasn't his fault. There were boos and whistles from elsewhere in the arena which made us show our allegiance more heartly. Mick ended by saying that in the 25 years he had known John McVie, he had never known him to miss a gig. We clapped yet again and he gave a pert bow towards us and left the stage. It was then that my brain woke up to all the pain I had inflected on myself that day. It was the last straw and I was in tears in five seconds flat. We fought our way back to the cars and sat pensively for half an hour , waiting for the traffic to clear. I told my friends i couldn't go though all that again so soon, not just for five songs. Linda agreed with me and said we'd better go. We drove back ….. All that we were left with was hope for Utrecht. Michelle |