Some notes on a week in the British Isles, courtesy of Rock Junkets Ltd.:

First of all don’t ask me anything about the folklore of the common slobs, because they put us up in the Ritz. Which is not exactly like waiting around for some boogie band in a Holiday Inn in the middle of Iowa. They practically had to pry me from my room to go to the concert: “Uh, send the band up on a tray.” Oldstyle decadent elegance at apogee, my suite had two enormous beds, as well as a sitting room and two bathrooms, one for the toilet and one for everything else. Under such circumstances one develops a lightning appreciation for the more civilized ways of the Empire even in decline, rather than being irritated by the relative blandness of the natives, as I’d been on Slade trip in 1972. No room service menus because they just assume you know they’ve got everything. I should have thought to order enchiladas, but I did all right, especially when I woke at 6 AM with monstrola hangover and called down for remedy. I figuredJhey’d send up the British equivalent of AlkaSeltzer, but five minutes later the porter knocks and hands me an envelope with four white pills that looked like Quaaludes (but weren’t) in it. I wash them down and 20 minutes later I’m kicked back, grooving to tapes, practically on the nod. (I found out later the reason for this is they can sell codeine preparations with mild sedative sans script in Angleterre; when I told NME writer Mick Farren about my experience he snorted: “My mother’s been giving me those things for headaches since I was five years old.”)