We’ve been very busy since the last tour diary. I’m writing this from my hotel room in Nagoya just before our last Japanese show!
Finally we have recorded our third album, ‘Classified’. It was a great experience, which we all enjoyed, having the opportunity to write and record our own tracks as well as collaborating with our main producer, Youth.
We all agreed that Explosive had a great energy and chose it to be the single. We decided we needed to be in a tropical climate so we flew to Cuba to film the video!
It felt like a long time since being there for Victory and it had changed a bit. It seemed a bit more commercialised than before.
One night we decided to go out for a meal at a place called Fraise et Chocolat. As soon as we went in we recognised the staircase and realised it was the same place we filmed Victory 3 years earlier!
Our taxi home was an amazing red Cadillac from the 50s! Only in Cuba!
Sven Harding, the director showed us the results when we got back, and we were all delighted.
We went to Moscow for a show, which we shared with Danni Minogue. We spent many hours wandering around the Kremlin and we took in the beautiful scenery of Red Square. The show went well and we came back laden with Caviar and Vodka!
A couple of days later, we travelled to Berlin. On the first night we were very excited to be joined for dinner by the world-class cellist (not to mention joke-teller) Mischa Maisky!!!
He had us in stitches for most of the meal! But the main reason for being in Berlin was to receive a prestigious award from the Five Star Diamond Hospitality Academy.
Gianfranco Ferre kindly dressed us for this occasion- where we also met the famously tanned George Hamilton- TANFASTIC!! He wouldn’t let us go without trying to set Haylie up with his son!!
The next morning, we caught a private jet to Athens and performed at The Woman of the Year Awards.
By now we were all absolutely shattered and had an early night before flying to New York to perform at the Waldorf Astoria.
After the gig we dined at the glamorous Spice Market, where we met up with the Chefs who had also won awards in Berlin. We ate very well that night, as the Spice Market is a 3 Michelin star restaurant. They very generously treated us to our meal.
So now to the tour.
After a few weeks’ rehearsals with our new band in sunny London,
We headed off to Taipei. We went straight to a TV show as soon as we got off the plane. None of us had slept on the flight so we were all exhausted. Luckily the show was very entertaining- and I was sitting next to some people from the Amazon who were all dressed in their tribal clothes and body paint- it was quite bizarre to be sitting on set laughing at jokes in Taiwanese that none of us understood! At one point one of them turned to me, saying ‘maybe in many moons we will understand this language’, the concerts went well and we flew back to the UK for a day before heading to Düsseldorf for a private show. We only had one day there before the mammoth flight to Sapporo in Japan, via London and Hong Kong. It was pretty scary coming into Hong Kong because we landed during an electric storm and our plane was hit by lightning twice! We arrived in Sapporo 32hours after having started the journey in Germany.
Luckily, we had a day to recover before our first Japanese concert.
It was really good fun to be performing all the new tracks and watching the audience’s reaction. We never know which ones will be the favourites until we’re on the road in front of live audience.
The next day we had yet another flight, this time to Tokyo. When we landed we all headed straight out to Shibuya to catch up on some shopping! As arranged, we met our camera crew in a café by the Shibuya crossing. They filmed us as we wandered around the streets looking for presents for our friends back home.
They were filming us to make a documentary for my home country of Wales, and they followed us for the next three concerts. I had to do a lot of the interviews in Welsh, which felt quite incongruous sitting back stage in Tokyo and Osaka with everyone around me speaking Japanese! I loved speaking Welsh again; I had missed it since moving to London 10 years ago.
We always love Japan because the fans here are so enthusiastic and give us a lot of energy on stage, whilst being very respectful and polite when we meet them afterwards or on the street. It seems like the best of both worlds.
After our Tokyo concert we caught the Bullet train to Osaka. Today was my sister’s birthday and I couldn’t get in touch with her because the dialling code had changed. Eventually I managed to get through and just left her a message. It is this sort of thing that makes me really homesick on tour.
The audience really picked up my spirits in the concert though- it went really well even though we broke a string in the acoustic set!The next day we travelled back to Tokyo on the Bullet train, and as we stopped at Kyoto, about 10 beautiful geishas boarded. They looked amazing, with their faces painted white and flowers in their hair. We all signed copies of our album and handed them to the ladies. They seemed very pleased.
The second Tokyo concert was great fun- and the audience were fantastic- they all ran down the front and were dancing and clapping along. It was one of those moments when we realise just how lucky we are. I had been absolutely exhausted before going on stage but after the concert I felt elated! We spent about an hour signing CDs for people after the gig.
Some of them told us about a cartoon in a Japanese comic that is based on Bond. We had to go and find ourselves a copy!!
The next day we started off with some promotion; a radio show on ‘J wave’ and then a TV show. We flew to Hiroshima and had the morning off, so we went the Hiroshima Museum. It was very moving.
The show was good fun again, and the audience were fantastic.
So tonight is our last concert. We’ve just done the sound check and we have about half an hour before the house lights go down, so I had better go and change into my concert clothes.
Bye and I hope you all enjoy the pictures!!!
Eos xxx
