When I arrived at the studio, there was a brand new set of drums that I’d never played before. We rehearsed for a few hours. Well, it wasn’t really a rehearsal. Ener, Roland and I knew what each other was about but Don and Bunk hadn’t played any of that stuff for about 10 years. |  | The next day, we went to Rome and played at an open-air Jazz festival, held at a big tennis court. We stayed at Sandro’s villa for four days - every day we went into his studio and rehearsed for about five hours. We left Rome and played in Bern, Switzerland. By then, the band started sounding much better. We’d rehearsed and we knew what was going on - sort of! |
| We went back to Germany and played our first gig with the Muffin Men in Solingen. We played nine double shows with them during that tour.
We had some fun times. The Muffins would open with a 90-minute set, then there’d be a short break and we would play a 2-hour show. I used to join the Muffins at the end of their set to sing ‘Willie The Pimp’ and then most of the Muffins would join us at the end of our show and do ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ and ‘Who Could Imagine’. |  | At the end of the tour, both bands went into the studio to record their new CDs. The Muffins completed a 72-minute CD - Say Cheese And Thank You - in about 12 days. I got to sing on some of the tracks on that album. It was really too early for the Grannies to go into the studio, we weren’t ready to make an album. We never did use any of the stuff from those sessions. |
