Largo/Landover, MD - Tour Diary

Joe Elliott - 3rd November 1992 KERRANG! Tour Diary Quotes

Okay, it's a fair cop! I've got to hand it to you guys at Kerrang! You got me sussed. I can't deny that the style in which I wrote Part One of my tour diary was very much based on Ian Hunter's 'Diary Of A Rock 'n' Roll Star'. Y'see, Ian is my hero, and has been for a lot longer than Chris Robinson has been in long trousers, so no shame in that!

And while we're on the subject of your wonderful rag, I gotta reply to the bozo who wrote in to Kommunikation, regarding my 'criticism' of Deep Purple. Okay, I can accept that maybe Deep Purple '75-ish (Coverdale, Hughes) was valid...but JOE LYNN TURNER? Leave it out, P-L-E-A-S-E!

Boy, we have pulled a fast one tonight! It's election day, and we're playing the Capital Centre, Landover, which is basically Washington, DC! So I get one of the local guys to go get me a stars 'n' stripes top hat for the Uncle Sam look to add to the obvious carnival atmosphere that there should be tonight. Think, I'll save it for the encore...

We've got an information network second to none tonight, passing details of the election to the stage via walkie-talkies, TV monitors, you name it. Wish we'd been able to do this in Britain!

So we do the gig, which is going really well, with yours truly cracking jokes all night long about the three candidates (it became pretty obvious we're in Perot country here!). Don't think I should give up my day job yet, but the line about "I won't be talking politics tonight" - which of course I did - went down well when I said - "Well, like most politicians, I LIED!"! Not quite Rik Mayall, but good enough for a white boy from Sheffield!

Just before 'Armageddon It', which is three-quarters of the way through the show, I get the nod that Clinton is trashing Bush and Perot pretty well. I'm thinking, shit I'm not reading this out here - they'll kill us! We're going down a storm, though: I think maybe the light atmosphere we've created relieved a bit of crowd tension, but nevertheless, 15,000 people are obviously dying to know what's happening to their country. Ha! They'll have to wait a little longer!

Encore time rolls around, and we've worked out a party piece for the finale. Yes, you've guessed it - Alice Cooper's immortal 'Elected'. Up I pop in my happy hat and coat-tails and announce, "There's a new sherriff in town, and he goes by the name of...Bill Clinton!".

WRONG! Half the crowd want to throw themselves off the balcony, but for the rest it's a mixture of joy and disbelief!

We do the song, though, which goes down like a fart in an elevator. Oops! It was still a good night, but it was a bit like being 5-0 up and then letting one in in the last minute...

By Kerrang! 1992.

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