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Saturday, 1st June 1996
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Jakarta, Indonesia Tour Diary - By Joe Elliott

Saturday June 1 - Jakarta, Indonesia.

Much ribbing about my "performance" at the Hard Rock had to be endured on yesterday's flight here, so I thought it best to keep my head down. Boy, it's another hot one. We're backstage at this enormous outdoor thingy (officially it's a stadium but it's more like a field with a stage at one end) and it has to be 100 degrees. We arrived at the venue by boat as it was quicker than the road and we soundcheck for an hour or so. We can't keep the guitars in tune because of the temperature, but it should be OK when the sun goes down. Tonight is being filmed for TV so we'd better be good. We've rehearsed Let's Get Rocked today (its first airing in two and a half years) because as much as we're really not into doing that song any more these kids are nuts. Since we've never played here before, we figured it would make a good compromise if we made it the last song of the encore.

Everything seems to be ready. The cameras aren't too intrusive so off we go. Then the obvious happens. It's a full moon, we're filming for TV and three minutes into the set the bastard power goes out leaving us looking like the bridegroom who turned up at the altar without his trousers on. A few years ago we'd have gone bananas, but with our new found "looseness" we just shrug and walk. It's a good 30 minutes before power is restored so the natives are well and truly restless. We need an ace up the sleeve to pull this one off so we start all over again but this time we open with Action, which was a massive hit down here.

Much to our relief, plenty of leaping up and down is going on so other than a two-second power hiccup during Photograph it goes well and thank God we did Let's Get Rocked! Brad our sound god, comes in the dressing room and proceeds to throw loads of 20 dollar bills in our direction and then his entire wallet! This was what's called in the biz a sound man's nightmare. The power apparently was fluctuating between 220 volts all the way down to 175 volts. The generator must have come out of Hitler's bunker! Much as I'm tempted to keep all this new found wealth, I pick up Brad's dosh, hand it back to him and everybody calms down a bit. Me, I thought it went OK but others had their reservations.

Time to forget about it and move on. And move on we did. To the biggest karaoke bar you've ever seen! Robbie, our local record company rep, has organised a private suite with free food and drink and a giant TV with a catalogue of what must be 2000 songs! God I love being in this band. I'm desperate to sing Fly Me To The Moon but as it was the first one up it turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax. The best, my friends, was yet to come. We made Phil sing Miss You In A Heartbeat, the only Lep song we could find (wrong words, et al). We all did a few which for credibility purposes shall remain ever secret, but the highlights were Viv's unbelievably accurate Elvis on Love Me Tender (The Pelvis never sounded this good): Sav's Strawberry Fields Forever , particularly memorable for his very passable Lennon nasal performance, but the Tin Of Biscuits goes to guitar techs Stan Schiller and Dave Wolff who both nailed Axl on Welcome To The Jungle. Dave more for the voice, Stan for the shapes. A hilarious night. Highly recommended harmless fun. I always thought karaoke would be a bit sad and maybe for some it is, but try telling that to me at 4:30am!

I hope that Dave Wolff can "do" me too, because I think I overdid it a bit tonight. I might need him to be me at the next gig. Thank God we've got two days off. See ya!

(To read the next part of this diary go to the Kuala Lumpur show page.)

By Joe Elliott in Q Magazine 1996.

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