Steev Toth

The Mission to Lars started today next to a tea shack on the A39 to Minehead, we were on our way to see a guy called Steev Toth who has been a sound engineer and tour manager for bands including The Cure, Erasure, Alice Cooper, Fun Loving Criminals, Crade of Filth and Depeche Mode. We'd stopped for tea at PJ's Hotspot in a layby and Will went, "I guess our roadtrips started." Tom was laughing and happy; I knew, once the fundraising party was over, I'd be feeling the same way too.
Steev's recently divorced and lives with his quiz mad Mum, his son, Storm, and a couple of cats in a small village near the Quantocks. He'd just got back from a tour in Japan and he had tour manager written all over him. Full of mental rock n roll stories, drug tales to make your eyes pop out your head, and an absolute softie. You couldn't make a character like that up, he was perfect.
He was really sweet with Tom.
Tom loved the stories about how Steev has to herd naughty rock stars into bed and how they have rules on tour buses about no smelly feet and no farting.
He gave us some excellent ideas for tour bus living, our Winnebago in LA is kind of like our tour bus now. He gave us some excellent advice about how to get backstage at gigs, and how to not be a boring fan when you meet your heroes. His son Storm made an excellent cup of tea. Tom did the whole interview wearing a luminous yellow reflective jacket. Don't ask me why. That was the style he was dropping today.
Tom's excited about the film now, and about the trip. The challenges are there and real, but he's already packed and ready to go. Janet, the manager at Bystock has got his cash money and the one dollar the bloke at the pub that Tom goes to sometimes, took off the wall at the pub and gave Tom the other night when we went for pints and pork scratchings.
I've just got to get through the party tomorrow, which caused all manner of hullaballoo today as I tried to shoehorn party planning into a full days filming. I'm having this party with some of my favourite women ever; big personalities, and we've managed to get through the whole thing without one fight. But today, the day before lift off, there was simmering potential for lady punch ups over the seating plan which I've been obsessing over for the last three days.
We nearly had no wine because I forgot to give delivery advice to the wine sponsor, Journeys End, I was hurtling down the M5 talking to Journey's End's owner, Rollo Gabb (who throws the best parties ever at his family home, Stanley), who said, you've got exactly 8 minutes to sort this out.
I've got to go to bed. Or my head's gonna explode, it's been a long day, I had a hangover, and we drove hundreds of miles. If we hadn't drunk gallons of tea I don't think we'd have made it.