As an introduction to business travel goes it could hardly have been less glamorous. “This is the last van they had,” explained the singer, “we should have got there earlier. That stench comes from the fact that this van has already been out since 6am delivering fish.”
It was a hot Saturday lunchtime in Manchester in the mid Eighties and I was about to travel to Scotland on a three day tour with the little known pop group Big Flame. It was a commission for a now defunct music paper called Sounds. It was work, my first job and I was already horribly aware that in those days the van was not only the transport but quite often the accommodation too. It’s fair to say that by the time, ten years later, I had graduated to flying round Europe and America with U2 in their own private Jumbo jet, on a cover story commission for the Sunday Times Magazine, I had absolutely no qualms about enjoying the highlife. To this day the memory of sleeping in the back of the van between a roadie and a mic stand is still more vivid than slipping into a champagne induced snooze between two gorgeous looking air hostesses.
If you’re lucky, business travel can be a euphemism for swanning around the world enjoying the finest things an expense account can buy. If you’re unlucky you’re confined to the road-going equivalent of a trawler. I, as you now know, have had the pleasure of experiencing both.
In the early days as a music writer I never considered it business travel. The New Musical Express, where I had become Features Editor, would be constantly invited to travel all over the world to write nice things about rock and roll bands. A PR would buy your normal class ticket to America, pay for you to stay in pretty normal hotels, and all you had to do was get to the airport on time, be nice to the PR, have a few drinks with the band, and come home after a few gigs.
It’s fair to say I was rude to the PR, rowed with the bands, got terribly drunk and missed half the gigs. But aside from the good times I struggled with the travel. Before the launch of the Paddington Express getting to LHR by public transport was tedious, especially if you only left yourself thirty minutes to do the hour long journey. There’s a sign at Leicester Square Tube claiming it’s 47 minutes on the Picadilly Line to Terminal 4.That’s presumeably without the legions of tourists who get on and block the doors with their outsize bags in the museum district of London. Sprinting down the long distance walkways to the terminals is a hot and tiresome affair. After a while I gave up carrying luggage because it would just slow me up on this leg of the journey. I thought nothing of arriving in New York mid summer in a thick black suit looking for the nearest cheap army and navy to buy some clothes and a bag to put them in.
This was pretty much standard travel procedure for me for most of my twenties. Ill prepared, ill at eased and poor. The whole thing was a pain in the arse and transatlantic flights were only improved by the knowledge that every time I got to JFK Airport I could get out my own company Amex and book the ten minute chopper flight from the TWA terminal into Manhattan. Missing planes, not being able to read departure boards because glasses were broken, sitting hot and sweaty in tight uncomfortable seats upholstered in cheap man mad fabrics. The memory of all of these problems were washed away by the sound of those blades chopping up the air on the tarmac, welcoming me in to a big comfy seat with my name on it. Sixty dollars it cost but as far as I was concerned it was the best journey in the world..
Once I ‘d launched my magazine, loaded, and it had become a hit, one of the first things I implemented was a significant increase in the standard of business travel. It didn’t matter if there were five of us going to Argentina or Australia ; and there frequently were, it was a car or two to collect us at both ends, business or club or whatever they called it, lounges, good hotels the lot. I was still happy to sleep in a cave floor or in some woods if the story demanded it but as far as I was concerned as soon as we started travelling faster tha man can walk we would be doing it in extreme comfort and style. It’s fair to say that our company was not the best if you were a fellow passenger, loud, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life never mind customs. But we predated Air Rage Offences and only once was I peeled from the plane in a wheelchair.
Nowadays if there’s no choice in the matter I’ll take a bed in whatever shape or form it’s presented. You can only eat cake for so long before you get use to it, your ego ceases to be excited about such trivial matters, and so long as you can get your head down and a decent meal that should do. That’s if you have no choice in the matter. The point is. Once you’ve skipped through your early thirties and you’ve long since stopped comparing your age to your wage you should have all the choice in the world.
I recently travelled to New York for a lunch with a client that involved him putting me up at the Mercer for four days and taking me over there in Virgin Upper. I liked that. It made up for the vans that smelt of fish. The hotel has a boutique feel and a clientele you can either watch in the foyer or on the DVDs in your bedroom. There’s an Apple store next door which is handy for presents. From the start of my journey I was picked up at my house and deposited through the back door fast track Virgin operate. In the Lounge I bumped into one of my best friends who was on his way to a music festival. Strangely we were both flying to New York, to the same hotel and were sitting next to each other. He started out as a tour manager back in the seventies, now he runs a famous worldwide record business. As he settled back into his Virgin bed I looked over the divide and asked him, “did you ever sleep between a roadie and a mic stand.” And his eyes lit up in a horrified flashback.
You’ve a long life a head of you, make it your business to travel in style, but never forget where you started out. That way the comfort feels even better.
