Lenny Kravitz and Joss Stone are playing in My Garden

Lenny Kravitz is playing a gig in the park up the road from me. I can hear one of his support acts, Joss Stone, from my garden now. I am, of course, reminded of the time I played a gig with her. From my book Jim Bob From Carter – In The Shadow of My Former Self. It’s 2007, I think.

In June, it was time to find out how strictly enforced the supposed Glastonbury ban on Carter was. I was booked to play in the Left Field tent, the festival’s political zone, where political speeches and debates mixed with pop music. I was on the bill as part of the Shelter Affordable Housing campaign. Joss Stone was the secret headliner and was responsible for one of the funniest moments in music I’ve ever witnessed.

It was so muddy at Glastonbury that year. In my blog I said, ‘To get across quite how much it rained, at one point Team Jim Bob found themselves sheltering in the ambient trance tent.’ Going to see anyone else play soon stopped being fun, and I had to keep the team’s dwindling spirits up by pointing out to them every time we trudged past the Pyramid stage that I had once headlined it, looking around us on the ground for any foam balls still left behind. I’d heard the balls were worth a bit of money on eBay.

In case you don’t know, when Carter headlined Glastonbury (Carter headlined Glastonbury), we fired thousands of sponge balls into the audience with the name of our latest single ‘Do Re Me, So Far So Good’ printed on. We had planned to drop the balls from a helicopter but couldn’t get permission from the Civil Aviation Authority. The same spoilsports who wouldn’t let us fly a giant inflatable Brussel sprout above Battersea Power Station a few months earlier. At Glastonbury we had to fire our balls from two giant cannons at either side of the stage. But that’s not why we were asked to leave.

There were no cannons or helicopters for my 2007 Glastonbury return. Just me and an acoustic guitar. We pitched our National Geographic tents and unpacked our National Geographic backpacks and made our way through a mile of thick brown soup to the Left Field stage and the backstage green room, where all the seats were taken up by various union leaders and their entourage. We stood in a corner. At least we were out of the rain.

Billy Bragg was in the green room. I used to know Billy. Carter had hidden from him in a cupboard at Wembley Arena because he wanted to talk to us about the war. We hid from Jonathan King in the same cupboard on the same day. We may have been childish idiots, but we didn’t discriminate. Obviously, Billy Bragg didn’t recognise me, and I had to face my usual dilemma of wanting to say hello but not wanting to have to explain who I was.

After about five minutes of eavesdropping on Bob Crow from RMT, I noticed Marc was talking to Billy Bragg. After a while, Billy came over and said hello. He told me he’d heard that Carter had just sold out five nights at Brixton Academy. He said he was going to have to split up and reform too. Five nights. Classic Marc Ollington.

After my gig, I did a video interview for the Love Music Hate Racism people. I was attempting to make a very clever point, which I started with the words, “Everyone is a little bit racist”. They stopped filming and thanked me before I managed to complete what would have been my very clever point and give any much-needed context for my almost proud-sounding “Everyone is a little bit racist” declaration.

A little later, Joss Stone arrived backstage. She tested the ‘we’re all in it together’ ethos of the Left Field stage, if not the whole festival. First a sofa was carried into the ‘portable building’ dressing room. Presumably the sofa had come from the green room, and Bob Crow had to get up. For a transport union leader he didn’t seem to like moving about much.

Joss Stone’s rider arrived, and a load of teddy bears were brought to the dressing room. Mister Spoons says I’ve made this detail up, but I definitely remember teddy bears. After two days’ worth of bands traipsing in and out without removing their Wellingtons, the dressing room was just as muddy as the rest of the festival, but it did now have a settee, some soft toys and a huge rider in it. It looked like Pete Doherty’s bedroom. Joss Stone arrived with her team and me and Spoons went out front to watch her. The tent was pretty empty and it must have been soul destroying (no pun intended) for Joss.

Her band came on first. There were about a hundred of them. They were all fantastic musicians, horns and keys and guitars and a wall of backing vocalists etc. They started playing, establishing a groove. All good so far. And then the funny bit. The song reached its crescendo, and the backing vocalists sang something like, “Here she is, Miss Joooosss

Stooonne!” and the band all turn to face the side of the stage. Nothing. No Joss Stone. Everyone in the band smiled awkwardly and then slipped back into the groove. Starting the song again, until it reaches the crescendo for the second time, “Here she is, Miss Joooosssss Stoooone!” Still nothing. No Joss Stone.

Marc Ollington was backstage and he later told us what was going on. While the band were playing the big introduction number, Joss Stone’s manager, who was also her mum, wasn’t happy about her client, who was also her daughter, having to walk barefoot through the mud to get to the stage. It wasn’t until somebody made a long strip of carpet from flattened cardboard boxes that she could reach the stage without getting trench foot.

According to Marc, Joss Stone’s fifteen minutes of vocal warm-ups consisted mostly of her repeating the words “To the left. To the left.” Which is ironic, as just before she arrived in the Left Field tent, all the trade union stalls and the stalls set up to promote various political causes allegedly had to be removed.

I played the Left Field tent at Glastonbury twice. In 2007 (mud) and in 2008 (dust). In 2008 I was booked to play for half an hour, which was then cut down to twenty-five minutes, and then, just before I went onstage, because everything was overrunning, I was asked if I could maybe do a tight twenty. A similar situation in 1992 had led to us having a huge row with Michael Eavis and eventually being asked to leave. By 2008 I’d either mellowed with age or I couldn’t be arsed arguing anymore. I obediently played my twenty minutes, rushing through the songs without talking so that I could fit in as many songs as possible. I feel a bit guilty for not making more of a protest. You could say, that like Joss Stone, I was going against everything the Left Field stage was supposed to be about.

And here’s a song and video inspired by Lenny Kravitz.

Come see me live this year

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