Lest your think book tour horror stories are purely an American phenomenon...
...we have Andrew Mueller to prove it's universal. Or at least British, also. From Part One of his tour diary for The Quietus.
There is no aspect of the rock & roll life more mythologised than touring, and I should know. Having given rock & roll the proverbial best years of my life, writing for Melody Maker, then assorted others, I did my little bit towards furthering the idea of touring as a splendid and enviable mobile Saturnalia. Which is to say that I lied. Not lied as in related palpable untruths, but lied in failing to pass onto readers the whole truth, which is this: tours are only fun when they're someone else's tour, in which case they're about the most fun you can have. When they're your own tour, as most people who undertake such things will confide after a few drinks, they're an excruciating, dignity-destroying process which will steadily cause you to loathe, in this order, your most recent work, your audience, yourself, everyone, everything.
I once interviewed Harry Shearer, now best known as the voice of much of The Simpsons, but a genuine rock & roll immortal due to his portrayal of bass player Derek Smalls in This Is Spinal Tap, the purest essence of the touring experience ever distilled. While wrangling my tape recorder, I remarked that I'd first seen the film as a teenager, and thought it amusing satire. "Well, thanks," said Shearer. And then, I continued, I became a rock journalist. "And now," grinned Shearer, "you know better, right?"
I embark on my own tour, therefore, with some trepidation. In order to interest the reading public in the UK edition of my new book, I Wouldn't Start From Here [Soft Skull's publishing in January in the US] - an account of one peripatetic hack's bewildered stumbling around the political, philosophical and actual frontlines of the 21st century - my [UK] publisher, Portobello, has arranged for me a series of manifestations in bookshops and associated establishments. My first reaction, naturally, is to become gripped with visions of Artie Fufkin, the hapless press officer from Polymer records, penitently inviting Spinal Tap to "kick this ass for a man" after organising an in-store appearance at which even the two men and a dog of fable have failed to show. Nobody, I reason, knows who I am. My book contains no boy wizards, no excruciating accounts of childhood hardship, and isn't by someone who is on television.