Keith Moon & The Who all left me in my office. I was hoping Bob Dylan would still speak to me!

Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend and John Entwistle left my office as I continued to speak to Paul Wasserman, Bob Dylan’s publicist, on the phone. I asked where Bob Dylan was going after the UK, and he said Holland, Germany and France. I asked if Morgan Renard was going to all of them. He said all of them except France. So, naturally, I asked if I could photograph a show in France. He waited a moment, and I could hear the cogs turning, and then he said, okay, you can, but we won't pay for any of your travel. I asked if I could shoot the whole show, which was the norm in those days, and he said yes.  I asked where I would collect the pass from, just in case I had to collect it in London or something daft like that. In any case, I wanted to ensure there were no mistakes or holdups on the day of the gig in Paris. He answered my questions about the photo pass and asked me to bring a print of one of the photos from the London Standard so they could see if they wanted to use it for the US tour. I said it’s the ‘Evening Standard’. I am not sure he was too impressed with me correcting him again. But that is what it was called, the ‘Evening Standard’! I agreed to take a print and said that if they used it, we would need to discuss a fee, which he said was fine. He also told me that after the gig in Paris, I should go to the backstage door and ask for him. This was so he could collect the print from me.

When it was time to go to Paris, I looked in a London-based magazine called Time Out, where I saw an advert for a bus company called ‘The Magic Bus’. You could buy a ticket from London to Amsterdam or Paris for ten pounds. So, on that day of the gig, I met up with the bus in London. It was a very early start, which was horrible for me as I was always more of a night person. I jumped aboard “The Magic Bus’. I can't remember exactly, but there were about 15 passengers. The driver had one eye looking at the oncoming traffic and the other looking around the corner. He had a face fit for radio and would have been better suited driving a hearse in a horror movie.  In reality, it was a dented and damaged old grey Ford Transit van with bald tyres, one wobbly wheel and seats in the back that seemed to have a strange relationship with the floor. I say strange; they were loosely connected to the floor and moved and slid around in the back of the van. The only benefit of them being mostly unattached was that they became, at times, rocking chairs. So, on a reasonably long trip to have free-flowing chairs made it slightly more interesting. There were no seatbelts in those days, and it was quite shambolic.

As we left London and headed towards the south coast, I realised I was in a vehicle that was going to limp from London to Paris.  I was sitting next to random, sweaty hippies. Nobody seemed to know anyone else on the bus. But, as the saying goes, birds of a feather flock together. It didn’t take long. Once we got going, the smell of grass (hashish) wafted around the van. Joints were being freely passed around the bus, and pretty much everyone except me took a big old lug and passed it on. It didn’t take long before the next joint arrived and wafted past me.  Our driver, who also resembled the actor Marty Feldman (if you don’t know him, Google him) but without Feldman's good looks, also took part in the consumption of joints being passed around by his paying punters behind him.  We had joss sticks & incense burning in the back, too. It was a proper hippy bus.

Dover harbour as we were about to set sail to France.

The guy next to me was on his way to Afghanistan via Marrakesh. He had a long, heavy Afghan hippy coat, a cheesecloth shirt, jeans, flip-flops and loads of beads around his neck.  He also smelt of a similar incense that I used to smell at a London venue called The Roundhouse. It was a common and popular kind of hippy smell. Many people will know exactly what it was, but I don’t remember, as I didn’t want to smell it. I was more of an ‘Aqua de Silva’ boy at the time. Oh yes, I was very sophisticated.  Well, at least I thought I was.  Now, everything he or I said was followed by him saying “Far Out Man” or “That’s Cool” When he spoke to women on the bus, he called them “Honey Baby” or “Hot Stuff”. He was also into transcendental meditation, or so he said. I only wished that he practised what he preached and did some meditation. He didn’t stop talking to me once I foolishly mentioned that I had photographed Bob Dylan and that I had nearly spoken to him in my office. That was it; he had adjusted his seating position to face me slightly, and he didn’t stop talking. He asked me question after question but often didn’t wait for my answer before the next question came hurtling towards me. I found it exhausting. I guess the fact that I had been on the bus since around 8 am and had only slept a few hours the night before made it even more tiring for me. It took a while before he introduced himself. His name was Arrow, and I think he thought he was my new best friend. Fortunately, there was no way for us to stay in touch. This is a gentle reminder to anyone who doesn't know how it was back in 1978. There were no mobile phones or the internet, and therefore, there was no Facebook, Twitter, or anything else. Just postal addresses and landline telephones. We finally arrived in central Paris on this hot July day.   We got off the bus, grabbed our possessions, and said goodbye. Arrow’s adventure involved now getting to Spain and across to Morocco and eventually sitting around campfires in Marrakesh probably meditating and getting stoned.  He said that he was aiming at the Khyber Pass, Iran, and Afghanistan. I wasn’t envious at all. Even though the countries he was going to visit were very different from today, the ‘Hippy Trail’ didn’t appeal to me in the slightest. I had more of a magnetic pull towards the USA. That is where I thought it all was for me.  My plan that day was simpler and more straightforward than his. I just wanted to get to the right venue that night and photograph Bob Dylan. So, we all said our goodbyes and went in separate directions, never to meet or see each other again. I didn’t smoke cigarettes or anything else and never have, but as I walked away from the Magic Bus due to the company I had kept and in such close proximity on the bus, I realised I was now smelly, stoned and hungry. As I walked through the streets of Paris towards the nearest Metro

A quick shot whilst I was walking through Pais to find the Metro Station.

I quickly grabbed some French bread with ham in it. The bread tasted so much better than in the UK. That French bread immediately brought a memory flooding back. I clearly recalled eating it as I walked to the Metro to get a train over to the area where the venue was. I had been to Paris quite a few times before this, but I remember my first ever time in France and Paris was eight years before this, when I was around eleven years old. My dad was working in Paris at an exhibition, so my mum, my brother, and I got a train from London’s Victoria Station to Folkestone on the south coast of England, where we got a Hovercraft to Boulogne in France.

We boarded an SNCF French train to Paris. However, as we got off the Hovercraft, my mum was trying to get my brother and me to board a train that I pointed out to her was going to Brussels, so, at least I was alert at eleven. My mum was well known for getting lost in a supermarket. She would always walk out of a store and in the opposite direction of the car. When we were kids and lived in the East End of London, my parents bought a new car, a bottle green Mini.  Mum got out of the car and went into a shop. My dad sat in the car with my older sister, my younger brother and me in the back. When my mum left the shop, we all watched her walk straight up to another green mini along the road in front of us. She opened the door and got in. We could see the driver sitting and reading a newspaper. We watched her sit there for a minute and then jump out of the car. We were all laughing as Mum walked towards us and got into our car. She said that she asked him why there were pots of paint on the floor on her side of the foot well. When the driver dropped his newspaper, to see who she was, they both realised she had got in the wrong car. She swiftly jumped out, looked around and saw us. There were many other situations where she would get completely lost in a shopping mall or something. As we set off, en route to Paris on a busy SNCF train, we bought French bread with ham from a seller in the carriage. It was very different and much nicer to what we had in England. So, at least the French bread was still rather nice and brought back happy memories. Anyway, I digress.

Back to 1978 and on camera one: I had left the bus and was now heading to the Pavillion de Paris. It was now early afternoon, and it was the day of the gig. I arrived at the Metro stop, Porte de Pantin, the nearest station to the ten thousand-seater stadium.  I was relieved that I had found the right place and was early. I knew I had to wait until the evening. I wandered around the perimeter of the big building. I was generally wasting time until the evening gig when I was walking past the backstage door when a coach with a sign in the front window that said ‘Bob Dylan’ pulled up next to me. That would never happen today; nobody would put a sign in the window to let everyone know who is inside it. Then it stopped, and the doors opened. The coach was on my left-hand side, and I had a camera out and hidden from them on my right side. Suddenly, Bob Dylan is right there,