This text is from the Clutching at Straws tour programme (funny thing to put there, as one of the carrying themes of Clutching was the problems with alcohol.. oh well). The file is copied from the Out of this World pages and formatted by me.
Bloody Caesars
A cocktail. The Marillion tipple in Canada.
Clamato juice (clam and tomato juice) and Vodka with
celery salt around the rim - indigenous to Canada.
Brandy Alexander
A cocktail. A staple Marillion drink, particularly while in America.
Britannia Hotel
A Manchester hotel and a favourite watering hole for Marillion on their jaunts to the North of England.
Cafe American
A bar in Amsterdam
Fish: "This place is beautiful. Architecturally it's stunning, all art deco. And the place mats are actually printed with line drawings of the cafe. It's one of the most amazing examples of art deco in Europe."
Cafe Untro
A bar in Berlin.
Mark: "This was the first place we went into in Berlin."
Fish: "It's a Tequila haunt, if you drink 10 Tequilas you get one free... we always went for the free one! Definitely recommended as a Tequila establishment."
Pete: "We all thought the free one was a good idea at the time."
Steve: "And quite happily spend £100 just to get it!"
Carlsberg Special Brew
A beer. A non-British Marillion favourite.
Cat & Fiddle
An English pub in Los Angeles, much favoured by visiting British rock stars.
Fish: "This is the place you go to when you need a remedial pint of British beer half way through the tour, just when you're beginning to forget what it tastes like!"
A favourite of the Amsterdam Hard Rock Cafe.
Mark: "The chocolate milk tastes great but you have to add the brandy to turn it into a proper cocktail."
Directors Bitter
A beer. A Fish favourite.
The bar underneath Hansa By The Wall Studios, now renamed The Harlequin.
Elephant Beer
A beer, fairly obviously.
Fish: "This stuff by the ton is wonderful!"
An Austrian restaurant in Berlin.
Fish: "It's run by this beautiful 60's lady who's into jazz records. This is where the famous walking-naked-through-the-restaurant affair happened! This is where we all got completely smashed after a horse-radish eating competition and I walked stark naked throught the restaurant for a bet with all these gay waiters taking photographs... I still don't know what happened to them. There was a lot of money bet for certain appendages to be left dangling out of the trousers on the way back from the toilets."
Pete: "Fish also wanted to bet us he could swim across the canal here."
Guinness
A beer, indiginous to Ireland. A favourite beer for Fish.
Hammersmith Odeon
A famous London venue. The backstage bar is to be avoided though.
Hangover cures (The Marillion Method)
Fish: "A 'Resolve' tablet or 'Nurofen' taken just before bed along with a vitamin C tablet does wonders. And drink a pint of water. But if I've got a really bad one I take a Prairie Oyster."
Ian: "The best cure is to do 50 press-ups, a few lengths of th pool, go hang-gliding..."
Hard Rock Cafe (The Amsterdam version of the famous hamburger chain)
Fish: "This place does the best chocolate milk and brandy in the world."
Hippodrome
A famous London nightclub. To be shunned at all costs.
Hobeck
A beer. A Marillion preferred ale.
Formerly El Capo.
Japanese Barman
A bar-room game, played solely in Japan.
Convince the Japanese barman that Scotch Whisky is better than Japanese and that you can taste the difference. Get him to supply the challenge shots.
Jack Daniels & Coke
A drink. The quintessential mix for any serious rock band, Marillion included.
Layson Street
A street in Dublin, Ireland, renowned for its illegal drinking dens
Fish: "This is a great place. They'll charge you $30 for a bottle of wine but they serve the best pint of Guinness in the world."
Lexington Queen
A bar in Tokyo.
Fish: "That place is a cracker, because if they think you're a celebrity you get free drinks when you drop in there. It's run by a gay Australian journalist."
Mark: "A real 'Lexington Queen.' And he has all these incriminating photos of famous people on the wall so you can see who's been there before you."
Limelight
London version of the New York and Chicago nightclub. The VIP bar is "shit" however.
Lindy's
A New York bar, favoured by Marillion for its waiters who double-up as comedians.
Fish: "You walk in and they just start slagging you off. Great place."
Long Island Iced Tea
A cocktail.
Fish: "This is a classic Marillion cocktail!"
Mark: "It's got brandy, tequila, gin, vodka, triple sec and sours and a dash of coke. And it tastes like iced tea!"
Fish: "The story goes it used to be drunk by college students because they weren't allowed to drink alchohol and everybody thought they were actually drinking iced tea!
Lyon
A French city patronised by Marillion members in search of "the best Vietnamise and Thai restaurants in the world."
Maclays Eighty Shilling
A Scottish beer and a favourite Marillion pint.
McEvans Export
A Scottish beer and another Marillion recommendation.
Mampe Halb Und Halb
A German liqueur drink at Exils but not as strong as Schteins.
Marguerite
A Marillion favourite aperitif.
Marillion Might Out [sic]
A typical evenings drinking with the band.
Including:
Heinneken or very spicy Bloody Mary's
Champagne (with optional oysters)
Red and white wines
More beer
Jack Daniels and Coke interspersed with more beer
Mayflower Hotel
A New York Hotel, much patronised by rock stars, and the bar even more so.
A bar-room game played at El Capo. Also known as 'Sink the Bismark'.
Fish: "How you play is you get some matches and set them up in squares of four matches each, all joined together. Then at either end, the stern and the bow, you add two more matches to form triangles, and at the bow you also put an extra match as the flagpole. Then you get three dice, and every time you roll a 1, you take a match away, working from the stern back. In each compartment there's a drink and every time you open up a compartment you get to drink it -- mostly shots. Polish vodka, Russian vodka, neat gin -- and whoever gets to take the flagpole, the last remaining match pays for the whole round, all the drinks set up on the ship."
Mark: "One night, after a game of Miss Piggy we all went off in two cars to find a curywurst to eat. Chris Kimsey and Fish were in the first car, and they decided to hang a quick left. We tried to follow but went across the island, up onto the pavement, and round a lamppost and smashed the car to bits."
Novotel
Any bar in this hotel chain is to be avoided.
Old Hookey
A beer and yet another Marillion recommended tipple.
Oyster bar
An Edinburgh, Scotland, bar.
Fish: "This is my all-time favoutite sawdust-on-the-floor type bar. Art deco and with an incredible revolving door."
Ian: "No, it just seems to be revolving when you leave."
Parker-Meridian
A New York hotel, residence to be taken up only at the record company's expense.
Perrier with a dash of lime juice
A non-alchoholic drink that Ian Mosely claims is his favourite. Not a reliable source.
Pint Glass Rim
A bar-room game.
Mark: "You bet someone a pint you can get your mouth round the rim of a pint glass."
Fish: "And Mark is the only person in the world who can do it! I used to put him up against people for money so we could buy fish & chips in the early touring days."
An assortment of types. Basically unspellable, unpronouncable and largely undrinkable to all but the most hardened
Fish: "These drinks are really smart... great if you put them in the freezer for a while."
Posey Nightclubs
Places around the world never to be seen dead in.
Rusty Nails
A cocktail
Fish: "A shot of Drambuie and a shot of Malt Whisky and ice... and it tastes like rusty nails."
Pete: "But it works."
A German beer much favoured at Exils for its strength.
Sexual Trivial Pursuit
A favourite bar-room video game.
Alternative name for the Miss Piggy game.
Slalom
A bar-room game.
The idea is to send a radio-controlled car down the bar and see how many people's drinks you can knock over. Not recommended for single drinkers.
Stockholm Opera House
A converted railway station. More art deco.
Fish: "They've got great food there."
Mark: "And an amazing disco where this spaceship comes out of the ceiling and all these lights pour out of it!"
Sugar Shack
A Munich bar and preferred stop-off point.
Upside Down Club
A hotel game invented by Pete Trewevas, a former TV repair-man.
Pete: "What you do is take the back off the TV and reverse the screen-image so that it's upside-down. It's quite easy if you know how. Then when you leave you turn the TV upside down so that the next person who comes to stay in the room looks at his TV and immediately turns it back the right way up. Then when he turns the TV set on the image is upside down, and then he gets really confused!"
Volvo Dancing
A street game requiring a Volvo, loud music and some particularly drunk participants.
>Fish: "We'd left Exils and gone onto the Cafe Untro for the Tequila run and then we climbed on top of the Volvo and started dancing to the beat of '1812 overture' and singing along. There were three of us and the Volvo roof just caved in. And a woman who lived in one of the apartments above got so pissed off with this noise at 4am she started throwing eggs at us! Raw eggs!"
Mark: "They were landing on us, Splat! Splat! And we couldn't work out where all these eggs were coming from."
Fish: "She wasn't shouting, just throwing these eggs! So my entire tour jacket was covered in egg for weeks, I couldn't get it off! Oh, and the Volvo was trashed."
White Russian
A cocktail. Marillion's favourite drink on the 1983 US tour.
Wild Turkey
A drink. The worlds finest bourbon.
Fish: "I'm actually beginning to prefer this to Jack Daniels."
Lexicon from Clutching At Straws tour booklet © 1987 Dave Dickson.