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Rob Mullins talk about his recent World Tour
Around the World with Rob Mullins
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This had to be the most interesting of all the tours I've done. First off, its really nice
touring with a movie star who has sponsorship from Planet Hollywood: there is no carrying your gear,
the hotels and airlines are first rate, and the money is wonderful....
Plus, it doesn't hurt that Bruce is a first class guy, who actually takes care of his
band and cares about the music, and the quality of it.
I'm just going to tell you all about more of the interesting stuff that happened while we were traveling, and
please no questions about Bruce and Demi..if you want gossip, go somewhere else..lol.
So enjoy the journey, and check out what its like to be on the road....it has its ups, but it
certainly has its downs as well, as you will see.
CANNES
A truly remarkable worldwide event that happens annually is the Cannes Film Festival
in Cannes, France. No, its not pronounced CAN, its pronounced CAHN, like the actor
James Cahn, in case you were wondering.
Thousands of movie industry folks, and quite a few fans gather at one of the most
beautiful spots on the French Riviera for a week to celebrate new and old films,
and the like.
Our gig was at the Planet Hollywood in Cannes, which was right in the center of town..
about two blocks away from the Palais (casino) where all the movie action was going on.
The whole town was buzzing with activity, and there was some really funny promotional
gimmicks: such as a larger than lifesize Godzilla the was placed across the whole front
of the Carlton hotel, rofl, it was hilarious.
The high point of this city for me was the afterparty which was in nearby Antibes, where
there are the most exclusive hotels in the world.
I had a chance to meet Brooke Shields, Matt Dillon and some other celebs there, as well as some
very interesting movie people. Most of the band went to the party after the gig and we had a blast till about 5am.
I was there two nights, and on the second night, thousands gathered outside the casino
to see the stars going into the 1998 Adult Film Awards....no thanks, I think I'll pass.
Some of the band got pretty excited when they saw that all ages of females were topless
at the beach, as well as at our hotel pool. This of course, had no effect on me (heh heh heh).
ZURICH
Zurich Switzerland has to be one of the most fabulous spots in the world.
The town has a large river running through it, and its the home of some very cool and
very old buildings...some dating back to the 1100's.
Our gig in Zurich was supposed to be outdoors, but they had some kind
of religious holiday going on, and we had to be inside at the Planet Hollywood, which was
kind of small for such a large band.
I was thankful for the bodyguards and security on that day because the audience was packed
up against us like sardines. I remember Bruce being in a great mood, and buying the audience
200 shots of tequila that night as part of the promotion for the Grand Opening.
It was really cool when I saw an old friend of mine, Sam Simms, Janet Jackson's bass player,
on the stairs walking in front of me after the gig. I said hello to him, and he told me that
Janet was in town doing an arena gig there in Zurich the next night.
Bruce was DJ'ing at the afterparty that night, and almost all of Janet's band came..including
Tina Landon, Janet's choreographer. I've always loved Tina's work, and that night we started talking
about dance and stuff, and well, that led to this...................
WOOHOO! Tina invited me to come to Janet's show the next night in ZURICH!!!!!!!!!
Of course I was thrilled about this invitation...and I went. Over 15 thousand people
were at her concert, and it was much more than a concert, it was an EVENT. Tina had come up
with something really new dancewise too that involved dressing the dancers in black outfits
with masks on their heads...doing wild stuff with skateboards all over the stage. If you get
the chance to check out the velvet rope tour, its an event not to be missed.
DUBAI-Persian Gulf
The next day it was nervous time for me: we were heading into the Arab Emirates, and I
was really not happy about going there. I think some of the other band guys were a little
nervous about it as well, since that part of the world always seems to have some
tension going on. We were headed to a small country just down the coast of the Persian Gulf from
Kuwait,
called DUBAI. Dubai, or not Dubai, that is the question....lol
To make us all a little more uncomfortable, we were able to watch CNN after we landed
in Dubai and find out that India and Pakistan, which were right across the gulf from us, were
playing around with their nuclear bombs while we were there. Great, just what I needed to hear.
The coin you see to the left of these words is the Arab Emirates equivalent of the silver dollar:
and they have a lot of them there! The average income of the average person in Dubai
is 1.2 million dollars a year.
This particular place was where most of the wildest stuff of the tour happened. I'll start with the gig
itself...........15,000 people stood for nine hours in 118 degree heat (there was almost no seating for this gig)
just waiting to see the Hollywood Celebs and hear us perform. I was just blown away that that many
people would wait that long for an event to get going.
The red carpet they had rolled out for us and the other celebs seemed to be
a mile long and MTV and a million other media types were there as well.
check out this crowd in the background...something else don't ya think?
Here's a pict of the giant Planet Hollywood Globe that is attached to the outside of
Planet Hollywood Dubai.
For you music nuts here is a pict of my keyboard setup that I used on the whole
tour.
Celebrities in attendance at the Dubai afterparty included Sylvester Stallone, Cindy Crawford, Patrick Swayze,
Tia Carrera, Bruce, Naomi Campbell, Wesley Snipes, and a bevy of aspiring supermodels from the Elite
Agency. It was quite a party to say the least.
Probably the two wildest things that happened in Dubai were
1) when a sheik tried to purchase our three background singers, and attempted to
kick all the male band members out of a private club and
2) when our trombone player, Jack
Hale, who is 71, had a stroke in the airport when we were trying to leave Dubai.
Jack is a great guy, and has been touring and playing bone forever, and well, I guess
the extreme heat got to him. The cops came over, Jack went to a hospital, Jim the sax player
went with him, and the rest of us tried to explain to the police what we were doing in the
airport with no passports (the road manager and our passports were missing when Jack
had the stroke).
London
It was great to get out of the Middle East, and feel the feeling of a country a lot like
America, which made our trip to London a great one.
Jack went home to get well, and we had a great night helping Planet Hollywood London celebrate
its 5 year anniversary.
The crowd outside and inside Planet Hollywood was enormous on that night, it was just an
ocean of bodies, I don't know how else to describe it.
What meant more to me than all the Hollywood hype though, was getting to meet one of my
fans, Andrew Wierzan, a 13 year old pianist from London who had been sending me fan mail for quite some time. Andrew
really likes the "Dance for the New World" CD, and I had promised him and his family I would call
them while in London. I was able to do a little better than call them that night: I was able to get
them a table right in the front of the show, where they sat smiling from ear to ear. I got the nicest thank you
from the Wierzan family when I got home: A CD rom presentation that Andrew and his sister Imogen made for me complete with
graphics and sound wavs. Mum also hand made me an English waistcoat which is hanging in my closet.
I thought you might want to see Imogen's drawing that she did of Bruce and the Band, so here it is.
Well, that's some of life on the road! Hope you enjoyed the trip, I sure did. Like the Musical
Director for Bruce says: "Touring with Bruce. Three chords-Five Stars."
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