In a House With Unlocked Doors… Part 5

In a House With Unlocked Doors… Part Five

By Sharon Mitchell

Vegas, Baby

Winding back to the day I met the band in London, I couldn’t wait to get home and post the five or six photos I had taken to Facebook, along with a blasé, “I just met Green Day in the street – as you do!” There followed a ton of responses from friends, all asking about the encounter, and I was still answering them when a chat box popped up, asking how they looked. I replied that they were tired, jet-lagged and hungover from Mike’s birthday celebrations the previous day, but polite, kind and lovely. That person and I had a long conversation, starting what has turned out to be a good friendship. She turned out to be a member of one of the band’s family, (I couldn’t believe it, either, but it’s true, I promise) and a few weeks later, she suggested that we went to Las Vegas to see the show there, because it was going to be a good one, and that she would be there too. Graham resigned himself to the fact that having a non-flying wife, this trip wasn’t going to happen.

Except that I said yes. He’d booked the flights within five minutes, and we were all set for our first trip to America.

Vegas was a whole new world. We stepped into the hairdryer-hot air in late August, 2009 and made our way to the Mandalay Bay Hotel, which also happened to be the concert venue. The first road we turned into in our taxi-cab ride from the airport was called Paradise – another great coincidence.

The show was a couple of days later, on Friday 21st, and we joined the queue early in the morning, inside the air-conditioned building, and with toilets and a Starbucks close by. That was very civilised. I knew a few friends were going to be there, but we ended up with a party of about twenty five after a few surprised me with their presence, and by some miracle, most of us got into the sound-check.

That was amazing. We had a private performance for around 30 in total, the highlight of which was the band playing Misery, at the request of a friend from NYC, Lauren. Billie refused her request at first, saying he had forgotten the words, but when Lauren said she had printed them out for him, he gave in. After the band left, we were given food and drinks backstage, in the “Rock and Roll Room”, where we also got free t-shirts and a chance to play the new GD Rock Band. The sticks on the drum set were Tré’s, and we were told he was playing the game before we got there. After the party, the host told us to take any of the posters from the room, because it would save him the trouble of clearing it later – we didn’t need to be told twice, and those drum sticks disappeared, too!

The show was great, although I did not get a chance to meet with the person that invited us in the first place, because this was the day that a childhood friend of the band died, and the memorial was back in California. The band were deeply upset by the news, but you would never have known from their performance.

It was a long way to go for just one concert – 11,000 miles in total – but it was worth every mile, every cramped hour on an aircraft, every airline meal, especially as we won tickets to see the next show the following day in Phoenix, which involved five hours each way driving through Nevada and Arizona deserts. We had a couple more free days in Vegas before we left the USA for home, but promising we would go back to explore this wonderful, friendly country.