Originally Posted by Paul Noonan

The bus that we were travelling and living on last week used to belong to Tim McGraw, who I’m told is a popular country music artist. It was an old Silver Eagle bus that had seen better days, but was the classic gleaming chrome number, and bigger than most European buses we had been on. There was a framed picture of Tim McGraw on the bus, him resplendent in stetson hat and denim, his foot up on a bale of hay.

At about 3am last Saturday morning, the glass on the picture smashed, the picture yellowed and caught fire. An offering of sorts.

the-burning-bus2.jpgYes folks, our bus went on fire in the car park of the Boston Medford Hyatt Hotel and by now has been dismantled and sold for scrap.

There were four of us on it at the time, noticed a little more smoke than there should have been, and alighted to find the power generator on fire, flames leaping from the side of the bus. We ran into the hotel, shouting at the poor night porter for a fire extinguisher (which was a little inadequate by the time we got back out to the bus, the fire having spread) and my friend Mike called 911. Now Mr Flav, I must disagree with you, but 911 is no joke. Within 3 or 4 minutes (long minutes, watching the bus go up with all of our gear in it), 3 gleaming fire brigades swung into the car park, sirens blaring. And then they put out the fire.

The rest of the touring party were roused and we stood around, bleary or adrenalised in the flashing lights of the fire trucks and noxious battery acid smoke. When the firemen said it was safe to do so, we opened the cargo bays of the bus to find our gear toasty but intact. The bang off it though! All the cases were caked in awful black shit that we can still smell.

They kept finding pockets of fire in the roof lining, so had to rip it all down and knock out a window to get rid of the smoke. Poor Phil sound engineer, who’s bag had yet to be found by the airline, and who had bought himself some lovely new out-fits, had left said outfits in his bunk and were covered in the afore-mentioned black shit. And Tim’s iPod, which was found by Mr May (as the scary bit receded, we realised that there was a bit of a hen-party buzz about it all – hot firemen in their gleaming chrome and hoses) and returned to him in quite a filmic moment, was no longer working. (Mr May sent us an email saying he hoped eveything was OK)

We were very lucky. Didn’t lose anyone or any of our gear. And we were heading to New York the next day, where we were coming off the bus for a week anyway.