from Andy Taylor's book:
Then, just as everything seems to be coming together fine, I notice Simon’s voice is getting a tad croaky. He looks great, but it’s been a while since we were last onstage together, and one gig isn’t enough to get the voice back into shape. I can tell he is straining to hit the notes and there’s still that note to come as the song reaches crescendo. I hope he isn’t thinking about hitting that note . . . “Thinking” is a bad thing when you perform, I muse. Then, shit! His voice suddenly gives way . . .
“With a vie-yoo-ow to a kill!!!” he screeches right at the end of the song, with no time to recover. All bloody live . . . Well, at least he ain’t swimming with the fishes. I grimace and the cameras capture everything—again all live, but so what? It doesn’t matter and it was sort of inevitable. We carry on playing, and the number ends to rapturous applause.
Now it’s Simon’s turn to speak to the audience:
“Hello. Good evening to Philadelphia, to the whole world that is watching,” he says triumphantly as the crowd settles. “Tonight, we are here to celebrate something which has worked so far . . . This is a song called ‘The Union of the Snake.’”
Then we slow things down a bit with “Save a Prayer,” before Simon gees up the crowd one last time.
“If you’ve got any energy left, we’d like to see you dancing,” he tells them, and we finish with “The Reflex,” another recent US number one, which wins the audience over big-time, and they go nuts. As we leave the stage the cheers are still deafening—not bad after Zeppelin, I think to myself, but which bastard put them on before us? . . .
