Across the Pond

This was to be a highlight of my trip. The Palladium has seen over the years many legendary rock and rollers including Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and many, many others. Today it's mainly used for musicals.

Buddy played there on March 2nd 1958 on a TV program entitled, "Sunday night at the London Palladium." We were there on March 11th, 2001. It was also a Sunday, and I ran into a spooky ordeal right before I went on.

I was down in the old dressing rooms and trying to tune my guitar with a tuner. The needle on the tuner was going every which way and not landing on any note. Sometimes this can mean the battery has expired so I put in a new battery. It still did the same thing! I even tried a new chord. No luck. By this time the stage manager is telling me that I'm on! I frantically explain what's occurred and Chuck runs down and gives me his tuner. It does the same thing! It doesn't work! What the heck am I going to do?

I have to go on so I grab my tuner and head up to the stage. I get up there and have about 15 seconds before I go on so I quickly try my tuner again. It works perfectly! I'm thinking what the heck but relieved that it allows me to tune. My set goes well and the crowd is great. Afterwards I repeat the whole experiment for my own satisfaction and curiosity. Both tuners fail to work down stairs in the dressing room and both work fine upstairs backstage. The only thing I could think of to make this happen was the fact that below the stage is a huge magnet(which didn't occur to me at the time) that used to be used in revolving the stage sets. It had to be that or...ghosts?