Alex James Eeez Unwell... February 2000

I've been in Mexico for 36 hours and I'm standing 12,000 feet above sea level with my newest friends watching the sun rise from the top of the Pyramid Of The Sun, an inexplicable ancient lump of maths built before maths was invented. Apparently, the angry little man with the gun who keeps spitting has just arrested us for defaming the sacred soil of Quetzlcoatl. Negotiations are in full swing and eventually we're frog-marched into the back of the van. We feel we have the moral high ground as we are convinced the thing was constructed out of deference to the rising and setting sun.

These kind of things will happen on tour, especially in places you've never been. An initial sense of trepidation dissolves and an emboldened maniac emerges. You meet people who could have been your friends, girls you could have married, places you don't want to leave but will probably never see again. It's all quite bewildering now I think about it.

There's something nauseating about staying in a huge suite on the 48th floor by dint of playing some music when there are people living in cardboard boxes on central reservations of dual carriageways. Poverty here is absolute. It's hard to imagine anyone starving in London. I doubt it ever happens. In Brazil it's hard to imagine how people survive. Its really quite humbling.

I'm always enchanted by places that have been mythologised in song, they give me the goose bumps. Rio is evidently formed entirely out of songs, beaches and football. Copacabana beach, Ipanema beach...it makes you feel like you are somewhere, even if nothing at all happens. Brazil is probably the best place for indulging yourself in rock star clichés, as all those kinds of things run thick and fast...

Buenos Aires is one of the world's six great cities - it's up there with New York, London, Barcelona, Tokyo and Milan in my book. Huge squares and tree lined avenues, it's so European. The most surprising thing was the Argentinians' fondness for the English - completely unexpected. What a civilised bunch they are, intellectual espresso sippers. I caller Walter and we went out on the razzle dazzle. There were calm gardens to sip gin and tonics in, peoples houses full of books and strange perfumes, pumpin'' discos and boozy cafes full of people at sunrise. My kind of town.

If you can't change you habits, change your scenery: when you come home there's all this energy. It took about three days for South America to become irretrievably some part of my past. All those new horizons become old ones but I'll never forget the view from the top of that pyramid. go on, go somewhere you've never been - but remember! There's no greater bore than a travel bore. Cheerio!