Yes, that’s right. So when we got to the venue, I was really looking forward to it. They did it in such a way that you didn’t know who you were going to meet first, I didn’t know if I was going to meet Mike or Eddie or Twist.

So I was ready for anything just sitting on the edge of the stage. I think it was Eddie that walked in first and I didn’t even recognise him. And what’s more, when I met him, it was amazing, it was a totally different person than the person I knew back when we were touring. The person I met that morning was just such a totally wonderfully happening, positive, enjoyable spirit that it just blew my mind.

For the first time I think ever, right back since we met way back in Wales, we totally enjoyed the s**t out of each other. We were just immediately totally relaxed, and I’d never felt that way with him. Ed would probably tell you the same thing; we’d always been a little bit a loggerheads. But it was an amazing about turn, really really cool.

About five minutes. Literally about five minutes, I think Eddie was more nervous about meeting everybody than I was.

No, we’ve never lost touch. We met each other when were six and started playing music then. We were telepathically, spiritually brothers, we’d done nothing but play since the age of 6, we knew everything about each other, we were inside each others’ heads.

Twist immediately tuned into where Eddie and I were and that we were enjoying the situation. For the first time ever, the three of us felt like ‘‘wow, this is The Alarm’‘. The three of us had immediately formed this new bond, after 15 years of The Alarm we felt we had a whole new deal, felt like we could start a whole new band right now with the feeling that we had going.

And then Mike walked in and I have to admit it was a little bit odd for a few minutes.
Obviously I’d seen Mike at The Gathering & things and had talked with him, but for a few minutes when he first came in, I don’t think any of us could figure where Mike was coming from. It was a little bit tense, through no fault of Mike’s and no fault of ours, it was just one of those things. I think it took Mike a few minutes to settle down, he was a bit keen to start with.

In the space of the preceding ten minutes, the three of us had come together in a way we had never done before, we were in tune within a matter of a few minutes chatting together. It was very comfortable, very relaxed, very open. I wish it had been like that when we started the band off. When Mike came in, it was a bit tense for 10 – 15 minutes but I think I turned round to the lads and said ‘‘look guys, this is great, but when are we going to get some work done around here?’‘. When we began to get down to business, that was when it all mellowed out.

By that point we’d had the gear and there were a few complications, I knew I had some problems with the gear that I’d asked for. It wasn’t totally wrong, but it was wrong enough that there was going to be some major technical problems with the performance unless this problem was sorted out. So after meeting up, we got a chance to switch the gear on and I had a chance to iron out some of the difficulties. It was agreed that we had to make this fix to the gear, so we did the group interview then.

I don’t think we even discussed that.

We took a look at the place, we knew how many people it would hold. I think we all instinctively knew that it was the right size venue and that it would be jammed. I think we all have enough experience that it went without saying. Obviously I knew with talking to the .org people and we’d been through the whole guest list situation. I guess everybody must have had that conversation with the VH-1 people, although we didn’t discuss it as a band. We knew we were there to do a job and put on a damned good gig.

Ed told me personally that he was very nervous because he hadn’t played for so long. He’d put his mind in a place away from rock and roll and away from performing in front of people and I could tell that he was serious about it.

It was the whole shebang. He’d worked very hard at putting his head in a different place so he was making a massive effort to agree to do it in the first place. Eddie told me that when it first came up, he really didn’t want to do it for that reason. Not because it was getting back together, he’d have gladly got in a room with the four of us. But picking up a guitar and playing in front of people, reconnecting all those ties that he’d obviously worked so hard and conscientiously to sever, and severed in a proper manner. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to reconnect and then separate himself back out afterwards. So that was what was driving some nervousness on his part, but he and I worked real close on that.

I think it was Marching On. They asked us to play a bit for sound check, so we fired up into Marching on because that was one that we could all remember and felt comfortable with.

They wanted us to immediately go into playing and soundchecking, but we said no way, we’re not even close to soundchecking. Eddie had stuff to do on his gear, so did Twist, I had a ton of stuff to do. So we sent them all off and I think I said Mike, why don’t you go and interview for a while, do the pop star thing, we’ve got work to do in the boiler room.

So we spent four hours or so messing about with the gear and I think we were in a spot to do something about six in the evening on the Monday. We blasted through a few songs then.

By then, the issue was looming rather large on the horizon. I think Mike and I had very different views on what we wanted to do with the performance. We agreed at the end of the evening that we would discuss it as a band first thing the following morning and find a way to resolve it.

We knew that we were going to do 8 songs by then. We’d looked at how much time we had to rehearse and soundcheck. We knew that all these people are showing up, it’s the first time that we’ve played together for years, and maybe the last, we can’t just to two songs. We decided how many songs we can realistically get together in the time that we had and decided that about 8 songs was appropriate.

I don’t think any of us knew how to resolve it, but it was Mike’s suggestion and a damned good one, that we all wrote down twelve of our favourite tracks that we wanted to play. Out of those four lists, we’d find eight that would co-incide and those would be the ones we played. So that’s what we did and that’s how the set was picked.

Mike was magnanimous enough after that to come to me and say ‘‘I’d like to discuss with you what order we want to play these in’‘. At that point I think it had already been decided which were going to go out the broadcast, but I was just ‘OK, whatever, it really don’t matter, we’re just going to get up there and play and have a good time’.