THE DARKNESS "ONE WAY TICKET TO HELL... AND BACK."
FILMS
My overriding memory of shooting this video is of myself sitting on the edge of a helicopter's open hatch. The suit to keep me warm was far too short for my long body, as I don't think people in Iceland are as tall as I am at 6'3". Below me, as I waved for him to slow down on an ice scooter as he sped at 100mph across the ice plateau, was Justin Hawkins, lead tremelo-warbler of The Darkness. Even from this lofty perspective I could see the manic expression across his face.
"Slow down," I kept mouthing and flapping my arms.
The band wanted to spend as much money as we could on the production, even wanting curry flown in from Reykjavik for the scene on the mountain top.
Perhaps one of the biggest regrets of my career is what I missed the night before the shoot, for which we all had to be up by 5a.m.
Many people had gone high on to the to the ice flow in the night to see apparently what had been the most amazing display of crazily iridescent Northern Lights. Even the local Icelandic people said they had never seen anything like it. Oh well.