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Farewell to Madrid

Andrew Latimer, the longest surviving member of the band Camel, has suffered from a blood disorder called polycythemia vera since 1992. This condition causes the bone marrow to over-produce red blood cells, causing the blood to thicken. Despite therapeutic phlebotomy, the condition progressed and he developed myelofibrosis, a state in which the normal bone marrow that produces the different types of blood cells is replaced by fibrous, inert tissue. With progressively less blood production, weakness and fatigue set in. By 2003, Andy Latimer knew that his touring days were close to the end and this is the reason for naming that year's tour, the Farewell Tour.

Below are excerpts from an interview Andrew Latimer gave on October 19^th, 2003, just nine days after this Madrid show. He was in Rotterdam, Holland and was speaking to Clemens Steenweg…..

  CS: How would you describe the music of Camel?

  AL: It's just, you know, emotional music really, I think. I don't think it is progressive, you know, we've been doing the same thing for 30 years so that's not very progressive ha ha!! It's the outside world that wants to put some little tag to it, a label. It's not the musicians, what we are doing is kinda playing the music that we like and exploring new avenues as we go. If you want it to call it Progressive Rock that would be okay by me, but I mean it wouldn't be a term that I would use.

  CS: Of all Camel albums is there one or are there more favorite or special to you?

  AL: Quite a few are special I think for me: I like "Dust And Dreams" because it was our first venture into the independent record world, and then "Harbour Of Tears" became my favorite because of my father. So I've got sort of quite a few different favorites I suppose: "Snowgoose" was quite an important album for the band, "Moonmadness" I like because of the sound that it has, there's a certain sound and feel. I would probably say "Harbour Of Tears" would be my favorite which has something to do with my dad.

  CS Is this really The Farewell Tour?

  AL: Yes, maybe it is meant to be our last tour, and I think it will be, but you can never say never, you know, so I don't know.

  CS: How was it to be reunited with Ton Scherpenzeel, the keyboardist for this tour?

  AL: Wonderful! It's been really quite a joy, 'cause Ton is so funny. And his playing is very structured and very solid. We've kept in touch through the years, and the only reason we stopped working was he wouldn't fly, which made life very difficult, especially when we were touring and going to Japan. So I think now it seems very logical to me that he's doing the last tour and we've had a Dutch crew up to today, it's been incredibly funny. They're very dry, very interested people and we were sort of learning from each other, and starting to accept each other…..we all got sick together down in Spain. We were very ill, 7 of us were sick, and that kinda bonded us in a strange way, but they were great!

  CS: Has this Farewell Tour been what you expected?

  AL: No. I don't really think about it too much. I started to think about it in America before we organized it, and it became too much to think about. "Farewell Tour"..., "last time"..., you know, if you start thinking: "Wow, this is the last time I'll play Rotterdam!” it becomes too much for me. So, I purposely put it in another compartment and don't think about it because if I did it probably would make me very sad. You know, I'm sort of fooling myself that it isn't the last time, although I'm kind of accepting that it probably is. You hope a tour will go well and those are the things that you look for when you go out.

  CS: So, for many fans this Farewell Tour is an emotional goodbye. What about you?

  AL: Yeah, it's pretty emotional .....! Yeah, somehow inside I get very emotional. I only have to start thinking about it on stage and I start going, so I have to try and control it because otherwise my emotions get too much and I can't sing and I can't do anything. Each place we play there have been moments …

  CS: My last question: if you could choose to do it all over again, what would you do?

  AL: Oh, probably the same. It's very difficult when you look back on your career. You know, forming the band and then watching it split, and then having the influences from all the other musicians. "Oh, maybe I shouldn't have made that decision, that was a bad decision", you know, but that decision let us down a certain road and so I think a lot of the painful parts of Camel I would soon forget. You know I just made the best decisions I could at the time, but I'm fairly happy with the way things have gone. But I mean that's a man of age who says those things. You get wiser, don't you?

By December of 2007, Andrew had received a bone marrow transplant which was hoped to improve his condition. According to his wife and publicist Susan Hoover, the next 6-12 months were rocky as he had to endure the multiple medications and waited to see if the replacement bone marrow was going to function properly. By the end of December, 2009, the Camel Video Producer, David Minasian posted this update…

  “Recently there's been much concern over the health of Andy Latimer and the future of Camel. This wonderful man and incredibly talented musician is recovering well and even beginning to get back to work. I'm currently producing two projects with him - one is a DVD of Camel's Farewell Tour we recorded in Santa Cruz, California in 2003 and the other is my own album which Andy has graciously offered to play on. In addition, Andy has just announced that he may possibly be playing at the High Voltage Festival in London in July, 2010. Good news all around then for fans of this man whose music has contributed to so many lives.”

PRRP Staff

Notes from the Re-Master

This recording came from a well known, experienced taper in Spain. The whole show is here with no missing sections. At the end of the disc 1 material there is 25 seconds of redundancy so that fade in and fade out can be present. The show was remastered in this form but at the end, the redundant section was removed so that the last track of disc 1 and the first track of disc 2 would flow seamlessly together. These are provided as alternative (alt) versions of these two tracks so that listening to the WAV or FLAC files using these alternative tracks would allow a seamless listening experience.

The remastering began with repairing and restoring the clipped audio. The tonality was then re-balanced to attenuate the excesses and improve clarity. Clicks and pops were identified and were repaired when found. Some sections such as monologues were poorly heard and therefore were modified to make more audible. Dynamic adjustments were made to enhance the music and compensate for auto-record circuitry. Channel balance was off and needed correction. The show was then re-tracked.

PRRP Staff

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